Tuesday 29 May 2007

Hivefleet Itsumaden

I decided to go my own way and create a custom hivefleet for the combat patrol.

Keeping with the "monster" theme for Tyranid fleets (they are really just misunderstood, honest) I hunted around for a suitable monster. I decided to go for something a bit different than the usual and went for looking for monsters from Asian mythology.

The result is the Itsumaden. It looks the part and is easy enough to say - could you imagine someone trying: Negoro-no-ushi-oni. :)

The image comes from the Obakemono Project, which is a great resource for Japanese mythological creatures.

I haven't bothered with any background fluff for these guys yet, though that might be getting a bit carried away...

Scrubs up ok

The combat patrol has been essentially completed now.

This last stage was all the fine stuff - the striations in the skin (what are those things?), weapons, teeth, eyes, toxin sacs and so on.

The skin bits were done with Enchanted Blue to give a strong contrast to the red skin. The toxin sacs were done GW style - approximately. Snot Green, Scorpion Green, White.

The barbed strangler (leader's gun below) was painted to resemble the plant it is supposed to be. The result looks pretty "treey", but not quite what I was after there - perhaps more alien next time. I spent a bit of time with the ammo sac (or scrotum as some have suggested :). This was Bleached Bone base, Elf Flesh broadly dry-brushed, with a careful highlight of White. The skin colour was then washed with a red wash. Looks suitably gross.

Basing still needs to be done, but may take some time to materialise... When finished the whole patrol will be photographed.

I finally got the exposure settings right - it only took till the end of the project! :) The colours below are pretty accurate.

The patrol has their first run at the May BIG club day. They got walloped by Space Marines and Necrons. Wasn't until I got home that I realised that my costing spreadsheet was broken and I had diddled myself out of a heap of points. What a wally. :)

Next game they will be tougher...