I've located a goodly stash of tyranid bits, and the smaller termagant arms make great fodder for hybrid arm conversions. You can see one on the 2nd generation here, with the missing hand. I may swap the mask on his back for a purestrain servo skull. He's shaping up to be a squad leader, I'm thinking.
A package of good stuff from Victoria Miniatures provided these resin arms and alien (Cthood) heads. I think they make great early generation hybrid heads, particularly from Ymgarl variant purestrains. They work with the Games Workshop ghoul bodies very well indeed. A little warm water bending will be required for the arms to fit, which were a little roughly cast, getting them off the gate in one piece will be a chore, for example. Great parts for all that though. The bases are from Dragonforge. My basing will be wrecked urban, so these do the job nicely.
Another welcome item from Dragonforge are these poseable metal cables. You can't have infected adeptus mechanicus without some cabling attaching various bits to other bits. I did consider guitar string, but the fact these can be bent to the required shape is a winner for me.
All very exciting. Once the ettin is wrapped I may dive in and start building hybrid squad one. I've recently amassed enough original hybrids for another squad, problem now is making the originals and converted ones look like they are from a coherent force.
Wooo, I love the creepy aspect of those, you are doing a superb work there!!
ReplyDeleteExcellent Genestaeler cultists! Where did you get the head from?
ReplyDeleteThe tentacle heads are from Victoria Miniatures, link in the post. They're Cthood heads. I'll be getting more, I can tell you.
DeleteDuh! I sonly read the part about the arms and somehow skipped the part about the haeds... stupid question, sry
DeletePlaying the mad scientist, eh? I'm envious. Very, very cool! I love them!
ReplyDeleteThanks folks. I'm quite looking forward to assembling them properly!
ReplyDeleteThey are starting to come together nicely now. Do you plan on having Ymgarl purestrains in there, that would be very cool? Those cables are something I should get for my kit also!
ReplyDeleteCheers. Yep, I'll have some ymgarl purestrains, wouldn't really work otherwise. They won't all be ymgarl though, not sure how I'll explain that one.
DeleteI picked up some of those same cables recently. Far more practical than other alternatives I think.
ReplyDeleteI really like the Ymgarl look. Those heads are great too. They don't really visually connect the cultists to the regular purestrains right now though, although I am sure that you have plans for that :)
I enthusiastic to see some paint soon if you can schedule it. I want to see how you get the suitably disturbing skin tones to tie in with a Mechanicus palette.
I'm liking the ymgarl heads A LOT too, I think a mix of ymgarl and regular purestrains might work, it'll add a little variety. Perhaps father Calogero's (the patriarch) granddad was half ymgarl on his mother's side. The broodlord could be a ymgarl. Make for a nice conversion project. I am thinking for a hybrid unit I'll be mixing generations to give it a more mob look, mixing the masked, ymgarl and more bestial hybrids in one unit. Earlier gens will be the leaders, special and heavy weapon carriers and so on. Making it coherent will be the trick.
DeleteAs to a test model, once the ettin is finally done (2 parts left to paint, dead goat and rotten beasty head) that'll be my next port of call. There are loads of models I should be doing next, but the one's I want to do are the hybrids, so that's that. Colour scheme, pale, maybe slightly purple tinged skin for certain. Not sure on the red, either a deep rich red or a more muted dark, almost wine red. Dark grey with a touch of navy for armour and carapace. Maybe. The silver and bronze of the metals will lift that some. I'll need to build the tester to include some of all these elements. Not sure on a spot colour. Cream maybe.
Mixing generations in squads to denote specialists is a solid plan, maintaining the frenzied mob look while still keeping a clearly delineated structure game ID purposes.
DeleteI dont think that justifying the appearance of an Ymgarl strain in background terms is necessary: all that genetic knowledge sits waiting for stimulus in every Tyranid organism I think. I reckon that you could justify a Carnifex fairly easily if you wanted too (although that would be a birthing scene that required a "parental guidance" tag).
Trying to work out a non-cookie cutter colour scheme that has some character, yet still looks suggestive of the background has held back my Adeptus Mechanicus project for a few years now. My test paint jobs didnt do it for me, but I dont want an exact replica of the established schemes, although I feel that might be inevitable now.
Trying to get a purple in there will be tough I think. Cream was added to the AdMech palette quite frequently around the time that Inquisitor was released (the large size of the models required something less cartoony is my guess as to why). Cream struck me as too warm for the definitively cold AdMech. I think that I will go for a blue-white if I use that influence when painting my non-genestealery version.
Purple, red and cream is a very religious/undead type of palette. Not necessarily a good thing or bad thing in this context, but you have some experience with undead palettes which might help.
It's very hard to avoid a predominant red if I want the cult to be identified as associated with the adeptus mechanicus. I think that and a pale skin tone are two givens. The first stumbling block will be the colour for carapace and armour. I might have to get the crayons out.
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