The Beginnings of Hive Fleet Thorn

So its been decided that the Tyranids are going to be my weapon of choice but as much as I was looking forward to returning to my ‘Nids, my experience with them in the 2^nd Gen era filled me with dread (but that could just be the Shadow in the Warp…) – namely buying and painting the same Termagaunt models 50 times over.

Luckily the advent of the plastic multipart boxes and eBay has made this a lot less painful than I first thought.

My general tactic for ‘Nids is to overwhelm the opposition with sheer numbers (no duh…), so after recapping what units I would need to create a usable 750 point list, I hopped online to begin putting together a swarm of gaunt broods with a light smattering of monstrous creatures.

Whilst the army is smaller than 1000pts, I would be running with a Tyranid Warrior Prime as my HQ unit of choice. Coming in at half the cost of a Hive Tyrant and giving a nice WS & BS boost to its Warrior brothers, I felt the Tyranid Warrior Prime was going to be more effective in the first few skirmishes whilst I was re-learning to play.

I have always been more of a painter than a player, but being over a decade out of practice, I wanted to keep my Hive colour scheme simple, yet effective.

What I have tried to go for is an organic look – with a mottled green flesh effect to make all of the units appear slightly unique (this isn’t uniform armour after all) and a dark carapace that goes from black through purple to green with yellow highlights. All this is topped off with a gloss varnish coat for an extra wet effect.

The carapace didn’t go to plan – my original vision was to reproduce the oily effect of a Scarab Beetle’s black carapace, but for some first attempts, I am generally pleased with the final results and it gives me something to work on.

Now I just have to get my WeeNids into a game.