I Got Distracted

So close to the end of Zombicide! And yet I still found time for sidequests.

The recent game with Stylus showcased an addition to Hive Fleet Afanc (you may have seen it in the brief seconds before a Greater Possessed ate it) - it's a Carnifex, at long last! 

Cheap and expendable but still threatening, this is the beast that has given rise to the classic 'Distraction Carnifex' meme. Meaning that your opponent can't quite afford to ignore it, but it distracts them from taking out perhaps more deadly units in your army. Mostly because it's particularly big and threatening as a mini, I'd say, even more so with the old fashioned base this eBay rescue came on. It looks more dangerous than it really is!

Bit of a fixer-upper. There was reattaching bits, like the hips or the slightly battered spore plate, which is missing a slice of its left side. It also arrived armed with a pair of scythes, a Venom Cannon and a Stranglethorn Cannon. The first one was glued on upside down and back to front, a right arm piece stuck in a left shoulder socket. That had to go, besides being too many guns for the chassis.

There's also a bit of a kink in that right scythe, but not enough of one that I wanted to risk bending it back.

Although I'd slightly prefer the twin scythes of a Screamer-Killer (I'm classically inclined), I didn't have any scythes big enough in the bits box. Twin Deathspitters are a good second, though, giving the beast a bit of shooting as it lumbers in, so I converted some out of Warrior arms and spare Tyrant Guard plating. 

I got a bit carried away, though - I've gone with two pair, which you can do, but only if you ditch the scything talons first. So I replaced the too many guns with too many guns. I'm clearly Ork-trained. Still, this way I can claim it has different options later, plus it looks even more vicious than it really is! Actually fielding it with the twin guns doesn't make it any less nasty in close combat, not with the Bone Mace tail and the Acid Maw it's sporting. Nasty weapons both. 

This monster is actually the first part of a mammoth haul that brings my 'Nids to over three thousand points. And I did the next one at the same time - a Broodlord, another missing piece of the Tyranid Puzzle. 

Quick enough to paint them both. They were already done in quite decent Leviathan colours, with pale limbs and a purple carapace. They'd both had quite an intense pink wash, but that was easy enough to cover with my Afanc scheme. I did redo the carapaces with white before hitting the whole model with Biel-tan Green wash, then a sparing dose of my now-precious and dwindling jar of classic Green Ink. Not much of that left. 

A bit of fixing for this guy too - his tongue was missing its spike, and was also pretty spindly. Rather than try to repair it, I replaced it with the head of a Tyrant Guard lash. The resulting Cobra Tongue is pretty nasty looking.

Feathering was a bit of a hassle. The rest of the Hive were done with Bilious Green, but that's long gone. Trying to match a lost colour is tricky, but this at least looks decent - it's a mix of Jungle Green by Army Painter (horrible paint, very weak and needs lots of coats) and Yellow Green by Vallejo. Tedious, but did the trick. 

This is the third one I've painted, after doing two for Leofa at various points, which is the main reason I'd never got one off my own bat. Silly, when you've got forty Genestealers in need of a father figure, but I look forward to trying him out at some point with his boys!