Testagants

 

Pootle here with the start of a new army...

A few months ago I decided that with Leviathan incoming and price rises about to hit, I'd invest in the beginnings of a new Tyranid army, so I grabbed the Nid Combat Patrol, a brace of Carnifexes and a Tervigon/T-Fex.

It's now all built and, regular readers will be entirely unsurprised to learn, mostly magnetised (though, after brief consideration, I decided that I am not quite mad enough to magnetise the different weapon options on Termagants). Next I need to decide on a colour scheme for my as-yet-unnamed hive fleet. I painted half a dozen or so of the  Genestealers from the original Space Hulk set back in the very early 90s (the one below is, gulp, one of the better ones) and I decided two things:

• I want to try to get as close to this scheme as possible so my surviving Stealers can join in; this also reflects my attempt to get close to the original colours for Stealers in Space Hulk artwork (see above).
• I want to make my first foray into using Contrast paints given the horde nature of the army. Stylus has recently painted a batch of Stealers (see here). The Celestium Blue he used isn't quite as drab as I'm looking for (though I have to say that it does look quite like the original pic above so credit to Stylus for that suggestion). Some research on YouTube indicated that Stormfiend is a little more like what I'm after.

Base colours here were Worm Purple and Moody Blue I believe, with some fairly dodgy “dry”-brushing with Skull White 

I think I know where I will end up, but there are a few variables I want to try. First is a variety of undercoats (as Stylus had recommended a zenithal spray approach). Lacking sprays so far (they’re on order), I undercoated two with Wraithbone, one with Wraithbone that was then drybrushed with white and one was sprayed black with a grey overbrush and then a white drybrush. It may be that Stylus’s method ended up lighter at this point as I was worried that this was still very dark to show the contrast paints, but let’s see.

All fleshy areas were painted with Magos Purple. I used Stormfiend on the carapace of everything apart from the one on the top left in the pic below, which got Celestium Blue (to match Stylus's scheme). The test confirmed to me that Celestium Blue was just too bright for what I'm looking for. Claws were Skeleton Horde. 

The one at the front right above was Wraithbone with drybrushed white; the one at the front left was the same but no white drybrush - frankly they're all but indistinguishable so I shan't bother with the drybrush in future. The one with the black undercoat looks very dramatic but I think is just a bit too dark (and is also a bit of a faff), so again I shan't use this. 

So the main recipe will be Wraithbone with Magos Purple, Stormfiend and Skeleton Horde. 

That will probably do for future 'Gants, however I wanted to try a bit more to test what larger Nid models might get, so drybrushed the blue areas with Calgar Blue and the purple with Pink Horror. I also used Shyish Purple to add shadows on the purple and Leviadon Blue on the carapace. I added some Gore-Grunta Fur at the body-end of the gun and some old Red Ink (from the 90s Expert Paint Set) on parts of the gun.

Here's the whole lot with the original Stealer, which does look pretty close in colour to the ones to the extreme left and right. Overall I'm really happy and looking forward to getting more cranked out!