Otty's scratchbuilt Tyranid Bastion

You know me, I love Tyranid Fortifications and I obviously have strong views on them particularly those that claim they're not something Tyranids would do - they absorb and mutate other life forms, steal their tactics and evolve to overcome them if you don't think they'd produce fortifications alongside the rest of their bio-constructs then you're not looking at the same faction I am. And to top it all considering GW have no love for creating nid fortifcations then it falls to the hobbyist to make their own and they can be as easy or complex to build as you like, thanks to their organic shapes. Now my old mate Otty has empited his bitz box here on his Bastion, with enough spares that it propably costs more than a standard Imperial variety. Enjoy the pics and his decriptions

Here are some photos of my tyranid bastion. The first is black undercoat, then onto block colours.

the third and fourth washed

then the last 3 are the layers and highlights.

This is the finished article. The hole at the top, isn't quite as large as I would have liked, it did start off larger, taking the inspiration from tyranid box art ,which appear to show bastions or towers in the background. I extensively modified the original, adding more scything talons and numerous tyranid components. Changed the automated weapons for gene stealers holding death spitters.

I love the way those Devourers poke out perfectly from those gaps in the Carnifex carapces that are there to accomodate it's vent stacks - inspired.

Well what do you think? There's got to be a point soon where we look at another Apocalypse game I hoped I'd be able to field more of my army now but Otty keeps banging stuff out of such an awesome level I'll struggle to fit in my stuff ;) Anyway, he's given me some more pics to share with you  so look out for those and I hope this has inspred you to build your own nid structure.

Armies on Parade board 2014 - Project X continues [just a little bit]

It seems my embryonic Armies on Parade board is worthy of a few extra views. Now if I'm honest I've taken far more pictures than I'll be showing but it doesn't do to show all my cards at this point. What I will do is show you that the base is now complete and I spent a bit more time ensuring all the support struts on the back drop were properly aligned and pre-drilled for the screws.

In the end I added another couple of screws in the back instead of dowling rods, to secure the left hand wall. It takes a bit longer to put together, and there will no doubt be some DiY on the day to put all the pieces in place but a quick buzz with my electric screwdriver will have it in shape. 

So I've got the time done so far and it's about 6 hours so far [I've recorded them all on the back of the pieces, just don't have them to hand], still seems a lot for not much progress but again, it's the measuring. What is disturbing is the wife has already cottoned onto the project. I'd dismantled everything and it was in the same space occupied as the insulation foam used in the construction so I didn't think she'd notice in the garage, particularly as she'd been at work for most of the days I've been constructing. However she went and asked me "what are those wood things in the garage?" To which I had to confess - "a new display board". 

One issue is I'll be starting shaping the walls next and to make it look effective I need to add as well as take away to each fascia but if I add then storage is more difficult as added elements will 'stand proud' instead of allowing it to lie flat. This then is the next stumbling block to progress and why there are only two pics to show. This did give me the impetus to finish off the 'not Pyrovore' and press on with the Dark Vengeance Tactical Squad so I'll take whatever motivation I get in those directions, even if it's borne from a creative block.

Additionally I've been thinking some of the other decorations and there are a number of technical hurdles I need to overcome. Once again I'm thinking of transparency effects and once again I'm struggling to reconcile how to achieve them, and to do so cost effectively. I've since found out that there is no National Armies on Parade event. It will NOT be part of the new Warhammerfest, so although I think AoP is about taking part I had always hoped to go on to the Nationals and not win, but perhaps take one of the 2nd or 3rd places.

Of course with that not happening there is less incentive to go completely OTT but there are still some things I want to explore. I just have to weigh up whether solving them is entertainment for me or is the specific effect I'm hoping to achieve too much hassle and ultimately resort to what I'm familiar with [you see you don't need to use the phrase 'comfort zone'] and just sculpt clay. If only there was a transparent medium with same properties as clay, or even Milliput - a maleable epoxy resin instead of a liquid one...

Armies on Parade board 2014 - Project X is go!

Moving on from Saturday's doom laden post we are down the rabbit hole now folks! Armies on Parade is a go, despite my fear-mongering to the contrary. I hope anyone reading this blog, in particular my gaming buddies, enters a board. I see it as a showcase of what you've done all year, a 'parade' of your painting and hobby efforts so I hope everyone tries, they've already put a lot of the effort in afterall.

Last year it was all about the army, a simple board swamped with the Ferron Splinter Fleet of Hive Fleet Gorgon. This year I'm going to run with the OTT idea I alluded to here and here's where it begins. I'm a little paranoid, unrightly so, but isn't that the nature of paranoia? So I won't be revealing what the plan is, you can just try and imagine initially hopefully guess along the way, it should also help with the blog because I can just show pics and micro-blog the progress with less explanation, at least that's the plan.

Firstly I have about £10 worth of MDF and wood. I went to the local GW to confirm I could enter the same army and they did offer to sell me a Realm of Battle tile. They'll do this individually for AoP entrants, in case you didn't know, I think they're £30 each, though I'm not sure if you can get the hill sections, just the flats or even the new Sector Imperalis boards [although I doubt it]. At any rate mine is going to be covered a lot with insulation foam so really MDF is fine.

Once again I'm making a corner piece, here's one of the 18" high back walls with wooden batons at the edges to make it more stable. These have three wood screws in the back and wood glued in place.

Here's the second wall, it only has one baton as it will fix to the first one. I'm thinking of using dowel rods to secure it horizontally in place.

Here's the insulation foam, cut to fit the first wall

And the second wall is also trimmed.

The foam is glued in place using foam panel coving adhesive.

The second one is also glued in place, you can see the overhang where it can slot behind the first piece.

Here's the base, I went for 8mm MDF for stability this time, it's going to have the walls mounted to it afterall. I'll start marking where the foam is going to go on top, to join up with the walls next.

And this is how we stand after 2.5 hours, doesn't seem much really considering I completed my last board in about that time but 'measuring twice and cutting once' is a little more time consuming. Going to have to find a way to tidy up those edges.

Once the base foam is in place this will give me a great starting point for the next phase

And to allow your imagination to run wild, this is sort of where I'm going, lets remind ourselves of my brother's Vivarium. These [never before seen] pictures show what happened when I added some green to the stone to represent slime from rain fall.

It worked really well, although there's no Chlorophyll on Ferron Proxima so I'm not sure what to do painting wise, yellow would look very odd as people won't be able to process what it actually is as the visual reference wouldn't fit what they see on Earth.

 However, it ended up nice.

And the lizard approves, it's laid 102 eggs so far, in four clutches, so it must be happy.

I'll be undertaking a whole host of other terrain element while building the board. I'm hoping to make many elements removable, taking inspiration from Grubnards Swamp Table over at the Mandulian Chapel.

This will  both make it easier to store/transport and allow me to reuse the terrain components should I ever run a game in my own house! It is considerably more challenging for me to do this though as I'll have to work out the attachment mechanisms - lots of magnets, maybe some lego.

Each item will be a mini project in it's own right which means once I've finished the board itself all these other elements can be added piecemeal so any that fail to be finished will not jeopardize the whole. Hope that's whetted your appetite, obviously my last post was a bit 'down' clearly this seems a little contradictory to that but I'll be blogging as and when I can.

The fickle finger of fate!

I had a a game with PeteB last night. He's recently offloaded his Grey Knights and Imperial Guard and returned to space pixies, sorry Eldar. He's also picked up some MDF for a battleboard but asked for me to bring my Terrain. Anyway this isn't a battle report, I just wanted to play without the pressures of recording it and even with only 1000pts on the board it was 12:30am before I got home!

The point of the post is that we'd spent a good deal of time chatting about the terrain and moreso about the Tyranid Bastion. I've got it there on the baord with two Biovores inside. First turn it gets shot by a Bright Lance making it AV14, and then on the Building Damage table Pete gets a 6 +1 for AP2  = 7 DETONATION!. The whole thing blows up killing the two Biovores giving him First Blood and a VP for the Heavies as it was Big Guns Never Tire.

So, after all that preamble the Bastion was a complete bust, if I'd not had the Biovores inside I think I'd have been better off - a valuable lesson learned. Of course that's the nature of the game in that the first outing the Bastion lasted the entire game, despite being repeatedly targetted and then at Battle Brothers I'm not even sure it was shot at once except for being hit by some Tau Markerlights. You never can tell.

Anyway, next update on the Bastion is tomorrow, although I apreciate there's few surprises anymore but we'll carry on regardless. 

'nids part 88 - Tyranid Bastion growth pt9.

Next up is the dry fitting of my pseudo-heavy bolters. Simple addition of some flower arranging wire, drilled and glued into the donor Deathspitters [plain warrior version on the left, monstrous creature ones on the right, sadly I couldn't get all MC versions, never mind].

Pushed into the foamboard inside their fire slits. I will prepare a 45° fire arc template soon for this

As you can see it's not too bad, I can at least avoid the capillary towers although I'm not holding onto too much hope with my weapons here. A 45° fire arc with a 5+ chance to hit, not great odds but I think the fire ports will be the main benefit, not to mention the 3+ save on the battlements.

Here's where I switch to Milliput for the Chitin plates and I've added some stretched muscular flesh similar to the Forgeworld towers. Of course this meant I had to invest in another couple of packs of Milliput taking my costs up to about £10 spent specifically on this [not including the moonscape base which wasn't being used for anything else].

Second set of Chitin plates on the inner towers, perhaps you can make out how much crisper the detail is on the Milliput ones versus the DAS clay. I'm not 100% convinced I needed to make the swap, I'll continue on for durabilities sake but you could probably use DAS throughout.

The other larger towers first chitin plate.

That's another nights work, bring on tomorrow, although I may have to pause at some point because my Milliput order may take a few days to arrive, ooh the frustration!

Tyranid Bastion | Foamboard core template | part 1. | part 2. | part 3. | part 4. | part 5. | part 6. | part 7. | part 8. |