i must confess i have a bit of a warhammer blind spot when it comes to the tyranids
i painted a few but most of the range is a mystery to me and to add even more to my shame
i actually own a whole bunch of them these have been my pile of shame since basically at the very
beginning these are from when nick and i used to flip armies on dacadoca way back in the day
and i remember either purchasing or trading for a buddy of mine's fledgling tyranid army
so i don't remember what's in here let's crack it open and take a look
all right we've got a bunch of hormugans termigans and a smattering of other things
i guess let's look at the other things we have a p like 20 of a fine cast tyranid zone throw
we've got 75 of a gargoyle um ooh a little bit more of that zone throw
looks like it looks like pretty much all of three tyranid warriors which is
great i was hoping that i still had these because i really want to do a kill team
and i'm thinking oops all warriors is in my future and his tail's broken ah i know why i remember i
used a candle to try to melt their tail so i could repose them and i melted them a fair bit
we've got one jean stealer from space hulk all right and i have 19 cormagottes in various stages
of disarray i think i have enough bits to properly finish these guys and then i have 11 termigons
and some of these are pretty well broken so really i think i have 10. this guy is
definitely missing wow most everything i must have stepped on him but that's cool so there's
plenty enough here for a kill team it's good to know now this bag this is where the fun begins
so in this bag there's about one two three a billion of these spine fists
anybody who's built a terminal knows that you end up with tons and tons and tons of spine fists
because they each each each of them needs two and a kit comes with 12 or 20. i think it comes with
12. and then we've got what looks like two rogue traitor pyrovors hopefully they're all together
yes so i have two complete rogue traitor pyrovors i have one nearly complete 5th edition tyranid
hive guard back when they were made of white metal and unfortunately i'm missing one of the arms
so a little bit of a bummer there ah it looks like one more piece of the zonethrope i have a tail
from probably a tyranid ravager a hive tyrant's arm and this and this is something kinda cool
this model is a tyranid hive guard from warhammer's third edition when 40k was
in a really fun place where the artwork of the minis was incredibly badass i mean just look
at this codex cover it's just dripping with grim dark awesomeness dark colors and evil red
sun in the back everything looks sharp and is glistening in a very menacing way but once you
crack it open and look at the model pictures of what tyranid models looked like at this time well
in researching this hive guard mini i reread the codex from 2001 and you will get some crazy tonal
whiplash flipping through the codexes from this time period the juxtaposition is funny
but really there's a reason for this and that reason was the lingering effects of rogue trader
and second edition the tyranids have existed in 40k since the very beginning and they looked
really different to how we know them today and this book existed in that in between stage as
games are trap was replacing their og pewter bugs with their big bright eye-catching candy colors
and substituting them with sleek sexy plastic kits that better match the grim dark aesthetic that
40k was cultivating i got my first introduction to the tyranids with the 5th edition codex and
if i had never taken the time to look backwards through the ages i never would have known that
any of this heavy pewter stuff ever existed you see rogue trader was a wild time with such kits as
the swashbuckling tyranid warriors with hips that don't lie and an upright posture we can
all aspire to have one day a clear product of their time and have since gone the way of the
dodo to be replaced with the modern tier and warriors with more weapon options in this one
kit than the entire necron range seriously every guy has 8 weapon options and 2 wargear options
we also had the original tyranted carnifex known as the screamer killer and the name
says it all it was screaming and it was killing and it looked like it should be fighting the
ninja turtles more than devouring worlds the new model looks much more like a proper living tank
but i appreciate that they are still screaming a nice subtle nod to where it all began and finally
the old hive tyrant and honestly i don't have any problems with it sure it's old but it actually
looks basically the exact same as the modern one it's all there the tail with a little mouth on it
the extra long fleshy gun the shoulder mounted smoke stacks the tentacle whip and bone swords
the hooves even the posture and proportions are basically the same the new version which is one of
my favorite minis games workshop makes is the same model just with modern day textures and details
sometimes lightning strikes and this model really is what all modern tyranids are based off of
pretty cool corporate needs to find the difference between this picture and this picture
they're the same picture so that brings us to this little honey the old metal tyranid hive guard this
guy looks well it looks really bad to me it lacks any real wow factor charm it's not very detailed
the shield looks derpy and is way too small to require two hands to operate it it's just
bad and i think that's why this has remained in the deep dark recesses of my bits drawer for years
i just don't feel much of anything toward this model but maybe that's not where the story has
to end perhaps if i sit down and spend a few quality hours with this mini i can reinvent
it into something cool inside this derpy mini there is perhaps a glimmer of something a what if
and i want to give it a try i don't know if i can salvage it but i think it's worth a shot
and even if i fail i think it'll be worth the efforts
so what can i do to this guy to turn him from dopey to dope well i have a few ideas but one
thing i'm kind of trapped with is his basic pose and posture his head is attached to his
torso and i really don't want to grind it off so i'm kind of stuck there but one thing i do have
access to is his arms i think one big thing i'm going to try to do is to cut his shield in half
that way it'll be two small shields that can form into one big one as opposed to always stuck as one
big one another thing that i'm going to try to do is take this ravner tail i have and attach it onto
his little stump i think this will help thicken them up and make him not look so off balance
then i can re-pose the other arms and hopefully they'll give me a great base to play with when
it comes time to painting oh and i want to try to give him a huge horn on his head let's get to
work i tore him apart and as always the case with these metal models it didn't take too much effort
if you're squeamish look away now as i massacre this 40 millimeter base
i cleaned all the parts with some files and sanding sticks and i used a dremel tool on
the more egregious parts like his hooves well i just got really lucky when i was cleaning this guy
up the legs fell off so that's awesome it's gonna give me a lot more freedom when it comes to posing
i thought this guy had been super glued for the past 20 years those legs are going to be stuck
exactly like that until the sun eats the earth but it just fell off so awesome now it was time to kit
bash definitely more of a production when it comes to metal models i ground away the tail to make it
thinner then i drilled a hole the same size as my pin inserted the pin clipped it off then got
to work on his stump i clipped off his little lump of a tail then drilled a hole to receive the peg
i could have just super glued the tail but it would have certainly fallen right off
pinning it will make it much stronger then i stuck some green stuff into the leg holes and reposed
the legs i made some marks on the base where the legs were going to go so i could insert the pins
then it was just a matter of poking and prying the torso until it was the pose i wanted but you
know what's great without any poking and potting that's right our patreon over there we have lots
of high quality terrain stls available and it is the best way to help support us making videos
in addition to great grim dark terrain you also gain access to one exclusive video a week some
behind the scenes voting out models i paint live here on youtube a live hobby hangout every week
and more another great way to support us is by checking out our merch you can follow the link
in the description below to our shirts and sweatshirts with some fun populated designs
now with that said it's time to get horny i didn't forget about my horn idea i glued on a hive tyrant
finger which made a pretty good horn next it was the part i was procrastinating on the most
cutting the shield in half this took a very long time and my dremel tool removed a lot of metal
i also used my hobby nippers to gouge at the thick metal until it finally gave away
once it was in half i sanded the ragged cuts i made smooth now that this one shield two arm
situation was two shields two arms i had tons of freedom when it came to posing no more awkwardly
holding the shield out in front for this chappy it can be dynamic i stuck on his whip arm and i
carefully sliced the contact points on the whip so that i could re-pose them how i wanted this was a
major improvement over the original so i don't have a tyranid army and i don't really plan on
starting one so that leaves me with a question of what to do with this one hive guard well i have
an idea i will make him a lone survivor a lost tyranid trapped on a planet he will become a
legend a cryptid terrorizing some poor population and there is some precedent for something like
this although most unit organisms only live a very short time only long enough to serve their purpose
whether it's swarming a bastion or demolishing a lehman rust tank the more sophisticated biomorphs
can be capable of living for years if not practically immortal the gene stealers are
one such biomorphic material species that can live for hundreds of years and are often found in small
pockets or sometimes large ones all over the galaxy so it's quite possible that a hive guard
trapped aboard a fleeing spaceship could become marooned far from its original high fleets for the
base i did a classic earthy ground i superglued on some cork attaching pebbles to a layer of wood
glue and then finishing it off with some fine grained sand a good quick classic basing scheme
now the base is done i can start to think about painting also pro tip whenever i apply glue i
always use these old brushes and i clean them out in my water cup and make sure to clean out your
water cup and change your water before you start painting i have lost many a good brush to gluey
water i prepared for painting i like painting on a pane of glass it makes clean up easy i hosed
down the model with some steinel res black primer but a rattle can would have honestly been better
more aggressive robust paint then i xenothou the mini from above using some white primer
then it was base coat time so i've been sitting here way too long with my xenotheld mini trying to
figure out what color scheme i want to go with and it's hard but i think i think i'm gonna go with
blue and orange those aren't colors i use a lot and i think they'll look cool right
yeah yeah blue and orange that's what we're going with blue and orange i threw these colors into
my airbrush super watered down a dark blue and a red this will be a base to build my orange off of
and two thin coats is true for the airbrush too really especially with the tiny nozzle like the
1.5 millimeter size i'm using with this thin paint i was able to take advantage of my xenothel prime
by spraying lightly enough that the undercoat was shining through now that he's looking like a very
weird spider-man you might think he looks terrible but it's just that he doesn't look good yet
i threw some black and white inks into my airbrush and made my shadows darker and added highlights of
white to the raised parts of his skin and armor this will add in tons of value and help me pick
my areas of interest the brightest white spots will draw the most attention now the bug has lots
more value with black and white present on the mini i put more inks into my airbrush in orange
and blue i glazed these over top of the white i just applied and this did a great job of tinting
and gave me some buttery smooth blends some the actual color of butter now i was a little unhappy
with my blue ink so i decided to spice it up with some light blue acrylic paint through the airbrush
now he was truly base coated then i went in with a brush and did some highlights these
were pretty small i did most of the work with the airbrush so now it's just some finishing touches
on the carapace i thinned down some orange paint and took a brush with long bristles and made many
small straight lines to give the armor some texture that wasn't there before i went over
these orange lines with yellow lines to make them even more vibrant so the model's looking pretty
good i'm reasonably happy with my color choices but i feel like it could use a little something
i would love to try some drastic steps on this but it's hard to do those on the model i've just
spent five hours on so i've made myself this this is a swatch with the colors i already have on the
model now i can try things out on this instead of having to risk the paint i have already done
i tried a teal ink but that overpowered my colors then i tried a yellow but this didn't
do much of anything to my colors then i tried a brown which turned everything brown and finally
a green which was the most interesting one yet but still not perfect after some more tries the
winner was magenta this worked really well where it darkened and warmed the blue and it turned the
orange back into red i threw this into my airbrush and started to selectively spray it onto the model
into the recesses of his armor and the joints of his arms this is a super fun step as it worked
over all of the painting i had already done and instead of covering it up it enhanced them
i'm so glad i did that i know it's part of the tyranids thing to have a crazy difference in
color to give the model some contrast but for me it was kind of just looking like i had taken the
arms off my blue gi joe and put them onto my red gi joe now with the same magenta tones existing
in the orange and the blue it makes it look like it's a lot more done on purpose and it kind of
justifies the crazy color scheme now with the model done it was time to finish off that base
and to tell you all about that base about that base i applied a watery brown then i applied a
watery black to the flat ground then i took a tan paint and began dry brushing this over everything
then finishing it off with a watery green to make the ground look like it had a little life to it
then the only thing left to do was to paint the rim of the base black
the model is now done and i think it turned out pretty sharp but let's take a look at what the
model could have looked like if i had kept the building and paint job more contemporary to the
time period it was made in awkward pose bright colors with a high contrast in a cartoony manner
this is why i didn't initially like the model but now compare that to what i was able to pull off
what began as a lump of pewter about 20 years ago has now blossomed into a pretty badass monster
the separated shield now looks like it could be a pair of effective close combat weapons good for
bashing away at the enemy while still leaving the door open to forming it back together for maximum
protection and similarly the whip arm now cut up and reposed into a dangerous looking flurry of
razor sharp pincing claws the long meaty tail and newly acquired wide stance make this creature look
much more balanced and menacing able to spring into action instead of just march i really like
the new look of the hive guard but now i think three of these flanking a higher parent would
actually look pretty dope i'm kind of loving this model which is kind of hilarious because i seem
to remember myself saying something like i just don't feel much of anything toward this model
now i think it's cool i don't know if i would want more of these as it took about the same
amount of time to build it as to paint it and it wasn't a quick paint job but
i'm really happy about being this happy about a model i previously didn't like
this model is old but it's not even that old it's third edition old not rogue trader old i
would love to get my hands on something tyranid in a rogue trader era flavor maybe one day a man can
dream but i now have the fifth painted tyrant in my collection so he needs a name i can call
him the red terror no wait that's already that's already a thing the orange dread now it's not very
good either the hexapetal horror now let me know in the comments what is the name the terrified
locals have given to this abomination that stalks them from the shadows thank you for watching this
video all the way till the end and because of that i have a special offer for you remember those two
third edition tyranid biovores well if you are a subscriber like the video and leave a comment
we will send them to you i don't have a use for them so hopefully we can find them a new home
so make sure that you subscribe like the video and leave a comment saying unleash the spores
after seven days we'll pick someone at random to send them to good luck and thanks for watching