Wednesday 14 October 2015

Dreadtober - Progress update #1

A Carnifex?! For Dreadtober?!! Madness you say?!!! Well, get over it, it's happening so you'll just have to deal.
Ugh, that looks hideous!
As you can see, it's part way through painting. By the end of the month it will join my tie-dyed horde of alien gribblies. The colour scheme for my Tyranids is very basic because it was conceived when my interest in 40k was rekindled back in 4th edition. Essentially the fleshy parts are painted with an 80/20 mix of Evil Sunz Scarlet/Abbadon Black and the base is painted in Dawnstone. All of these areas are then washed with Nuln Oil. Once that's done the chitinous parts are painted with White Scar and then heavily washed with a 60/40 mix of White Scar/Altdorf Blue. The final details are picked out with Moot Green and Pink Horror and a goodly dash of Ardcoat is applied as necessary. The last step is to drybrush the base with White Scar.

Given that there is no highlighting, glazing, metalwork (non-metallic or otherwise) etc. it's not really surprising that I can turn these things around pretty quickly (now watch me miss the deadline!) I'm sure my fellow Tyranid players will agree that when you're playing a horde army, the simpler the paint scheme the better!  
What do you mean the photos are identical?!
As you can see, I've completed the basecoat on the skin and base, washed it down and made a small start in applying the white layer. As with most of my Tyranids, there's a bit of construction history to this guy. He's one of my ebay salvages; basically I went a bit nuts and bought three Carnifexes I didn't need along with nine Tyranid Warriors, a bunch of gaunts and spore mines and a Red Terror. Those who were aware of the size of my existing Tyranid collection simply shook their heads woefully. I think I'm about five genestealers away from an intervention.

Anyway, like most cheap things from ebay they'd had a hard life. Badly constructed with polystyrene cement, shellacked with layer upon layer of paint and displaying some impressive battle damage. Nonetheless, I take a perverse joy in resurrecting these poor miniatures and adding them to my armies in new and glorious forms. This particular model was stripped using Fairy Power Spray before removing the head and limbs. Once this was done I used a new head from my bitz box along with some new claws and re-posed the torso joint so that the model is rearing up instead of staring at the ground.

There's bound to be a few experienced players out there rolling their eyes and wondering why I would bother to put so much effort into building a Screamer-Killer style Carnifex. The simple answer is that I think they're awesome; are they the most effective build on the tabletop? No, not by a long shot, but it's a classic build that takes me back to the misty eyed days of second edition (when they were toughness 8 and had 10 wounds...).

More updates to come soon.

5 comments:

  1. Looking great Ed! I quite like the slasher killer carnifexes. I still feel you could build a carnifex style army (similar to how I build my dread wall army) that could be wildly effective on the table. The fact they hit with D3 HOW's at str 9 can not be discounted.

    I do think giving them crushing claws in that config makes them particularly nasty, str 10 armorbane at init 3 is every ork players worst knightmare!

    FYI, I will not be including these posts on the main dreadtober page, but I will be sure to give you a shout out on the main blog page when I update. I told a bunch of other guys who had MC's to hold off, but still want to encourage where I can! :)

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  2. Don't get me wrong, I love a Carnifex or two (or three) but taking a pair of brainleech devourers is almost always a better option than anything else I can think of. The only argument I can think of for the screamer-killer is that they're dirt cheap and the high strength is good for bashing vehicles.

    My ultimate plan is to organise my six Carnifexes into the two detachments from Rising Leviathan 3 (bioblast and wrecker?) although I'm not sure if those supplements are still legally recognised.

    Like I said before, I'll save my Dimachaeron (sp?) for the MCs. I really need some motivation to work on it - such a large and detailed model is quite intimidating!

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  3. The only problem with brainleech, is that EVERRRRRRYONE takes them.

    That means one thing.

    Brainleech is going to SUCK TOTAL BUTT in the next revision.

    I think the wrecker node is pretty awesome! D3+1 Str 10 HOW's!

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  4. Well, when brainleech devourers become heavy 3, strength 5, ap- I'll be laughing from atop my enormous pile of screamer-killers. I'm not so sure they'll get nerfed though.

    Don't forget the wrecker node gives re-rolls of to wound rolls of 1 as well. Saves you buying those expensive toxin sacs!

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    Replies
    1. Oooooh...makes me want to make a carnifex army. MC version of my dread mob :)

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