Monday, April 23, 2012

Of Repainting Tyranids and Other Side Projects

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Yup, repainting the tyranids.  At the December invitational tournament, I went 3-0 with 63/63 battle points with the nids.  However, after painting scores were added in, I didn't even place first or second overall.  That was the nail in the coffin for my poor nids.  That, and I can't bear painting any more metallic green.

May's monthly tournament at Millennium Games will be a 1000pt team event, but with a different random teammate each round.  There's a ban on special characters and no duplicate elites, fasts, or heavies allowed.  What a great opportunity to have some fun with the bugs, test out a new paint scheme, and some long forgotten units.

So, knowing what I know now and didn't know back when I painted them the first time, I came up with a paint scheme that uses the airbrush and lots of washes to make it go quickly.




The face and gun aren't finished yet, but you get the idea.  Quick, easy, and hopefully more effective than the black/metallic green.  And yes, I'll be taking warriors to the May tournament.  I've been mulling over the benefits of multi-wound fearless scoring units so I'm giving warriors a try.

In other news, I picked up a sick foam cutter recommended by Mike Brandt who runs NOVA.

 
 Making terrain entertains me as much as painting and playing so I figured I would step up the terrain production.  Maybe I can knock out 2 or 3 really nice new tables for DaBoyz GT this year.  Here's about 20 minutes worth of playing with the new tool.  I really want to make a city table without buying $300 in GW ruins so maybe I can pull it off now.

 
Anyways, that's all I've been doing over the past week.  Stay tuned for my tyranid hobby updates as I repaint 1,000pts worth over the next 3 weeks.  Then it's back to the dark eldar.
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10 comments:

  1. PoliticalOfficerKradApril 23, 2012 at 10:56 AM

    Very cool, man. I was wondering when you'd decide to repaint the Nids. The scheme looks good. Nids are really suitable for washes and airbrushing.

    The foam cutter looks neat too. Much better than a razor blade and probably better at curves than a band saw.

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  2. BrentApril 23, 2012 at 11:25 AM

    What's the link for the foam cutter?

    As an aside, I picked up a fantastic paintbrush this weekend at Adepticon... will I get results like yours? Maybe not, but if it can improve my speed and thus output it'll be worth it!

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  3. mugginsApril 23, 2012 at 11:30 AM

    What cutter is that? I'm super interested.

    Also happy to see the Tyranids back. I'll be playing my Tyranids in a team tourney in May as well. Planning for two tyrannofexes and two tervigons + filler in 1000 pts. Funsies :D

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  4. hyv3myndApril 23, 2012 at 11:32 AM

    MVB talks about several foam cutters here:
    http://whiskey40k.blogspot.com/2012/03/doing-radical-stuff-with-pink-foam-tips.html

    I picked up the Mighty Might.

    I have faith that you will master the airbrush Brent. It's just a matter of getting comfortable with paint consistency, air pressure, and the invisible "tip" where the distance from airbrush to model is just right.

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  5. hyv3myndApril 23, 2012 at 11:36 AM

    http://www.amazon.com/Wire-Cutter-Table-Mighty-Might/dp/B004IA4BJO

    One of the things I really want to try with it is cutting an insert to fit the battlefoam display board so I can make a different one for each army without buying 3 battlefoam boards.

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  6. 40kaddictApril 23, 2012 at 1:38 PM

    Not much use for your foam cutter but I've a slew of .pdfs to create terrain out of foam board and cereal box card. Feel free to use, abuse, remix, rehash and share the link

    http://40kaddict.blogspot.co.uk/2011/02/terrain-is-everything-standard-template.html

    Love the new scheme, quality and subtlety.

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  7. SinistermindApril 23, 2012 at 4:22 PM

    nice choice of scheme for the nids, very similar to my old one but reversed(body was white washed with sepia wash and chitin was grey heavily washed with blue)

    always good to hear someone will be stepping up their terrain output/quality, i wish i had time to get creative with a game board..

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  8. Terminus EstApril 23, 2012 at 5:40 PM

    Wow Aaron that Warrior looks fantastic !!

    I hope you will post more pictures soon !!

    : )

    G

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  9. ErleApril 25, 2012 at 7:15 AM

    New scheme is much better than old one:) Carpace is great but, I think, body don't match it perfectly. Carapace is natural, maybe it'll be bette to choose some natural color for body like "human skin" or something a little more reddish. I like this Tyrant's body, for example: http://www.figurepainters.com/tips-tutorials/2011/8/15/painting-a-tyranid-flying-hive-tyrant-golden-demon-winner.html

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  10. hyv3myndApril 25, 2012 at 8:21 AM

    Thanks for the feedback everyone. I realize the color choices won't appeal to everyone, but I wanted to have some fun with it. Just like I got tired of the black and white of my grey knights, the flesh tones of my DE were giving me fits. For the tyranids, I wanted to get back to their roots a bit back when their flesh tones were blues and purples. Since the models are fully assembled, it also created some difficulties with airbrushing, so I needed to pick an armor color that could easily be painted over on their skin where there would be over spray. That's how I ended up with the white on purple.

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