WeeNids WIP

Since starting a WoC army the ‘Nids have slipped from my attention a little – although I did manage to get some painting done since New Year:

Tervigon

I was going to wait and paint the Tervigon in a few months (hopefully giving me a bit more practice painting), but I had a few games coming up where I really wanted to use the model and show it off – so dived into painting this bad mutha.

Having used it in every game since I made the conversion, I can understand the abundance of multiple Tervigon lists that are floating round the net. So much so, that I have been tempted to make another Tervigon for higher point games – although recent rumours of a Tyranid 2^nd wave this year that supposedly includes a Tervigon kit means that I might wait and see what appears.

Prime and Warriors

For a while I had been wondering what to do about my Tyranid Prime – I knew that I wanted it to have dual boneswords for instant-death goodness, but couldn’t make up my mind how to convert it to make it different to my other Warriors. Whilst scouring ebay for bargains I stumbled across a 2^nd Ed warrior and thought it would be perfect given my 2^nd Ed experience. This was another model I wanted to leave for a while before painting, but after finishing the last of my Warrior brood and being faced with batch painting another 10 gaunts I said to hell with it.

Flyrant

Every ‘Nid payer needs a Flyrant – even if you never use it in a game and an annoying but fortuitous error made by a GW packaging troll meant that I had two Tyrant kits – one built and lightly converted (and in the process of being painted) and one sat in its box unassembled. I always intended to convert this second Tyrant and give it a set of wings to be the start of my Nid’s “Air Division” – but have been putting it off for ages.

Well, in a fit of slight boredom I picked up the bitz and got to work.

The plan was to magnetise the model it for storage/equipping.

First job – which wings to use….checking online, it seems to be a toss up between WFB Dragon wings and Balrog wings – with pro’s and con’s for using either. I personally liked the more lizard-like appearance of the Dragon wings, so went for them.

Next stop – the magnets. Again, checking a few online sources told me the best sized magnets to use are 1/8” x 1/16”. The plan was to magnetise the arms and the wings – the rest of the model would be pinned and glued in place.

I set all the magnets where I wanted them and then…epic failure. Despite the magnets being powerful (they are the typical rare earth style magnets that you would use for this job), the limbs just wouldn’t stay in a fixed position and kept drooping (ewww….droopy limb images).

I think it was because the limbs could physically only hold a single magnet (two would probably have been better) and the fact that it was tough to get the magnets to sit perfectly flush against each other (they are set in a moulded torso as opposed to flat tank/dreadnought sides).

I tried to get round the problem by adding a temporary pin to the limbs that would help stabilise them when attached to the model – but this didn’t work well enough, so out of frustration I said screw it and glued on my favourite combination of weapons (please GW – keep the T/L Devourers as good in the next edition).

I’m now left with the problem of storage/moving the damn thing from game to game – but I think it looks pretty nice and can’t wait to paint it…