The Thread Where Dave Puts Pictures of His Epic Stuff

[kojibear]

They have mighty big guns those necrons!

Oh, and robot insectoids, now that is pretty cool!

[The Other Dave]

They have mighty big guns those necrons!

Some, yeah. (The Pylon "really" looks like this, but bendy bits are way too much of a PITA for me to try and make from scratch.)

Since I'll be using BFG ships for my necron vehicles / smaller war machines, the only other thing I really need to make from scratch is the Aeonic Orb, a big old war machine that's basically a sun in a box. Fortunately, the Orb's attack is pretty reminiscent of Ramiel's, so I may just hack together a giant D8 out of plasticard and call it an Aeonic Octahedron.

(Closeup pics for MiJ tomorrow when I get some good light.)

[The Other Dave]

A couple things off the workbench from this past little bit:

First off is some new objectives I bashed together.

I have six already, but what with the event coming up I need a couple tables' worth. I figured I'd try some objectives that tell little stories, like the ones you can buy for Flames of War do. So we've got a downed Falcon, a couple important Blood Angels company standards, a little Mek station, a gargant foot and an ork bunker.

Next is some stuff for the Necrons, a Tomb Complex (objective / portal) and a sort of test-of-concept Monolith, both scratch-built out of plasticard.

I'm not usually much of one for making stuff out of plasticard (and it shows, heh), but my choices are something I make myself that actually looks (sort of) like a Monolith, or something from GW that looks good, and looks Necron, but doesn't look like a Monolith (I'd probably use the BFG Necron ships, which are about the right size). I'm still not sure which way I'll go, but the one I made looks OK, and is free, so I'll probably make some more.

Finally is a color test for my Tyranid repaints, some gaunts and a brood of Exocrine bio-tanks.

They turned out all right, although it's a color scheme I know works, being the same as I used for my 40K Tyranids, with the "skin" and "armor" colors switched. Dominatrix is on the workbench at the moment!

[The Other Dave]

The swarm begins to take shape!

And that shape is... kinda weird.


Dominatrix!

(At this point, the whole "symbiote" angle of the 'Nids was really being played up - you clearly have a big combat beastie with a bio-cannon beast grafted on its shoulders, and a hive-mind controller beast clinging to its back with massive claws. The pic is cruddy, but in that throne thing is something that looks a lot like the pilot of the alien ship in Alien.)

(I also need to take another picture where it doesn't have other models of the exact same color scheme right behind it. D'oh!)


Haruspexes!

Really, the Epic tyranid line is kind of interesting historically, because it's the very start of the "modern" Tyranids - Lictors, Hormagaunts, Gargoyles, and Biovores all made their first appearance in the Epic line. Before that it was Warriors, Termagants, Carnifexes, Genestealers, Tyrants, and now-defunct stuff like Zoats, Squigs (!) and Mind Slaves. They hit with the infantry-level stuff, but the slug-like bio-tanks are, frankly, pretty weird, and none weirder than the Haruspex.

Me, I like that weirdness, but compared to the cohesive look of Gaunt -> Warrior -> Carnifex -> Heirodule, which all look like related beasties, the wide range of body types in this version of the 'Nids is a bit of a mish-mash.

[me_in_japan]

I'm a big fan of the mishmash, myself. I particularly like the Dominatrix. I've always been a fan of that mini, actually, and would love to see a similar thingy done by FW. possibly not to teh same scale as the epic one, but still, I like um.

[The Other Dave]

Well, I'm a fan, obviously, or I wouldn't have shelled out the cash to buy them back. I think a unified color scheme will help out a lot as well.

I do find myself wishing I'd had the cash flow and forethought to invest in the Forgeworld epic 'Nid line when they still produced them. It was pretty much just Harridans and Heirodules, but they were sweet little models.

[The Other Dave]

Me again!

Hey, remember when I said the Haruspex were some of the weirdest creatures in the Tyranid line?

Well, that was a dirty lie.

Here are some Malefactors:

Nothing too odd about their weaponry (those guys come next) - they just have banks of frag spines on their front leg things, and I think those are still around in 40K. But dig that Otyugh-like eyestalk thing. Awesome!

Dactylis!

See those clusters of round things on the backs of their heads? No, they aren't eyes - see, Dactylis grow cysts on their backs (I don't remember exactly, but in this iteration of the rules I wouldn't be surprised if they're actually separate parasitic creatures), and those cysts are full of bile and other digestive acids. In battle, they pluck those cysts out of their backs and hurl them at the enemy, showering them with chitinous shrapnel and, basically, vomit. Understandably, it tends to cause the target to keep their heads down.

[The Other Dave]

So, I made a thing. :shrug:



My plasticard technique still needs work, but it's close-enough-for-government-work to a titan-sized inscrutable floaty thing made of living metal, which is all the Aeonic Orb needs to be!

(Fluff-wise, it's a containment device for a small sun. Shoots out either extremely focused titan-killing beams, or vaporizes a whole area with less-powerful sweeping attacks. In game terms, it has a single weapon that can either shoot as a D6-damage titan killer or a 12BP - and a Basilisk has 1BP - barrage weapon. Since that reminded me of that one angel in Evangelion, and a trapezoid is easier to make than an orb, I went with the thing you see here.)

[The Other Dave]

Rise from your grave!

After a bit of a hiatus from wargaming-hobby-related matters, I decided to give a crack at my Slightly Ghetto Scratchbuilt Epic Necron force, and put together my first full vehicle unit, a Monolith Phalanx:

The attachment monolithphalanx.jpg is no longer available

That's 3 Monoliths and 3 Obelisks, an Epic-only vehicle that basically fills the battlefield role of the Doomsday Ark - a lighter vehicle than the Monolith (but still tough) with no Portal and a long-range anti-tank weapon. Incidentally, it seems like this is just about my sweet spot for complexity in a scratch-built model. Any more fiddly and I wouldn't want to bother making them, even though they're very light on detail. Still, the Monoliths look like Monoliths (if only in basic outline) and the Obelisks look like something that could be called an Obelisk.

A shot of a Monolith with a Land Raider for a sense of scale. A bit bigger than it ought to be, but not ridiculously so.

monolithsize.jpg (137.26 KiB) Viewed 2304 times

And a (blurry, sorry) shot with some infantry, again for scale.

obelisksize.jpg (138.94 KiB) Viewed 2304 times

Now I just need to get some more packs of plastruct to make the second phalanx I need.

[Primarch]

Just a suggestion, but why dont you have a look in Tokyu hands for some coloured plastic beads to stick on top of the Monoliths? I know they do bright green plastic rods so a couple of them would help bring out the Necron vibe on those 'liths.