Sportification Network

Balloons! 

Oh yes, it's time to pad out the funbag section in the swarm. Down at the bottom of the eBay haul lurked an unopened blister pack. Real live genuine resin spore mines, a full unit of nine ready to assemble!

This is a mixed blessing. Nice models and all, plus they're all unique. But they're also all resin, with a nice spindly tentacle attachment to the slotta base. Press one of these babies the wrong way, and the resulting shard-ridden explosion is going to be miserable, if at least lore-appropriate. 

Quick and fun to paint, anyway, and the very devil on the field. Can you ignore them? Yes, they're slow and pathetic. But they get in the way, they can cause heaps of mortal wounds and you never know what that devilishly handsome 'Nid player opposite you is going to do with them. Block movement? Protect a backfield unit from chargers? Whisk them forward into your rear gunners with a strategem?

Better by far than leaving them on the field to get popped, though, is launching them. Biovores are great, I'd love to have some, but they're only around in wretched finecast or as eBay scalps in lead. Hence this Sporocyst! 

I've gone with Deathspitters for this one, it's the cheapest option. Although really, they all look so similar that nobody is likely to care much if it does some counting as.

Looks almost floral, doesn't it? Like a lovely buttonhole orchid. Just don't ask why I ended up going alone to senior prom.

Now, I do sort of have one. It's the top half of my Tyrannocyte, which I went back to and magnetised with an ingenious bit of sprue use I saw on the net somewhere. It was already pinned, but occasionally broke in half during a game, so magnets keep it together better. But now I can have two if I want, or the 'Cyte and the 'Cyst* together. This one came with no wiggly love tentacles, so I gave it slashy Warrior limbs poking out of its many orifices instead. Lovely. 

Which side is the front?

Who cares, they both look kissable. 
Again, don't ask about senior prom.

Finally, one of the big mines, just in case I ever need really pad out my Fast Attack slots. I don't rate these so much as the mines, they are too expensive and too easily killed. The Sporocyte can, of course, cough them out at a slower rate, and there is much to love about this lighter-than-air testicle as a model, so I'm sure it will see use!

Charge that, you buggers.

*An early Disney title that never made it off the cutting room floor