Troops
Rippers
It’s hard to love Rippers, especially in the second edition. Each base came with six of the buggers and you couldn’t fit them all on it. They cost too much and they didn’t look great. Once again, they were intended to fill the army ranks, not win any awards.
I broke my Rippers up into smaller units, three four or five on a base. I was going to do only three on all of them, but that looked too cheesy.
I painted each Ripper separately, unattached to the base. I went with pink and blue - baby colors. Their white gnashing teeth made for a nice cute contrast. I pinned the models onto prepainted prepared based by drilling through the base, bending the wire and fastening the lower wire down with superglue and baking soda.
I ended up with 10 Ripper bases - more than enough for any campaign. I broke them into two broods; one with a squiggle on their heads, the other, surprisingly, without.
Termagants
I never intended to paint so many Termagants, but I just kept getting them. They came abundantly with the Tyranid Army box set, and somewhere along the line, I got another box, I think.
Luckily they were easy and fun to paint. After assembling the plastic pieces into as varied poses as possible, I painted them orange. An aggressive wash of Chestnut Ink and a drybrush of a lighter orange make them look just grand.
I did the usual detail work and broke them down into broods of 11 gaunts each. I painted their shells different colors to represent their brood. Ironically, the best color combination, the blue, was the last one I did. I guess I was trying to go for more subdued natural colors. I don’t know why I didn’t go for the compliment right away. It looks good and matches the rest of my tie dyed army.
Hormagaunts (2nd Edition)
These were actually very time consuming pieces. First, assembling the pieces was a chore. They do not balance well at all. I use weights where I could, bent them where I might, and vowed to take the wobblers off the table as first casualties.
Second, I couldn’t find a good paint scheme. I painted my prototype three times before finding a look that would work. I’ve never loved the look of them, but after two dips into Pine-Sol, I was willing to compromise.
To get the color I ended up with, I had to dry brush each piece with two colors over a base coat. The Hormagaunts ate paintbrushes like they were marines. To make matters worse, I decided to increase their number after I had finished the brood. Restarting an assembly line is always a pain, trying to remember what you did where and how on the piece.
I drybrushed the claws as brightly as I could get away with and keep a natural look. I wanted them to contrast against their darker bodies, giving the impression of a cloud of claws coming at the enemy. I seperated the swarm into two broods of 14 figures each, green and red. I used heavy washes to bring out the carapace colors.
Hormagaunts (3rd Edition)
I know I had a lot of Hormagaunt - 26, but this game just encourages the player to add on. So it is that I became fascinated with Seeding Swarms and the prospect of sea of leaping hormagaunts racing across the table. I’ve noticed that for all the cool expensive models in my army, the lowly gaunts seem to decide the game. Okay, the Carnifex pull their weight too, but the cheap little gaunts are wonderful all around. Besides, the old Hormies are so poorly balanced that they’re a pain to play with, the new ones also don’t balance over their bases, but being made out of plastic, a weighted base fixes them. Besides, they’re actually very cool models.
I picked up 16 hormies on ebay and then ordered two boxes from my secret Canadian connection. The gaunt boxes come with 8 hormies and 8 termagants each. With the 26 I already have the new 32 brings the Swarm up to 58 hormagaunts, 580 points of clawing, gnashing frenzy before mutation.
The downside is painting them. I used such a complex method of painting my original ones, that even taking shortcuts and not requiring an exact match, I still had a long process getting the purple/blue skin. Eh, it’s all a labor of love though.
Spinegaunts
I tell you I didn’t need more gaunts. I have so many Termagants that I wondered if I’d ever use them all. But I wanted more hormagaunts for a seeding swarm. As you may know, Games Workshop, in their infinite greed, does not allow you to buy hormagaunts alone. You have to buy them in a box of 8, with 8 termagants. I had planned on converting the termagants into level walking hormies, but then I changed my mind.
Spinegaunts are the cheapest gaunt construction in the Tyranid Codex. I’ve heard good things about throwing waves of these cheap critters at an enemy so I thought I’d make some.
I went with the same color scheme as the termagants because I figured they were close enough in species to be the same color, and they’d serve the same function of shooting gaunts.
The guns of the new Tyranids are really made a part of the creature unlike previous versions so I couldn’t repeat the spinefist pattern I’d used before. Instead I just went with an ivory undercoat and heavy Reaper Ruby Red ink wash which blending the orange with the rest of the critter.
I struggled for weeks with the color of the carapace. I tried no fewer than 5 different schemes before settling on the burgundy/maroon scheme I have now.
Though still untested in battle, I think they’re great. Now I want more!
New Spinegaunts
“Make a cheaper gaunt and the world will beat a path to another world.” Thus spoke my muse when planning my Tryanid Army. I had read how these little babies were wonderful, cheap, barely effective army fillers that always seemed to earn back twice their points. Sounded good to me.
I bought a couple of Tyranid Gaunt boxes, and to the horror of every Tyranid player out there, ignored the hormagaunts sprues and build the termagants into Spinegaunts. Now a spinegaunt is just the cheapest gaunt the 3rd edition would allow. It’s a base gaunt with the cheapest weapon. What they lack in strength, they make for in numbers.
I whipped these guys out pretty quick. I kept the basic orange of the termagants of yore – I liked the color and couldn’t happily find a new dedicated color for a mutant race. I tried to blend the guns into their bodies with inks and blending techniques. This bridges the old and new styles of models a bit, insofar as you can still recognize the gun, but it’s still a part of the critter. I made a couple of Hive Node versions so they can pass a test or two. Points and parts well spent.
Since making these guys, I’ve never fielded an army without them. I’ve never lost all of them and they usually play an instrumental part of any win they’re a part of, if only by taking fire away from the Warriors or tying up Terminators.
Genestealers
These are my oldest Tyranid troops. I built and painted them back in the first edition days. I traded marines or money or cokes for enough of them to make a force.
This was probably 10 years ago, but I remember that they were hard to paint. The basecoat wouldn’t cover them. I had to basecoat them at least twice. Also, picking out the detail in the elbows and claws was also a pain. They took forever and taxed my will to paint figures, if not my will to live. I remember thinking how glad I was when I was finally finished with my last one. I have a few more models laying about, but I don’t even remember what colors I used on them. My 32 Genestealers will have to suffice. Considering how deadly they have proven to be on the battlefield, I think they will.
I broke them down into groups of 6 or 7 and painted colored markings on their heads to show brood membership should I need to break them up.
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