Coven Mandrakes

Well, with it being Halloween and all, I thought I'd share something particularly horrific from my work on my coven: Mandrakes!

Once I'd found a suitably horrific solution for the Cronos, I had the itch to replicate this hideous treatment for Cronos parasites in other places in my army. I see the Cronos as kind of vacuums/generator for the whole coven. They are black holes into which souls/spirits pour, and they store the energy for the coven. I wanted them to have a pretty central role in the coven, so, if one gets destroyed, there needs to be a fresh supply of replacements.

Enter the idea of including nascent parasites, which are being groomed and grown to one day assume their roles as full-fledged engines. When looking for a role that I could rep with a baby Cronos, the Mandrake was the most obvious ones for me, particularly now that they seem to be stealth DEATH machines with the new 'dex.

It Will Not Die (The Return of Flesh Friday)

Phenomenal Nid Conversion Bits

I'm still out in the black, and all of GW's recent foolishness seems to be keeping me soured to the hobby (I was shown a COMPLETED shot of a new, plastic Eldar jetbike by someone in the studio in 2006 or 2007, and yet the recent Eldar release still features the same plastic bikes that we've had for more than 15 years. The company is clearly in it for the money and not for the models.), but this simply MUST BE SHARED with Nid players.

Get. This. (Genestealer Cult Rules)

Kids,

I'm still out in stasisland, but I wanted to make sure no one missed the opportunity to download this new rules set from the Tempus Fugitives for the updcoming Second Tyrannic War Campaign. Sure, they are only house rules, but since I've always been a fan of the Cult, I eagerly collect any and all semi-official Genestealer rules documents.

What's more, in the current age of Games Workshop's Oppressive Online Regime (maybe I'll write more on that later, but it is the prime reason for my existential ennui when it comes to The Hobby these days), I don't doubt The Company will be seeking to get these rules taken down, whether they are for an independent event or not. Thus, you should grab them while they are grab-able.

Here's a link to the event page:
http://tabletopnation.simpletix.com/Event/16/WH40000-Second-Tyrannic-War-18/

Here's a link to the campaign document/experimental ruleset:
http://www.tempusfugitives.co.uk/pdf/40k/2TW%20Pack.pdf

How to Sculpt Miniatures 5: How to make spines/Spinal Columns (Video tutorial)

Folks had requested that I expand my How to Sculpt Miniatures Series into a video format (hence the "(V)") so that they could watch me apply the kinds of stuff I wrote about in the articles. This was a somewhat-hurried first attempt that PinkPonny and I shot the other day.

Love is a drug, but my Lady prefers Polymorphetamines

Here's another guest post from the PinkPonny, but you should already know that since it contains a model that has actually been painted ;). On the surface, the following is an article about painting a Callidus Assassin. However, delve a little deeper, and you'll find this is another angle on something that I touched on in my Wisdom of the Norns article about balancing The Hobby with relationships.

Well... Have you heard of Deadpool? He’s a Marvel comic character, he says silly things, sometimes he’s a villan, sometimes he’s an anti-hero? Yeah, that’s all I really know about him. Still I had this Callidus assassin floating around for upwards of ten years. One day I just looked at it and realized this model had the same face as deadpool (and spider-man, for that matter).

Deepthought: Accommodator (or, On the Life of a Friend)

This is a hobby editorial. I went to school to become and try to make my living as a writer. Though I love the hobby, and I'd like nothing better than to sculpt all day, posting amazing things on here for all to ogle, there are times when the urge to write strikes, and I try to use these interludes to delve deeper into important parts of the hobby. I hope you find the following article interesting, and I promise to get back to posting cool models soon!

When I started writing this, it was titled "On the Death of a Friend," but then I realized that, were I in your shoes, that is not the type of title that would inspire me to read an article. Thus, I changed it, and I like it better already.

This is an anniversary of sorts, i guess, though it's hardly a thing to memorialize. This is the 3-year anniversary of the death of a good friend of mine, who went by the name Ross Nickle under the sun and the stars, but who was known as Accommodator in the digital world of posts and threads. Ross was most active on the Tyranid forum Warpshadow, and for the years when he was as our administrator, that board ran like a well-oiled machine. You may have run into him on other boards as well: particularly those that had anything to do with Titans and Titan Legions.

Like the passing of Brimstone (for those of you who can still remember Brimstone), Ross' death was an odd thing. It happened once in Real Life, happening to families and friends and co-workers. But then it happened again Online, weeks later, when the news was released to the communities. And in those communities, that news spread further than it ever could in Real Life, for over these information superhighways we touch more lives than we know.

If you knew Ross online (as Accommodator), you may not have known him as well as I had the fortune to in Life. As an attempt at remedying any disparity, I am finally getting around to this: something I've been meaning to write for some time. In it I hope to capture the Ross that I knew, and I hope to further fill out the Ross that you might have known. I'm not sure why it came to me now, but here it is.

Project Pyrovore

Howdy!

I can't remember where the conversation took place, but somewhere along the way I was talking to someone about how very useless Pyrovores were in the current Tyranid Codex incarnation. We were joking that about the only thing they seemed to be of any use for was to function like Banelings from Starcraft.

Put them in a Mycetic Spore, drop them in the middle of some marines, and hope that they fry a couple before they get shot to shit and are forced to detonate.

...Except, they can't even be relied upon to do that as they'll only blow if struck by a weapon that insta-kills them, and then only on a 4+.

Useless.
Utterly so.

A Proper Parasite Engine

That's no parasite.

THIS is a parasite!

Okay, so, the Talos model is phenomenal. I love the damn thing, which should be apparent from all the bits from it that I've used in my Wracks and Grotesque conversions. The only reason I haven't modeled a Talos yet is that, for me, there is no challenge to it; nothing needs to be improved. You take that model out of its box, assemble it, bog-standard, and you've got a work of art!

The Cronos Parasite Engine, however, is another story. I understand that they needed a secondary model to build out of a Talos kit, but for me the fluff doesn't match up with the suggested model that is built off the Talos kit. You've got this PARASITE that feeds off the SOULS of its victims, repackaging the unused lifeforce and beaming it out to other nearby Dark Eldar models. This thing, as far as I'm concerned, is the single GRIMMEST unit in the Dark Eldar codex. It gives me chills up my spine the same way the Doom of Malantai did when I first read its fluff.

Cheap 'n Easy Shrikes

This is my attempt to make cheap 'n easy winged Tyranid warriors. It's an older project that I'm rolling out again to get it finished off. I was inspired to go this route because one of my mad ideas (other than a full Coven army) is to have a full warrior army. To do that justice, I would need me some winged warriors/shrikes, but I want more than wings tacked on a warrior model!

So, on this attempted return to Tyranid Tuesdays, I'll be showing the work I've done so far on converting shrikes out of--mostly--spare bits.