Modelling - Tyrannid Shrike Conversion with Insect Wings - Part 1

Extra mobility on synapse creatures is super useful, you could use them to patch up holes in your synapse network or quickly allow your force to split. As a result, Tyrannid Shrikes seem like a no brainer then, but unfortunately I'm not a massive fan of some of the easier conversion methods or the forgeworld conversion kit. My main problem is that I don't like bat type wings on Tyrannids (except maybe on Gargoyles at a push) because I see them as more insect like. This is definitely due to my big brothers continuing enthusiasm to recreate Starship Trooper (the movie) on the tabletop with Guard vs Nids.

I have a few warriors around that need to be repainted so I decided to convert them into shrikes with beetle like wings. I really like the idea of have fore wings like the back of a beetle that flip up to expose the actual wings underneath like in the reference image. When you actually see beetle in flight the fore wings sit quite high up out of the path of the actual wings. To recreate this effect I opened up the back carapace of a warrior and added wings. This is how it turned out:

The wings were made by stretching greenstuff over a wire frame, they're not totally finished yet as they need a bit of sanding and carving underneath still.

I made bone swords out of some scything talons. I had a quandary with the armaments for him as I would have preferred a smaller gun, maybe a devourer. Unfortunately, the deathspitter just roundly trounces the devourer and only costs 5 pts.

I tried to make it look like it was in the process of landing, after a suggestion by my wife.

I sculpted soft fleshy parts that are normally covered by the carapace. They're half inspired by crabs gills. Also, as shrikes have a lower save than warriors this large unarmoured region could account for that.

The wings are part beetle and part moth inspired. I'll try and paint them quite elaborately.

Here you can see the opened carapace clearly.

I wanted to post some pictures before it was painted so people could see how it was put together. It's not totally finished modelling wise, I need to sand a lot of the GS down but I'm looking forward to painting him. I'm planning to convert up at least another 2, so I'll do a nice clear step-by-step at some point in the near future.

Hope you all like it and thanks for reading!

Progress - Tyranid Warriors

Hive Fleet Phorcys has sprung to life with five tyrannid warriors!

 

I'm quite happy with how they've turned out. I'm taking a pretty different strategy from normal as far as painting goes, the goal is to get them on a table so I'm not going crazy with the paint job. In the past I've spent far too long on a very small amount of miniatures, and as a result I've never actually had a fully painted army. This time I've left them relatively basic and will return to them later if I want to tweak them. They were good fun to paint, yellow and red are so bright and vibrant. I think it looks good with little touches of purple too, although I'm colour blind so who knows what it actually looks like.

 

Next up to paint are 10 Genestealers. Really looking forward to painting these. I've had the models for at least 16 years, it might be as much as 18 years. They're the old models from the Spacehulk box. The box was £40 pounds and had 10 terminators and 20 stealers as well as some really cool tiles and tokens; great value for a complete game. I played it with my Dad a couple of time but my big brother and I got really into it for a bit. They're still my favorite Genestealer models even though they only have 2 poses and are made of weird coloured plastic. My big brother has the terminators and they really haven't aged as well, they look kind of puny compared to the newest ones.

Coming soon:

My little combat simulator is up and running so I've been looking at some mock fire fights between various units. It has spat out some quite interesting, and non-intuitive results, for some of the simulations. I'm writing an article about them for the weekend. I'm also working on an article centering around dealing with uncertainty during a game, hopefully that'll be posted next week. 

On the modelling side, I'll keep you up-to-date with the stealers but I'm also working on a conversion at the moment that I'm going to do a step-by-step for, although it might be a couple of weeks for that.

Hope everyone is enjoying the content so far. Feel free to comment below and thanks for reading!