# Hive Fleet Hydrus - A Tyranid WIP Project Log



## dbgoldberg323 (Sep 10, 2010)

So here is sort of a timeline of the progression of my Tyranid army, from when it was purchased to it's current state. I apologize ahead of time for delays in posts and time between stages of work as I am an EXTREMELY LAZY hobbiest. Also, there are some Tyranid armies on HO that are just scary good, so I'm not sure my army will impress. I guess this is more for me. 

*January 2009*
The date I started Tyranids. Thanks to Auxellion from The Tyranid Hive for the inspiration and dedication! I purchased three battleforces (which included a Carnifex at the time), a box of "Gaunts and Hormagaunts" (it came with 8 of each), and two Lictors. I was so excited that I built a Carnifex and a Lictor at the store the night I bought them.










*March 2009*
I finished building the bulk of the army, and was magnetizing the Carnifex, Warriors, Genestealers, and yes even my Termagaunts. The whole point was that while it was time consuming, it would save me from having to double or even triple the amounts of certain units I had because I would be able to swap arms/weapons on the fly. Why buy 20 Termagaunts with Fleshborers and 20 Termagaunts with Devourers when I could just magnetize them and swap the weapons/wargear? It totally worked for my Carnifex and Warriors, but for my Genestealers and Termagaunts I gave up after HOURS and HOURS of work, and started gluing the arms in anyways. I realized no one would really care which weapon the Gaunts had as long as it was written down on my list. Besides, to this day a LOT of 40k players are still unable to tell the difference between Tyranid weapons!



















*May 2009*
After getting in a bunch of games with the plastic-colored Tyranids, I came up with a really basic color scheme. I decided to go with a Kraken-themed exo-skeleton and black armor plating, similar to Auxellion's Hive Fleet Orion theme, and began painting.

I started by priming the minis with the Army Painter "Skeleton Bone" color, and then washing them with Gryphone Sepia. The armor itself was painted chaos black. I hadn't officially decided on the highlight color yet but I was thinking about how a blue/light-blue edging (similar to the purple edging that Hive Fleet Leviathan has) would look, and began mocking the minis up in Dawn of War 2.




























Also, I decided that model-wise I would run three Dakka Fexes, three Sniper Fexes, and two Dakka Tyrants (though one would be a Flyrant). I had the arms off initially because I wanted to magnetize them, but I never got around to doing it and I was tired of people joking about how they couldn't hurt anything because they were armless. So, I started tacking the arms in with _tiny_ amounts of glue.










It was also around this time that I came up with the Hive Fleet name, "Hydrus". It is the male version of Hydra and it is a multi-headed dragon from Greek mythology. Basically the reason I settled on Hydrus was because I believe the new Tyranid codex works best with a multi-faceted attack, like several heads of a Hydra attacking at once. The codex relies a lot on synergy and multiple "one-two" punches as opposed to singularly strong units like TH/SS Termies, Plague Marines, Veterans, or Longfangs.

*August 2009*
I continued painting the armor black little by little, and continued running Nidzilla lists to great success. Aside from losses due to bad dice rolls and dumb mission/deployment combos like Capture & Control Seize Ground, I had only really lost one game and that was to old Dark Eldar (go-go combat drugs!).










It was also around this time (I think) that the rumors of Tyranids getting redone in January started to solidify, so I began playing a LOT more games because I had a feeling Nidzilla as we knew it would change, but I had no idea how much...

*January 2010*
With the new Tyranid codex finally out, I had placed an order for roughly $700 worth of junk, and started putting it together. I purchased:
The Codex
3 Trygons
4 boxes of Raveners (to have 12)
4 boxes of Gargoyles (to have 50, I had 10 old metal ones already)
4 Hive Guard
2 Venomthropes
2 boxes of Hormagaunts (to have 64)
2 Carnifexes (to make Tervigons)

I was so stoked with all the new creatures, options, and sweet models that I kind of over-spent to make sure I had enough of everything. And then, it was time to build. I had only gotten a Trygon done since the release by the end of January (and fully magnetized it), but I began play-testing the army and started learning of the horrible things Robin Cruddace had done, like making my Carnifexes TWICE as expensive without upgrades, and removing Assault Grenades from the codex almost altogether (witht the exception of a few inappropriate units). Still, the games were fun!










*February 2010*
Around this time I purchased a Realm of Battle Board as well. You know, that $275 USD 6'x4' plastic gaming board of awesomeness?










So after messing around with that quite a bit, I got back to working on the Tyranids. This time, I had decided on the official color scheme of Hive Fleet Hydrus.










I apologize if the flash was too bright, the Battle Board was quite shiny without paint on it lol.

Anyways, I started with Regal Blue (which is all that's done in the picture above), then move towards a highlight of Enchanted Blue. I thought about a possible highlight of Ice Blue or Enchanted Blue mixed 1:1 with Skull White, but again I was undecided and didn't really get to testing it out (yes, I know, lazy me).

I continued trying different units in the book and to do so I had built a Tervigon, three Hive Guard, another Trygon, and all 40 Gargoyles. Also, in case you're wondering, the little shell-thing is something I was using for a Mycetic Spore (since there's no model for it). In this picture, I was using the Warriors as a Shrike Brood, and the carnifex as a Tervigon (it's actually modeled as one, it's just hard to tell from this arial shot).










Games were going great at first, and even though I had a roughly 80% win ratio, I was becoming disappointed with the many issues in the Codex, and started to go back to running my Blood Angels, especially with that army about to also get a new Codex and models in two months. I spent most of the following year switching between Tyranids and Blood Angels, without making much more progress on the bugs.

*September 2010*
Unfortunately I don't have any good pictures for this, but after months and months of only using my Tyranids every so often, I kind of wanted to try them out again, and this time there was a good reason to. Tacticon, the smaller of two Cons out here in Colorado, was coming up in a few weeks. I started slapping paint on a bunch more models, including the Trygon, and ended up going 1-1-1 at the event, unfortunately placing only 32nd out of 44 (though I scored max points in the first round and was on table one in round two, which is the round I scored the draw). I had a ton of fun, and I was determined from then on to participate in EVERY local wargaming in the future.

*February 2011*
After Tacticon, I put the Tyranids down again and continued playing with my Blood Angels over the holidays. However, the larger of the two Cons out here (Genghis-Con) was coming up and I wanted to run my bugs again, especially since they wouldn't need as much work as my largely unpainted Blood Angels. With the help of my wife, I applied the bone/black/blue color to a ton of minis and started with some of the detail work. I also converted a Tyrant into a full-time Swarmlord, especially after he had done so well for me at Tacticon and over 20-ish games at my FLGS.

Again I have to apologize for not having more pictures, but here's a quick shot of the Army during the appearance-judging portion of the event, of which I scored a 33/44!










So, the first thing you'll notice is that I hadn't fully painted the army, let alone put the blue highlights on all of the black armor plates. I know, working at the last minute can burn you out real quick, and that's exactly what happened. Still though, we got a lot done and They're not looking too shabby, if I do say so myself. :biggrin:

I played in all five rounds of the event (it was an 1850-point tournament, as was Tacticon's tournament), and went 2-1-2 placing 37th out of 70 players. Now, getting just about half-way isn't all that great, but with six main Wrecking Crew members present and a TON of killer competition, I am quite pleased with that result! It was a blast, but after playing against hardcore Mech IG in round 3 and Dark Eldar in round 4 in a competitive environment, I learned quickly which armies were simply not fun AT ALL to play against as bugs (and by that I mean I learned the two armies that I would from then on refuse games against). Fuck 'em.

*April 2011*
Okay, so this part is unrelated to getting the army worked on, but around this time I made a scenario packet that would allow 4-6 people to simulate the stages of a Tyrnaid invasion in a fun and crazy set of missions designed to mimick each stage.

Here's a link to it just in case you guys are interested!

*May 2011*
Just last week I purchased two more Hive Guard from my FLGS as I was freaking out about the rumor of the Metal Miniatures going away. I have eight now, and I know someone who's going to trade me a 9th so that I can field three units of three each! Yay me!

Anyways, as President of my local 40k club, I started up a 40k Escalation League that requires participants to bring fully-painted minis. We are starting at 500 points on June 3rd, and adding another 500 points every month until we hit 2,000. A month after that, we are going to hold a 2,000 point tournament where only fully-painted armies (that participated in the League) can be used.

After a whole week of mulling over which army to use (and believe me, I REALLY REALLY wanted to get my Blood Angels painted), I have finally decided to run my Tyranids! For the 500 points level, we are running a modified version of 4th Edition's Combat Patrol (I believe Adepticon still runs a Combat Patrol tournament), but we're starting with 500 points instead of 400.

Here's my list:

Elites
2x Hive Guard
2x Hive Guard

Troops
8x Genestealers
10x Termagaunts
10x Termagaunts

Fast Attack
12x Gargoyles (Adrenal Glands)

I originally had 15 Hormagaunts with no upgrades in place of the Gargoyles, but after doing a bit of math-hammer, I decided that the Gargoyles with Adrenal Glands were better (yes, I know there are less of them). They also would look a LOT more menacing on the table, and might draw fire away from my Hive Guard and Genestealers.



So, by now I'm sure you guys are wondering where the pictures (and paint) are, and I promise they're on the way. I'm going to pull out my 500 point force today and try to take some decently-lighted pictures of them, along with maybe a better picture of my Trygon Prime (which obviously is not in my 500 point Combat Patrol haha).

I hope you guys have enjoyed this extensive history of my Nids, and I WILL be updating this with pictures regularly (and hopefully this will help me get my rear in gear and get painting).

Thanks for reading so far!


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## Midge913 (Oct 21, 2010)

Wow! Really great opening post man. I will be following your progress on this one.


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## dbgoldberg323 (Sep 10, 2010)

Thanks! That means a lot coming from you! :biggrin:

I finally got around to taking those pictures by the way. However, before I link the photos, I would like to say a few things to those that may be reading:

1. Up until about a few months ago, I did not have adequate light for painting. I live in a house with one and a half other families, so space is limited as well. I don't actually have any kind of painting or hobby station to sit down and work at. Together, that means that my work was usually a _tiny_ bit sloppy (though I have also improved significantly as a painter over the last few years). Now that I have a plog (and now that at least one person is watching), I'm going to try and make efforts to paint in a more well-lit area and ensure I have enough space to do it. As far as the light is concerned, I bought a $20 desk/hobby light thing and it is what I used to take the new pictures.










I think if I go to my FLGS on nights when it's not crowded, I will have the light and the space to bang some models out with relative ease. I'm actually excited to get going, and this Escalation League is just the thing to help me along.

2. A lot of my previous pictures were taken with a camera-phone (though it was a 3MP camera), as my actual camera was either in the shop, or I hadn't bought it yet. So, with my Nikkon Coolpix I will be taking much better pictures (especially since I'm going to try and make a photo box, or whatever it's called). The Nikkon is a 10MP camera with 3x Zoom. I'm sure some of you can tell I'm not really a camera guy, but hey, it takes much better pictures than anything else I've got. Overall, this means my photos will look a lot better than some of the earlier ones.

3. Over the last two years, though I've tried to paint the army here and there, I mostly just play games with it. I am more of a gamer than painter, and that's why I've started the project log, to kind of get myself motivated to actually finish an army. Because of the fact that I use my armies sometimes three times a week for games, that means they go in and out of cases and boxes pretty regularly, and thus the paint chips off since it's not sealed. Also, Tyranids are oddly shaped, so it's really hard to find a way to store them. I usually just put them in flats (cardboard trays used to transport cans of soda, etc.) but as I start painting them and sealing them, I'm going to have to find a way to transport them. Maybe you guys can help with that.

4. I can't stress enough how "WIP" these actually are. I'm usually *VERY* reluctant to let people see my paint jobs until they're done because I just don't feel like there's anything to show off yet. However, I've been inspired by people's logs here. Just know that not a single one of these minis is done by any means.



And now, enough talk! Time for pics!



Trygon Prime (Magnetized, able to switch between normal Trygon and Mawloc)














































The Swarmlord




























Tervigon



















Start of the Termagaunts (though, I don't like the blue striations on these; I like the pattern on the Trygon better)



















And my 500 point force that needs to be painted, based, and sealed by June 3rd










And you'll notice I bought semi-matching dice! 


Enjoy guys, and let me know what you think!


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## vulkan1793 (Apr 21, 2011)

yo love the scheme for your army keep up the good work


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## wombat_tree (Nov 30, 2008)

Very good work on the posts, it was nice to hear how your army had 'evolved' over time. I wasn't so sure about you painting ability until I saw the Trygon, for which I can say that you should be very proud of because you've done a great job.


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## dbgoldberg323 (Sep 10, 2010)

wombat_tree said:


> Very good work on the posts, it was nice to hear how your army had 'evolved' over time.


Thanks! I put a lot of effort into organizing and sorting out the pictures I had taken over these last two years. Thanks for reading!



wombat_tree said:


> I wasn't so sure about you painting ability until I saw the Trygon, for which I can say that you should be very proud of because you've done a great job.


Thanks again! I know, I posted a project log that starts with incomplete paint jobs and continues to show mostly unpainted figs, but this is really the starting point for me since I'll be really focusing on getting a 2,000 point army done over the next few months (schedule permitting).


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## troybuckle (Nov 24, 2010)

Nice work so far. You have a lot of bugs collected! The Trygon looks real good, any idea on how you are going to base your models. Also I noticed that your 500 point force doesn’t have a HQ or synapses?


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## dbgoldberg323 (Sep 10, 2010)

troybuckle said:


> Nice work so far. You have a lot of bugs collected! The Trygon looks real good, any idea on how you are going to base your models. Also I noticed that your 500 point force doesn’t have a HQ or synapses?


Thanks a bunch!

For the basing, I was thinking of using some sand mixed with slightly larger rocks mixed in, then painting them brown, and finishing with a drybrush of graveyard earth (maybe, I'm undecided as I haven't really based anything before). Then I was going to add some static grass here and there that matches my Realm of Battle Board:










As for the 500 point force, Combat Patrol (from 4th Edition) doesn't require an HQ, just one troops choice. Our club is increasing the points from 400 to 500, but otherwise it's roughly the same rules from the 4th Edition Rulebook's Combat Patrol game/mission/scenario/thing.


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## troybuckle (Nov 24, 2010)

Sounds like you got a good hold on the basing. How do you like that realm of battle game board? I am thinking of getting one myself, if you have any more pic of it I’d like to see them. It looks awesome.


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## Orochi (Jan 28, 2009)

I'd give your carapace's a wash of either blue (to bring out the blue) or Black (to merge it together a little more).

That said, it's nice to see a stray away from purple!


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## dbgoldberg323 (Sep 10, 2010)

troybuckle said:


> How do you like that realm of battle game board? I am thinking of getting one myself, if you have any more pic of it I’d like to see them. It looks awesome.


I like it a lot! The whole reason I spent that much money on a silly 6'x4' hunk of plastic was because I don't really have a table that fits those dimensions. "Why didn't you just buy a 6'x4' sheet of wood?" you might ask? I also don't really have a place to put something like that, and it's not really portable. After locking all the pieces together with the little clips that it comes with, It's quite sturdy and can turn a 5'x3' dining room table into a 6'x4' 3-D battlefield.

I also like the fact that the board is modular, so I can create a few different layouts so not every battle on it is the same. Unfortunately I don't have any more pictures of it (it's not something I photograph all that often as it is quite a pain to bring around and set up/tear down all the time). I love bringing it out when my 40k club is running a tournament because it just looks so much better than a felt with junk on it. The problem is letting people know that the only things that are allowed on the board are models and dice (no arms/hands, army cases, or drinks), and yes, I've actually had to tell people that. :angry:

Anyways, As an update, I brought my models to my FLGS to paint last night, but just wasn't really in the mood to get started.  However, I was able to play a game of Battles of Westeros instead, and it was friggin cool!

Tonight (my club's main meetup night), I'm going to try to playtest that 500 point list a little more, but I'm also going to try this 2,000 point list out:

_*HQ*_
Hive Tyrant (Wings, 2x Scything Talons, Adrenal Glands, Leech Essence, Paroxysm, Old Adversary)

_*ELITE*_
10x Ymgarl Genestealers
3x Hive Guard
3x Hive Guard

_*TROOPS*_
11x Termagaunts
Tervigon (Cluster Spines, Adrenal Glands, Toxin Sacs, Catalyst)
8x Genestealers (includes a Brood Lord, all have Toxin Sacs)
10x Genestealers (Toxin Sacs)

_*FAST*_
19x Gargoyles (Toxin Sacs)
6x Tyranid Shrikes (Lash Whips & Boneswords)
Harpy

It at the very least should be fun to play (though I've had great success with similar lists).


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## aboytervigon (Jul 6, 2010)

Nice list but I don't think Adrenal glands are needed as your already strength and Initiative 6 anyway also It's just me but I don't like shrikes.


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## Tinkerbell (Feb 19, 2008)

Really cool plog will follow this one closely. I am more a painter then gamer but you have given ne inspiration to play.

Love the colour scheme looks tidy and look forward to see more.

+rep 

Tink


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## dbgoldberg323 (Sep 10, 2010)

aboytervigon said:


> Nice list but I don't think Adrenal glands are needed as your already strength and Initiative 6 anyway also It's just me but I don't like shrikes.


Initiative 6 is a joke anymore, with DE and Furiously-Charging BA characters. I7 lets me go first almost all the time, and really what I take it for is some nice S7+2d6 anti-armor hits. Rolling average on the dice (2d6 = 3.5 + 3.5 = 7), it's statistically a glance on Land Raiders. Out of all the silly upgrades that exist on Monstrous creatures, Adrenal Glands is really the only one that is worth it.

As for Shrikes, I like 'em a lot. Screen them with Gargoyles (which would be fearless because Shrikes provide Synapse) and they work perfectly. With Lash Whips/Boneswords I have picked up many a Marine army. 


Tinkerbell said:


> Really cool plog will follow this one closely. I am more a painter then gamer but you have given ne inspiration to play.
> 
> Love the colour scheme looks tidy and look forward to see more.
> 
> ...


Thanks a bunch!

I'm quite depressed with how the color scheme turned out (not enough Regal Blue showing through in my opinion), so I may end up re-doing a lot of it. Problem is, it easily took 2 hours to paint the over 50 armor plates with that color scheme on them!


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