Second Thoughts........

First impressions of the Tyranid codex? Thin. I always thought that 40k was big on background, but even with a few pages of fluff the book seems to compare poorly with my fantasy army books. Even so, there is a surprising amount of options available to virtually each troop. I was intending on starting with the battleforce, the contents of Battle for Macragge and some old models rescued from an old copy of Tyranid Attack. I even did a fair bit of research online, looking for inspiration for colour schemes. But for some reason, I am just not fired up about the project.

My original choice of Space Marines seems much more interesting. I had discarded the idea because of other players choosing this army, but I'm not sure that's a valid way to make a decision. What to do next?

And the winner is......

Tyranids! It was no contest really. I looked at the battleforce for both Necrons and Tyranids and found that the latter contained far more variety, but best of all, the impressive carnifex model. I cannot wait to get my brushes on that.

Speaking of painting, I have started to research possible colour schemes. My first instinct is to go with the Alien vibe and attempt a grey/silver/chrome look. This would be fairly easy to do, though it could look a little dull on the battlefield - they might end up looking like unpainted grey plastic! So to inject a little colour there would be some glazing of the skin (probably a chestnut/red/pink) and the carapace (green/purple/brown). Another nice touch would be to colour code any bio upgrades, such as a sickly green for venom bits. Having not read the codex yet this is just a vague idea.

I am also starting to mull over ideas for themed terrain. Egg pods are an obvious idea which should be easy enough. More ambitious would be terrain that has been appropriated by the tyranids - the crashed ship from the Macragge set might be a suitable starting point for this, but I have no idea how to make it look as though it has been "infested" by the Tyranids.