Finally, More Tyranids

I haven't been doing much painting recently, but over the holidays I managed to get some more Epic scale Tyranids done.

To get some tougher command units I painted these old-fashioned hive tyrants. They've always looked kind of goofy to me, but they actually have a lot of detail.

I converted these biovores from Warhammer 40k rippers and fleshborers. They are around the same size as the original Epic scale biovores. In Epic rules, these are a very handy artillery unit.

I also used 40k rippers straight up as raveners. They certainly look the part.

This is a closer-up view of the rippers.

I also painted my original trygons. I'm not convinced about these conversions, but they'll do for gaming.

The same trygons from the back.

My painted Epic Tyranid collection is getting pretty big now. I'm working up the courage to paint the excellent French exocrine and haruspex proxies...

Year End and Some Tyranids

As this year ends, I'm finally able to catch up on some painting over the holidays. Overall, this year I didn't get as much opportunity to paint as I'd liked. The last couple of weeks gave me a chance to finish at least some of my plans.

I finished some of my long-running Epic Tyranid projects, but it only reminded me of how much more I have to go.

These are the flying component of the army, 12 stands of gargoyles and 2 harridans.

These are the harridans from previous posts that I built out of 40k bits. The colour scheme is based on my old 40k Tyranid army.

These are the command/synapse stands I have so far, 10 stands of warriors and 4 zoanthropes, again converted from 40k bits.

These zoanthropes are made from rippers and Tyranid warrior heads, to give an impression of giant floating brains. They're quite a bit larger proportionally that what they should be compared to the other Epic miniatures, but they're around the same size as the original GW Epic zoanthropes with legs.

Some of the cannon fodder, 20 bases of termagants. The zoanthrope shows the size of my converted miniature.

I don't have nearly enough original GW termagants for a proper Tyranid army, but I do have some of Onslaught Miniatures' proxy bugs that can be used as a substitute. This is a comparison with GW plastic termagants on the left and Onslaught stalkers on the right. The Onslaught minis are quite a bit smaller, but they should fill the need in separate units.

This is my Epic Tyranid kanban board as it stands at the end of the year. With the above units near completion, I still have a ways to go for the rest of the army, mostly larger models.

To everyone reading this, have a great New Year! Happy painting!

More Epic Tyranids

As a part of the work on my Epic Tyranid army, I've been putting together some custom resin models of vehicle-sized creatures. There is a miniature maker in France named "Winterman" who makes incredibly detailed resin miniatures of "ground bugs", perfectly suitable for Epic scale Tyranid creatures.

I have three of these "big gun" creatures, which are around the size of vehicles in Epic. They are good proxies for exocrines. In fact, they look lean and mean, a lot better than the "slug" design of the original Epic miniatures.

Here is a comparison of the exocrine proxy versus a Forge World Tau Devifish APC. It's the perfect size for a medium vehicle.

A size comparison with classic Tyranid warriors. These "exocrines" will provide much needed armoured fire support for an Epic Tyranid army.

I also have some bigger creatures with large scything talons and lobster-like claws. These are good for Haruspexes, large close-combat monsters. Again, they fit the current Tyranid design much better than the old Epic "slugs".

A comparison with the exocrine proxy showing the slightly larger size.

Don't worry, soon I'll be showing more pictures of painted Tyranid units. I'm just still working on getting a playable army ready.

Game Night Nov. 3, 2015

Tonight at the game club, there were four games running - a Warmachine table, Dave C.'s Memoir '44, Bob's Viking game, and Stephen's Robotech RPG Tactics game. I've always been interested in the 1/285 scale Robotech miniatures since the game's kickstarter, so I joined in on that.

Stephen had some really nicely painted miniatures, and we went through a simple introductory game with a couple of Valkyries versus six Zentraedi battle pods.

The Valkyries were each represented by three miniatures showing the three modes familiar from the TV show - battloid mode (big robot), guardian mode (hybrid fighter/robot), and fighter mode (pure aircraft). Each had its strengths and weaknesses.

The battle pods were also faithful representations of the basic Zentraedi cannon fodder from the show. Stephen had the classic blue and white paint scheme for them.

The basic game is very quick-playing, and we went through it smoothly, with the Valkyries overwhelmed by superior numbers.  Overall, I thought it was a nice system, and a lot of depths can be added by various support mechas.

The miniatures, being 1/285 scale, were very intricate, as can be seen from the photos. Stephen said that some of the miniatures, especially the battloid versions, were a pain to assemble, with too many parts for such small models. I've read similar complaints online around the time of the kickstarter too. The end results look great though.

The introductory game has gotten me interested in this line of miniatures. Maybe I can get some to try out...

Bio-Titans

Continuing on with my epic scale Tyranid kit-bashes, I created some bio-titans, again from 40k bits.

These will represent barbed hierodules, the ones with barbed strangler launchers.  They are small bio-titans and are made from 40k termagant bits.

A couple of close-up shots showing the details of their guns.

These are scythed hierodules, with two large scything talons and optimized for close-combat.  They're made from 40k hormagaunt and termagant bits.

 

More close-ups showing details.

These are a couple of trygons, made from gargoyle bodies, ripper heads, and gaunt scything talons.  The talons look a little too "busy" to me, so maybe I'll change them around a bit for later versions...

I also put together something larger - an attempt at an hierophant, the largest of the bio-titans.  This is made from a warrior body and various large creature bits.  I like most of it, but it still sort of leaves me cold.  Maybe I can try a different design.

This is the same creature from the side.

Now I just have to start doing some painting.

Harridans

To create some enemies for the Tau from my previous post, I started putting together some Epic Tyranid kit-bashes.  The good thing about Tyranids is that you can use Warhammer 40k bits to make larger creatures for Epic scale.

I made a couple of harridans from left-over Tyranid gaunt, warrior, and gargoyle pieces.  These are quite imposing in Epic scale, being the size of very large flyers.  In Epic Armageddon, these are war engines with 3 damage capacity.

A close-up of the first one - the wings are from Dark Eldar ravagers, which are slightly larger and seem to be more fitting than gargoyle wings.

I used a slightly different pair of ravager wings for the second harridan, to give it a different position in flight.

Here's a harridan next to one of the Tau Orca transports.  It's suitably menacing air support for the Tyranids.

I have a bunch of Onslaught games Tyranid proxies too, for all the smaller creatures, and I've got some ideas for other Tyranid bio-titans.  More to come soon...

Something Epic?

I recently bought some old Forge World Epic scale Tau aircraft from a wargames forum I visit.  This is a game I played years ago, and I've always loved 6mm/Epic scale miniatures.  The Forge World resin models were also works of art, possessing extreme amounts of detail.  Far from just for nostalgia's sake, maybe this will get me into the game again...

The deal contained two Orca dropships (top) and two Tigershark bombers (bottom).  They came already painted with a desert camouflage scheme, and it looks quite nice, so I probably won't repaint them.  Unfortunately, some of the always-delicate resin aerials snapped off the models a long time ago.  I'll have to see if I want to repair them.  Included for scale is a Forge World Epic scale Tau Devilfish APC I had lying around.

The unpainted resin model is a Firestorm Armada Manta-class ship I already had.  I'm thinking that it looks big enough and close enough in style to the Tau models to use as a proxy Manta-class destroyer for Epic.  The Forge World Tau Manta is so hard to find these days, and it commands such a high price, that there's really no choice other than to use a proxy.  By coincidence, the name even matches!

Maybe this is the start of a Tau army for Epic...