Hive Splinter Borlin

Bring in the Gargantuan Bugs!

2011-02-08T14:54:00.000-08:00

Run for your lives!!

Hive Splinter Borlin's Largest Tyranid Genus has made planetfall and is busy gorging its way through the lucky 88th as we speak.

This has been a long time coming, but my Scythed Hierodule is actually completed!

I thought I'd make an effort with the base, spicing it up with a few details (which were the entire reason the model took so long to be complete, the actual monster itself has been painted for over a month now! but I wanted the rippers done before i could finish the base)

In the photo below you can see the "collar carapace" which I had to build from greenstuff as it had been damaged (snapped clean off) and wasn't present in the box. Rather than send it back I was so eager to get it together I decided to have a go at basic sculpting, I'm pretty pleased with it as its only noticeable to the keen eye, and probably not noticeable unless I point it out.

This mangled dozer blade is all thanks to my dog, who took a fancy to it when he was just a pup, I have kept it all these years for this very reason, I knew it would make a brilliantly beaten up piece of scenery for a big monster.

And heres a big family shot, it doesnt have everything in there, but a few of the main faces to give an impression of the force in its current state.

I actually still have plenty of models in the pipeline for this army, although it's nearing completion, which will mean this force will likely come to an end this year, unless forgeworld pull a blinder and go mental with new nid releases of scythey goodness, or I go berserk and get that Hierophant which really would be an icing on a spiky cake.

Still, plenty of little beasties for me to paint up, and a few larger ones, and some bigger ones still, and possibly a couple of big beasties for good luck. so keep checking back because this blog is FAR from over, and even when the force is complete, the battle reports will be rolling in.

Cheers!

TSINI

Slurp!

2010-11-15T14:30:00.001-08:00

So i've got a bit behind with my updates, but if you're following my lucky 88th blog you'll see i'm back with plenty of ongoing and past projects.

Firstly, a catch up from before calneage.

The venomthrope which provides sporey cover for my scythe friendly gribblies.

The base is quite calm really, compared to other models. i figured a grey marine helmet and some shells would look nice, ideally a brighter marine helmet would look better, but for personal reasons, anything that resembles Lee's damn drop pod marines makes me happy :D

My two hastily built objective markers, they have plenty of room for improvement - adding supplies or tasty morsels will actually make these "objectives" rather than simply scenes of dying guardsmen

just look at the fear in his eyes!
This guy is totally oblivious of his impending doom, im considering adding a sign post with something like "Medicentre" on it, with a bloody hand print on the other side...

And now onto new things!

With a bit of income now flooding in, i treated myself to some forgeworld goodies. First is this baby!

Introducing, an even bigger brain bug!

You can see I highlighted the faces and hands in the digestion sacks to give the impression of them streching out

And finally, a use for those pesky funny faced rippers that come with the genestealers, I figured they would acompany the Malanthrope and help chew up the tougher stuff
Theres another big one to come, he's an ugly mutha, but compared to some of the company he keeps, he could win beauty contests!

hopefully i can get some quality time this week to get him washed and based, so possibly an update later this week.

Cheers for dropping by!

TSINI

Calneage, A Gribblie's Point of View

2010-09-27T14:15:00.000-07:00

So Calneage has been and gone.

I personally had a great time, Both John and I had no illusions of grandeur, and simply took an army that would be unexpected at an event such as this.

In fact I believe ours was the first Tyranid army to be entered at calneage.

Our Lists were as follows:

Team Name: 75% FEEEED

My forces:

Elites
Zoanthrope - 60pts
Venomthrope - 55pts
Troops
Hormagaunts with adrenal glands x12 - 96
Hormagaunts with adrenal glands x12 - 96
Genestealers with scything talons and adrenal glands x8 - 152
Rippers with tunnel swarm x3 - 36

Total: 495 points

Johns force:

Elites
Zoanthrope - 60
Pyrovore - 45
Troops
Hormagaunts with adrenal glands x30 - 240
Fast Attack
Spore mine cluster of 3 - 30
Heavy Support
Biovore - 45
Genestealers with scything talons x5 - 80

Total: 500 points

Our general plan was to just eat everything. we had a few tricks up our sleeves, such as the contraversial sporemine deployment denial tactics and the deepstriking rippers for objective denial. but as for actual tactics, we had very few. running forwards screeching seemed to be the only one we could muster.

a Quick run down of the 4 games

Game 1

Deployment: Dawn of War (table halves)
Scenario: Sieze Ground (2 objectives)
Enemy: Guard / Guard "The Forgotten Frogs"

An outflanking infantry platoon with a 50 strong conscript squad is a daunting prospect. a contraversial ruling which deemed Al-Raheem to be a "unit upgrade" rather than a special character meant this insane infantry horde could wander onto the table turn 2 from the side of the board. believe me when I say that mobs of gribblies running along the front of massed lasguns will not take more then 3 steps before being shredded limb from limb.

This was an enjoyable game, the opponents were a great laugh, and took it on the chin when me and john managed to score ourselves 5 points for a win without scoring a single victory point in the game. thats right, we were completely shredded to pieces, and hadn't even halved a single squad of guard, but managed to hold 1 objective with a squad of stealers, and deny them the second with a lone biovore. this was partly due toluck, and partly to some dastardly tactics of our own - by deploying johns spore mine cluster on their own objective before they could deploy meant they had to set up over 18" away from it. their otflank roll was good for the kills, but bad for their own objective, and our outflank roll was good for grabbing their objective. a last ditch effort to grab our own objective involved deepstriking the rippers in, praying for the biovore to not fail synapse, and running 2 lone hormagaunts back to the objective to build up the wounds holding it.

Outcome: Win (although a technical one)

Game 2

Deployment: Spearhead (table quarters)
Scenario: Capture and control (4 objectives)
Enemy: Space Wolves / Guard "Bow Wow Winners & The Swagger Stick"

This game looked as tough as it was. 4 Thunder wolves, a squad of grey hunters and a massed guard infantry blob of 35 men, with a hydra.

lessons of the game:

Genestealers can't kill marines
space wolves are better than genestealers
nids can't assault anything in cover
thunder wolves laugh in the face of danger
nids can't hold objectives if they're all dead.

on a more serious note, these guys were the winners of the competition and so we were right to be so convinced of our doom before the game had started. good sports too.Game 1

Outcome: Lose (we lost every single model...)

Game 3

Deployment: normal (long table edge 12" from centre)
Scenario: Anihilation (Kill points)
Enemy: Eldar / Eldar "Aspect Doom"

our spore mine deployment tactic backfired on us this time, by placing the mines in the centre of the enemy deployment zone, they had the choice of splitting up, or combining together. by choosing the latter, it meant my puny 495 points was directly facing 1000 points of eldar whilst john would have to slog it diagonally across the board.

Outcome: Lose (7 - 3 i think...)

Game 4

Deployment: Spearhead (Table Quarters)
Scenario: Victory points awarded for every unit which moves off of the diagonally opposite short table edge (in the enemy's deployment zone) double victory points if the unit is a scoring unit.
Enemy: Guard / Space Marines "Barn Doors Are Safe" (this was John P and Craig from our gaming group)

The scenario was an odd one. and having a mechanised troops guard enemy meant we were going to find it hard to get past them, and they were going to find it easy to drive past us. which is exactly what happened. we were wiped out to a man, apart from my rippers which deep striked and simply ran off of the table edge to score us 36 victory points.

The controversy was definately on the table behind us though, with the outflanking guard force simply outflanking on the enemy's table edge, and then walking back off gaining them 1000 victory points (due to the whole 500points being scoring units) a few of the other guard units from the other half made it to the table edge and the opposing team simply said they couldn't match that points score and so conceeded.

Outcome: Lose (our measly 36 points were no match for their armoured column and several squads of marines leaving our table edge. there was even a nifty bit of driving from the space marine bikers who lined up and did an "Evil Kineval" bike jump through a stone chaos warp gate only losing 1 from a dangerous terrain test - i have a picture but can't extract them from my phone)

Monster of evry game for us was definately the biovore, a large pie plate raining down on massed guard was handy many a time.

Competiton Summary
As usual Calneage is a great opportunity to meet new gamers and have lots of fast paced quick games with unusual tactics and armies. I personally had a great time, despite coming 2nd from last (for the second year running) I will however be running guard next year, as i could not believe that you can only field half the numbers of nids in 500points than you can of guard. even the mechanised guard could nearly outnumber us.

food for thought indeed.

Apologies for the lack of photos, I will set up a space to take some nice ones of the army as it nears completion (I was up late before calneage painting 15 hormagaunts and some new objective markers I've started) hopefully i can do this over the next few days.

Until then

Cheers
TSINI

Gribbling for Calneage!

2010-08-20T06:52:00.000-07:00

With Calneage approaching, my Ally dropped by to finalise our lists.

As with last year, Calneage is a 500 point doubles competition.

The rules are the old Combat Patrol Force organisation and unit limits:

500 points

0-1 HQ
0-2 Elites
1-4 Troops
0-2 Fast attack
0-1 Heavy Support

no 2+ saves
no models with more than 2 wounds (apart from swarms)
vehicle armour must total 33 or less
no special characters
no ordnance

I won't detail my list, as it has some exploitable holes which i'd rather my opponents couldn't buff up on before the day.

Of course, i actually did a silly thing agreeing to play tyranids at this competition. Firstly my army consisted of a trygon, trygon prime, a hive tyrant, and 4 hormagaunts. so i've actually had to buy nearly the entire 500 points in the first place. But i'm glad i did, as its really pushed me to get it done

so heres my newest additions, More Gribblies!!

Forgeworld really makes this tyranid army look the bees knees. I'm really satisfied with the unified theme of the army too.

So it's back to the painting table for me, I have LOTS to do.

Cheers

TSINI

Psychic BOOM!!

2010-07-28T09:04:00.000-07:00

As promised on Lucky 88th I've painted up the models I bought from Attack! 2010

I should have been painting up my Lucky 88th guard ready for the Borlingrav game this weekend, but I was too excited by the idea of painting up more gribblies, I got them finished very quickly.

As you can see, he fits right in with my colour scheme, with details being picked out in similar colours to my exising models.
For the base, I wasn't too enamoured with the "Tentacle" holding the Zoanthrope up. although removing it and finding a clear flying stand also didn't fill me with glee. So instead I decided to utilise the "spiky bits"thatI'd already removed from the Genestealer bases, and create a kind of "Magic Circle" of tentacles, giving the zoanthrope a more imposing presence, as if it's summoning the tyranid infection from the ground.
As mentioned above, I've built my genestealers, I didn't like the spiky bits on the base, they seemed too generic if they appeared on every genestealer's base.

anywaym this is the one I've painted up
I'm not too keen on the "armour" on the model, as a genestealer is supposed to have a 5+ save, and hormagaunts have a 6+, but the hormagaunts seem much more armoured.

so i set about giving the stealer a full carapace
And of course, scything talons were a no-brainer, these are the signature of Hive Splinter Borlin.
Cheers!

TSINI

Fizz Pop Rumble Rumble RARRRRR!!!

2010-06-30T05:40:00.000-07:00

wandering into my local indipendant store, I find a trygon marked down to £20

a heartbeat later I'm sat looking at the box in the pub next door thinking "I already have a trygon, so which one should I build now? a trygon prime, or a mawloc?"

without further ado, I present:

Trygon Prime emerging from the ground and performing a "goalkeeper" leap. very world cup apropriate (it has been mentioned that I should magnetize a football to the base...)

He was great fun to build, I wanted to show the prime after having just burst from the ground and now picking his victims, thrashing around violently.

Firstly I tilted the body over, and cut the tail off at an angle, this makes him look as if he has burst from the ground, and snaked around in a U turn back on himself. the end of the tail was added because it carries the theme of the trygon prime and breaks up the wasted base space. I decided that after the prime had come from the ground, his tail would be eager to reach the surface and so simply smash its way upward through the ground.

Some base details: Broken Auspex, Lucky 88th Helmet and a pile of skulls...
The cracked floor was achieved by layering some plasticard on the base, cutting 2 holes for the body and the tail. Using scissors I cut a jagged route through from one "emergence hole" to the other. then I slid the 2 halves a few millimetres apart to create a jagged gap, and then bent the jagged edges upwards. I then trimmed the plasticard to the same size as the base.

the craters are made from layers of madium basing slate, filled with basing sand

Lots of extra spikes on the Prime, and the sculpted tail uderside.

A couple of close-ups of the face, you can see the blue details on the tongue and mandibles.
(this was achieved using a Skull White base with an Asurmen Blue wash over the top.

The Family Portrait...
And a Height comparison with the standard Trygon

Now I'm off to do some Imperial Guard stuff for the Lucky88th blog, as I havent updated that for ages!!

I'm not entirely sure what is in the pipeline for the nids, if i came into a ton fo money it would definately be a scythed heirodule next, as i had the pleasure of seeing a barbed heirodule recently and it made me very jealous!!

as this is very unlikely, we'll just have to see what I can get my hands on next.

Cheers for dropping by!!

TSINI

Hive Tyrant - Commanding RARRRR!!! And how to cheat in painting.

2010-04-06T09:33:00.000-07:00

Look who's joined the party - my first hive tyrant

Today, i'm going to show you my painting process - how to paint tyranids without being able to paint...

But First, I've copied the small section from my Lucky88th blog showing the issues with the model.

I've sculpted a tongue for him, the mouth was a bit of a dodgy sculpt, and i didn't fancy the "Alien" tongue supplied, i figured something more in keeping with the other monsters would be more fitting.
I can't think what to do about the base. as far as i can remember, hive tyrants are normally on 60mm bases, but the base on this monster is already wider than that, so i could grind the resin base to 60mm, and build up a 60mm base to the same height with greenstuff, or make a nice wooden plinth stylebase and just make it 75mm the same width as the resin piece, or simply leave him as he is.

__________________________________________________________________

Okay, onto the painting:

Firstly, I undercoat the model with Chaos black spray, making sure to spray in stages from different anlges to get into all the hard to reach areas, allowing it to dry each time.

Then, using a fairly large brush, I brush on a coat of Khemri Brown foundation, this paint is thick, sandy, and dries quickly, so speed is the key to push the paint around until it merely coats the model and doesnt clog up the details.

Then I paint the "skin" sections (everything apart from the armour) in Bleached Bone. I have to do this twice to get a nice smooth coverage.
this stage doesnt have to be neat, I tend to get it on the armour edges - making sure I fill all the details nicely.

Apologies here, I got a step ahead of myself. You can see where I've carefully applied Camo Green to the shoulder plate and where I've used Thraka Green to coat the head plates and leg/arm plates (after their coat of Camo Green had dried).
Coat all the armour plates in thraka green once the camo green is dry.

With the armour now done, you can tidy up the edges of the Skin with bleached bone, covering areas where you may have accidentally splodged some thraka green wash, or the wash may have run a little too far from the armour.

on this particular model, I tidied up the areas where the skin looked as if it was attached to the armour plates, knowing that this would eventually be washed brown making the joins "seamless"

Then I coated the large scythe blades with Skull White, using a large brush and switching to a small brush to do the same with all the smaller claws.

Again I jumped ahead of myself, painting the tongue in Elf flesh, then once dry, washing it with Baal Red.

Many stages happened here (I was on a roll)

Firstly, the scythe blades were washed with Gryphonne Sepia, with the aim of getting the wash to stay at the wider part of the scythe, and getting lighter towards the tips.

Now to wash the main body.
Washes tend to dry fairly quickly, so it's a good idea to split up larger models into small sections.

Using Devlan Mud, I washed the arms first, starting where the arm meets the scythe and stopping at the ball joint at the body. After the arms I did the legs, then the tail and lower body, then the upper body, then the head. You have to be carefull not to go too far onto the armour, the scythes, or the toungue, but you should meet them to give a nice dark border (the secret of this wash is to hide where one colour ends and another begins)

I then used skull white on any claws I had missed- the toes and the ones on the "cheeks" and carefully covering the teeth - then washed them in Gryphonne Sepia.

Using the Baal Red wash, I carefully filled the details in on the arms and legs, making the piping stand out.

So here he is, the Hive Tyrant of my "no guns" Tyranid army. Which incidentally I'll be using for the first time this weekend, John P has kindly offered me access to his VAST array of tyranid models to use as count as to fill out mine to 2000points.

Hope you enjoyed this run through of how I quickly achieve a detailed look with actually very little effort, no dry brushing, or layering of different paints, just a simple "painting by numbers" with the basic paints and complimentary washes to give the effect of depth and details.

Cheers, TSINI

RARR!!

2010-02-05T06:13:00.001-08:00

I couldnt think of a more apt title for this post today. He really is a beasty.

I'm really happy with how the armour turned out, its difficult to get washes to lay (and dry) right on large surface areas, so I had to wash - drybrush - and wash again to get a nice coverage.

You'll notice i added some "pinkish" highlights in the "piping" on this monster, and have copied this on the hormagaunts too, it adds some subtle colour to the bone skin

A fair bit of detailing on the base, a lasgun and fuel can to tie the monster in with my Lucky 88th, this should make them look good opposing each other.
And a generic space marine helmet. I jokingly told Lee from 2screens I was going to paint it grey as an act of revenge for the amount of times his blasted drop pod army has ruined my guardsmen. luckily his sergeants helmets are red with a white stripe...

So there we have it, a small group of nids to get me started. I've still got 9 more hormagaunts to build and paint up, while I try to find some money for a forgeworld order :D

Cheers for dropping by.

TSINI

Welcome! To Hive Fleet Borlin!

2010-01-22T04:52:00.001-08:00

To help keep the Lucky 88th Blog clean and to a point, I have decided to blog Tyranid related stuff here, this way those fans of IG don't have to be bored with pics of Tyranid monsters and conversely those fans of nids can subscribe to this blog.