My Tyranids for Double Trouble 3 and Painted Ripper Swarms

In the spirit of Double Trouble 3, I decided I should make a push to get my Tyranids ready for the event. Before I get into my meagre progress, head over to the DT3 page for more details of the event and to buy your ticket. If you're on Facebook you should also get yourself into the DT group where I'll post updates.

Right, with the shameless plugging out of the way, let's look at what I'll be taking. This list is provisional because I'm hoping to grab a second Tyrant before then but here's what I have for now:

874pts of Tyranids (Patrol Detachment (Behemoth))
Hive Tyrant (adrenal glands, wings, scything talons, devourers, Ymgarl Factor)

16 Genestealers (3 flesh hooks)
3 Ripper Swarms
3 Ripper Swarms

Trygon Prime (adrenal glands)
Trygon Prime (adrenal glands)

Pretty low model count (25) for a Tyranid army but the idea is that if my partner deploys everything I'll be able to keep everything off the table at the start of the game. Obviously I can deploy the Tyrant and/or Rippers if my partner has reserves too. The combination of the Behemoth adaption and the adrenal glands should give me a pretty solid chance of getting into combat with most of my units. That's why I've kept the scything talons on the Tyrant too. It gives him that bit more punch in combat. The big blob of Genestealers should cause problems for my opponents and I'll be hoping to hit them with Catalyst from the Tyrant if I can. The Rippers are obviously just to drop in and grab objectives.

Bear in mind I've never taken Tyranids to a tournament and haven't really played many games with them either. There's no deep tactics involved in the list. It's just get into combat as early as possible and smash face. Rinse. Repeat. Still, if anyone has any tips/suggestions feel free to comment.

Given that this is my new army for 8th edition, I've obviously not got much of it painted. I've got Scott's Tyranids to borrow if I want but I'd prefer to use my own models if I can. We've got an old sofa in the middle of my garage at the moment which still hasn't sold so I'm unable to get to my airbrush. That means I'm currently using my hobby time to frantically assemble all of the above. It's actually a pretty cheap army. I've bought two of the new Start Collecting sets to add to the previous one with the Tyrant. I managed to get a second Swarm box from eBay for a reasonable price which will give me enough Rippers. I did a quick tot up of the points I've got so far and even at a conservative estimate I've already got 3,000pts!! Not sure I'd be fielding 160 gaunts at any point but I can't imagine them every being cheaper than they are in the Swarm box so I figured I'd capitalise.

You might remember my test model (above) was the only thing I'd really managed to get painted so far. Well, with the airbrush not an option I didn't fancy painting much but figured the Rippers wouldn't suffer much from using a normal brush. The Swarm box gives you 20 individual Rippers and they give you five 40 mm bases. It seems daft to me to put five on a base and then not have enough to field three units of 3. I've therefore gone with four per base which I still think looks decent. It's not like you pay much attention to them in a game anyway, they're usually stuck on an objective and forgotten about.

Enough waffle, here they are:

They're far from perfect and still need their bases finishing off but I didn't want to throw any more time into them. The only thing I might go back and do is a pin wash of Nuln Oil into the recesses of the carapace to give them better definition. Bit paranoid it'll ruin them though. I'm happy with how the colour scheme translated to these guys but I'm concerned about how it'll look on one of the big guys. I've built one of the Broodlords from the new Start Collecting box to give me some idea but I might just be better painting the Tyrant. My worry is that the pink will be too much on bigger panels. I'm intending to use the airbrush to give a bit of a blend to it but I'm not sure how successful I'll be with it.

Anyway, it's progress at least. I've built up all of the 'stealers and five more Ripper bases (only need one more though). One of the two Trygons is built and the Tyrant is in bits waiting for magnets. Hopefully I'll have the building done by the weekend and then, assuming this f***ing sofa has sold I'll break out the airbrush and get some basecoats on everything. I might try out some blue-tac masking to see if I can airbrush the pink on too. At this point I'm pretty confident I can get everything done for DT3. How is everyone else getting on? Would people be interested in a series of posts highlighting other people's progress?