Evolution

I needed a slight break from the Terminators from Space Hulk so decided to have a fiddle with one of the ideas I had floating around for Shadow Wars - the more or less re-release of Necromunda.

The only real army I've ever had for 40k was Tyranids - and I've had it for a very long time: the core of it was Genestealers from the original Space Hulk in 1993 or whenever.

The problem was that the colour scheme I chose for Hive Fleet Typhon was based on a lagoon crab and was therefore pretty useless for urban warfare.

Given that Tyranids evolve to maximise their effectiveness, it seemed likely they would evolve urban camouflage just like moths and butterflies did. The trick was, could I design something that felt tied to the original but still worked for the Underhive?

Step one was to raid the leftover sprues in the garage to see if I could knock together some tyranid warrior forms. Spoiler: I could.

Anyway, this is the scheme I came up with.

The carapace is very similar to the original just with splintered camouflage under the glaze; the skin was given a dark grey glaze instead of progressive browns; the purple flesh accents remained the same.

I think this works as something that would strike from the shadows and hangs together with the old scheme. Not bad for an hour fiddlibg about!

They're in the room!

"According to the auspex, they're already in the room...."

"That's it, Brother. Game over... Game over, man!"

Another couple of the Space Hulk Terminators. These are again, lovely miniatures to paint up and I'm really happy with how they've turned out. I'm not sure how much of that is down to my skill and how much is down to the sculpts, though. 

I decided to see how the whole team would look with decent scenery...

I think they're coming together quite well. 

Librarian

Another of the characters from Space Hulk. Again, quietly rather proud of this one...

A Dream to Some: To Others - A Nightmare!

Excalibur is a terrible film. I mean, it's very watchable and great fun but it's pretty dire. I am constantly grateful that Boorman didn't get the rights to The Lord of the Rings. Be that as it may, my closest work colleague is a massive fan; there's something slightly perverse about a medieval historian liking a film with such egregious anachronisms, but whatever. He's also the only man I know who can recite the entire Charm of Making which is, I suppose, admirable in a weird way.

In order to celebrate us surviving an absolute cast iron bastard of a year, I wanted to get him a present. There was really only one choice:

This is a lovely, simple sculpt from Rogue Miniatures. The hardest part of the paint job was when I looked at the film and realised that Nicol Williamson's costume wasn't black. There was blue and brown in there as well. 

So the technique was based very heavily around glazes and wet blending to give some different hues to the black robes. Overall, a simple scheme but quite effective. 

The finishing touch was to write the Charm of Making round the base. 

I just hope he likes it!

The Fallen

This is one of nicest pieces from the new Space Hulk set and I used all the weathering and aging techniques I've been learning over the last year or so to really work up the age and sense of a forgotten corner of a ruined ship.

I'd really like to grime up the other Terminators but seeing as they're supposed to be elite troops it doesn't really fit. I think I'll save it for the  scenic elements of the bases on the Stealers.

Winged Nazgul

This has been one of those miniatures I have wanted for a very long time; as it turned out, I got it as a Father's Day present.

It was basecoated with the airbrush with varying tones of grey and a fairly pallid flesh tone. The underside of the wings was built up with various flesh tones with a final Dark Flesh overspray - my tinking here that this wil probably be feilded with Uruk-Hai, so it main sense to try and tie them together with the palette.

Here's my Heath Robinson spray booth:

And here's some WIP shots:

There's a few little touchups left to do and the basing, but overall I'm, very happy.