Chaos Rising

   At some point soon we plan to wind up the Fratribusia Campaign as even good things have to come to an end, which has left us talking about what the plan for next year is. The two Imperial players are still building their first armies, so it makes sense for them to stay the side they are, which meant the two Tyranid players would be the opposition. We spoke about a Badab war style campaign of Space Marine chapters but I think we have settled on going fully Chaos.

   While the plan at the moment seems to be to stick to Combat Patrols for the first phases of the campaign, it is the perfect excuse for me to tidy up the last few units of Chaos in my backlog - this unit being one of those.

Ignore the guy at the back with the Heresy era Dark Angels pad . . .

Thanks for reading

More Cult Troops

   When it came to building the 2rnd squad of Neophytes I was a touch frustrated that the Combat Patrol build is not the weapons I would have picked if given free reign*, but I noticed that the version of Goliath** leaves you with 2 extra Neophytes left over. So I used those bodies to allow me to take extra options without ruining my Combat Patrol.

*Combat Patrol is a set of "balanced" rules from GW that allow proper games to be played using the contents of a single boxset, but they have set weapons and upgrades that have to be taken

**More to come later

Thanks for reading

The Cult's Muscle

  While starting on the second squad of Cult Neophytes, I found myself slightly distracted and painted the unit of Aberrants instead. These guys are the most mutated regular troops that the Genestealer Cult have at their disposal and are seriously tough in combat. All the advice for bigger games is that a 10 man unit of these is a must have - so there is a risk of another box in the future.

   I painted these the same as the unit of Neophytes, with the only difference being that I went a bit more nuts with the green washes to emphasis their mutated nature.

Thanks for reading

The Cult Rises

   One of the things I wanted to do with the Fratribusia Campaign was have an element of Genestealer Cult doing what they do best and to allow a bit of variation from the endless swarm - for both sides really - but both time and money meant the idea kept being pushed back. I had planned to just do a small force probably just for Kill Team, as that is what I think they would do best in this campaign, however, I popped down to Games Workshop to pick something up for another project but when I found they didn't have it, I decided to pick up a single box of cult figures so I could test a colour scheme. My local GW is one of their smaller stores, so it turned out they only had 3 GSC boxes in stock - none of which I was after. I ended up chatting to the manager and he very much upsold the Combat Patrol box.

   The Combat Patrol boxes are normally a really good deal and with the GSC one you get 4 units, a tank and a character for almost the price of the tank and a single unit, so I figured it was worth a punt.

   The first unit I painted was a regular squad of Neophyte Hybrids*. These guys are the most human looking of the cult with most of them passing a human if slightly bald and having an pallid skin tone - with the cult taking over some mines this didn't seem like an issue to me. I went with a bright orange work suit and white PPE to suit their working environment, plus it really breaks up the green and bone I've been painting a lot of recently.

   I kept a lot of the details from my Tyranid force, the skin has a green wash instead of my normal flesh wash just to give it a slight edge, then tongues are the same purple too. The more mutant the cult member is the more of my Tyranid colour scheme will come out.

*sticking with my theory of paint the regulars first

Thanks for reading

Bigger Bugs Pt 15

   Another unit I speed painted for a game during my paternity leave was my Zoanthropes - or brain bugs. These were another unit that I loved the look of in 3rd edition but always found were out of my price point as individual metal models.

   One of the things my brother and me had found our Tyranids were struggling with was confidently destroying tanks, we could kill a tank or two by the end of our games, but killing early and easily was beyond us. Asking online, there were a few answers, but a unit of Zoanthropes was always in the top 2 responses, so a unit was purchased.

   These guys were painted in time for our big 4 player game and put right at the point where the Sisters of Battle had deployed all their vehicles, so did they do their job? I have to say, yes they can damage tanks pretty well, but that they don't just pick a target and kill it as I had hoped. 

Thanks for reading

Bigger Bugs Pt 14

   I'm still quick firing the stuff I painted either before going on paternity leave or the very few bits I painted during it, so that newer stuff can be posted in close to real time again.

   When the new Tyranid models went on preorder a month or so ago, my brother and me were seriously excited - 10am on the Saturday as soon as the email arrived we were making plans. The reason for the excitement was that my brother's ideal way of playing Tyranids is with Vanguard organisms - i.e. Lictor breeds and Genestealers.

   We already had 12 Von Ryan Leapers (nicknamed baby lictors in our campaign), and we are covered for Genestealers, but it was fully grown Lictors where we had our big gap. On the day he ordered himself a single Lictor, I did the same to help his numbers, but as I owed him some money, I also ordered him an extra one - giving us the maximum 3 you can run in a single list*.

*He's since ordered a Death Leaper but that's a different story

   My one was built and painted fairly quickly, as a single medium sized** model is a quick afternoon of painting, with the result below.

**for Tyranids anyway

Thanks for reading

Bigger Bugs Pt 13

   The Haruspex is a model that once I saw it in the Tyranid range, I knew I had to have it. Then I saw the amount of attacks it has and added it to my watch list. In the end my in-laws offered to buy it as a birthday present, so I ordered one from Wayland Games and waited two months for GW to deliver one to them*.

   It ended up arriving 3 days before a big game I wanted to use it in, so a quick build and quicker paint job later and this was the result. The one thing I am really enjoying from a painting side of this whole project is how my 4 colours seem to swap and change in dominance using the slightly vague rules I've put in place for myself. Some models the green is dominant, others its the bone or red, but this model is definitely purple with the bone.

*I gather GW has been doing some work on their warehouse systems and lots of delays have been caused

Thanks for reading