Xenos Alchemist: A Review of Tyranid Design

Today on the Xenos Alchemist podcast, we pour back through Tyranid history for a review of the Tyranid design aesthetic. This one should be of interest to anyone who followed my Tyranid Archive posts, or folks who have a morbid curiosity about which Tyranid models we love, and which we can't stand!

It's a long one, with ridiculous accents, but here's hoping you enjoy it!

UPDATE: Since Kym so helpfully suggested it in the comments on this post, here is a link to all of Mr. Pink's past Tyranid Archive posts. They're broken down by edition so you can get some visual references to go along with this podcast:

http://www.modernsynthesist.com/search/label/Tyranid%20Archive

If you have any comments on this episode, please leave them in the comments section below.

Thanks, and happy listening!

The Omega Strain is Top 5 in North America!

I DID IT!

After four solid months of work, and many hundreds of hours of work (118 hours in April alone!) on my Omega Strain Genestealer Cult, I succeeded in not only scoring an Inner Circle gold medal at my local store, but also being named top army in Canada, and top 5 in North America!

Games Workshop US HQ made the announcement last Wednesday. It was a nail-biting wait, and they made the reveal by posting photos of the 5 winning armies to their Games Workshop Inner Circle Facebook page:

Xenos Alchemist: A Podcast for Xenos Lovers

Brother Pink has been on my butt for some time to put together a podcast for anyone who likes Modern Synthesist but would rather it be fed to them through their ears. Since he was also happy to take care of all the fidgety editing work, I was hard pressed to refuse him.

Therefore, I present to you his oeuvre: 

Xenos Alchemist - A Modern Synthesist Podcast

What's a Xenos Alchemist?

This podcast will be about the same kinds of things you encounter here on the Modern Synthesist blog: reflections on the creative side of 40k (painting, sculpting, conversions) that trend towards the alien factions that might not see as much love as their power-armoured foes. Brother Pink and I are more interested in models and fluff than in competitive gaming, so that's what we hope to make our podcast about.

We're still getting into the swing of things, so we've got a mixed bag of episodes at this point. However, in the pipe we have a two part discussion with Hydra about sculpting, and an episode on this whole Games Workshop Inner Circle thing.

How often will you be posting episodes?

Genestealer Patriarch Throne - The Osseous Throne

The centrepiece of my Genestealer Cult of the Omega Strain is the cult's Patriarch, known as The Master, and his Osseous Throne.

In this article, I'd like to share more photos of the Osseous Throne, both unprimed and painted. However, before we get to that, I should probably touch on my...

Inspiration for the Conversion

Anyone who has been along for long enough, or who has a vested interest in Genestealer Cults has probably run across either the following piece of phenomenal art by Tony Hough...

(Due possibly to some Twitter cajoling, he even did the following colour version of the same art in recognition of his 30th anniversary as a 40K artist!)

What is Games Workshop Inner Circle?

UPDATE: Brother Pink and I have since put together a podcast about my experiences in Dallas Texas as the Inner Circle champion for Canada. It gives even more information on what Inner Circle was all about, so you can listen to it here, if you're interested: https://soundcloud.com/xenosalchemist/inner-circle-report-part-1

On Saturday I attended the final judging session of the Games Workshop Inner Circle event, and I'm pleased to report that the Genestealer Cult of the Omega Strain walked away with a GOLD MEDAL!

Receiving my medal from Brando, who might just be my favourite blackshirt.
Don't tell Alphonso.

YAY!

You may have seen the hashtag InnerCircle showing up on your social feeds over the weekend. For anyone outside North America, or those within North America who haven't heard much about this competition, here's the skinny:

Games Workshop's US head office has been running a pilot event called Inner Circle in support of Gathering Storm. It's an army painting competition in much the same vein as Armies on Parade, which happens across the world in October.

However, Inner Circle differs in a couple of ways:

Omega Strain Genestealer Cult Wins Best Army at Astronomi-Con 2017!

Well thank god for that.

As I've been posting less on blog over the last couple of months, my fervent work on my Genestealer Cult of the Omega Strain has been ramping up like crazy. My goal for finishing this force was to enter my first ever tournament with them at Astronomi-Con 2017.

Genestealer Patriarch Conversion - MonsterMarch Week 4

So way back at the beginning of March, I cheekily committed to finish the above converted Genestealer Patriarch model for MonsterMarch, a hobby pledge event being hosted by Path Of An Outcast. However, to do that, I needed to make him look like this guy, who is The Master from Guillermo Del Toro's modern vampire TV series The Strain:

That meant sculpting some kind of cloak, which, honestly, terrified me. But I bit the bullet, took it on, and in the end I think it worked out.

The History of Mr. Pink and Modern Synthesist (Podcast Interview with Chapter Approved)

Something a little different today. I was approached about doing an interview by Tibbs, of Tibbs Forge fame, and more recently of his new podcast Chapter Approved. Tibbs is a GW hobby enthusiast after my own heart: he cares more about cool conversions and story than he does about uber-competitive gaming. And its this more laid back, more art-based hobby focus that he delivers in the Chapter Approved podcast.

Anyway. He thought that our interests aligned, so the two of us recorded a skype call, which turned into a bit of a marathon and will be broken up into a few podcast episodes. Over the course of it, we went through my history in the hobby, some of my work on Tyranids, a lot of my work on Dark Eldar and the Haemonculus Coven, and then onto what is probably best described as my ideological stance on the hobby and the importance of being true to what you enjoy.

This first part of the interview concerns how I got into the Warhammer 40k/Games Workshop hobby, and talks a lot about my work with Dark Eldar and the Haemonculus Coven. Tibbs put together a standard, audio podcast, so I painstakingly went through and annotated it with relevant images in the following video.

Have a listen/look and let us know what you think :)

Paint Yoshit Week 8 Update (Squaduary Week 4)

This is the Week 8 update for mine and Brother Pink's Paint Yoshit Challenge, and also happens to be my final update on my progress/participation in Stepping Between Games' Squaduary challenge. To review, here's where we are in my own Squaduary schedule:

Week 1: Assembly
Week 2: Priming and Airbrushing
Week 3: Clean up and details
Week 4: More final details and basing

...and what do I have to show for myself?

I had been hammering away at painting yesterday to have as many models as I could absolutely done for the Squaduary deadline at midnight on February 28th, but then I saw this post from Rob over at Broken Paintbrush about how he'd failed at Squaduary.

Except he hadn't. Not in my eyes, at least. Sure, his Orc Bloodbowl team wasn't based, but they looked pretty great to me!

...which made me realized that I could base the models I had in their current state, and call it done, even though I knew I'd have to go back later and touch up/finish some of their details. So I got out the pin vice and my already-painted bases and set to work!

To review, I took on a VERY AMBITIOUS pledge at the beginning of Squaduary. I'm working towards a tournament deadline at the end of April for my Genestealer Cult, so I thought Squaduary would be the perfect thing to get me ripping through painting most all of my infantry for that tournament force. Here's what that looked like:

All told, that was about 46 models...which is nuts for a challenge where you're supposed to paint a squad. But I had an airbrush, so everything was going to be FINE!

In the end, I wound up completing three squads, for a total of 21 models, which is less than half, but I'm pretty happy with that I DID accomplish.

Completed This Week:

- 6 Aberrants: I'm not really sure why, but I REALLY love the Aberrant models...particularly with their power hammers. Thought there are still some final touch ups to be made, I'm really happy with how these guys came out—especially the one who's setting up to hurl the dynamite. 

Paint Yoshit Week 7 Update (Squaduary Week 3)

This one should be a quick little update as I'm just trucking along with Squaduary and mine and Brother Pink's Paint Yoshit Challenge. To review, here's where we are in my own Squaduary schedule:

Week 1: Assembly
Week 2: Priming and Airbrushing
Week 3: Clean up and details
Week 4: More final details and basing

ALREADY a couple of days into week 4, and the trepidation I had with my progress last week has spilled over into full realization what I will not be finishing nearly as many models as I'd hoped in February!

I guess I need to remind myself that most people are trying to complete 5-10 miniatures in the time I allotted myself to complete nearly 40!

It's all about scale.

At this point I'm pretty confident that I should be able to finish 3 squads: the 10 "unwashed" Neophytes, 5 "shrouded" Genestealers, and 6 Aberrants. Oh, and though this update is posted late, I did actually take the pics on Tuesday.

Completed This Week:

I didn't finish painting anything this week as I'm aiming to polish off a bunch of stuff at the end of February.

In Progress:

MUCH WAS FINICKY PAINTED...though not nearly enough :(

- 6 Aberrants: Started in on their details. They have metalics on them now, and their chitin is all blacked in Secret Weapon Tire black. Waiting on highlighting their reds, painting their chitin, purple vascular tissue, then final details.