Tyranids: Swarmlord TO-DONE!

Hi folks,

I celebrated the start of the winter holidays last night with a couple of burritos and some painting. My Swarmlord was very close to completion last week, but work kept me very busy, right until the death! As I have mentioned before, the paint scheme for these guys is pretty easy, but I tend to pour a lot of time into the details, particularly of character figures. As a result, the finishing touches on this guy took me all night.

Most of that time was spent loading as much depth into the true metallics as I could, particularly on the swords and the shoulder armour. I originally experimented with all kinds of glowing green and purple blends for the swords, but it just didn't work for me.

I also added a splash of Tamiya Clear Red and Nuln Oil on the pincer tail. Some poor guy obviously wasn't important enough to use the swords on...

I added two laser cut purple flowers to the base, one of which you can just see near the second loop of the Swarm Lord's tail. They are less conspicuous than the ferns that I usually use, and the colour ties in nicely with the purple I use on my Nids gums and other fleshy parts.
 

I used to use the Swarmlord in a scary list packed full of Genestealers (or as I liked to call them, the Broodlord delivery service), Mawlocs and Deathleaper. He would slither up the board with his guard while critters were popping up all in your grill; so much fun! The list doesn't work so well these days, but I am keen to give him a go now that I have finished the paint job.

Before those days, the pieces that make up this Swarmlord used to be a flying Hive Tyrant, with large dragonfly wings and twin scything talons. To fill the winged Tyrant shaped hole in my collection, I'll be painting a very special conversion over the next week (month?). To speed up an already fast process, I managed to pick up a can of Leadbelchers spray at my local GW. I should be able to knock over the last two Tyranid projects of my 2015/16 To-Do list sometime during these holidays. For now, though, I am content to give myself a Big Green Stamp and place this guy on the shelf behind his snakey Tyrant Guard meatshields.

See you across the table,

M4cr0