Over the last 10 months we’ve been charting the history of Warhammer from the first metal Space Marine to the earliest plastic skeletons, and right up to Vashtorr the Arkifane, via spectral knights, unstoppable warlords, and risen Primarchs. We’re finally at the present day, and for our penultimate iconic miniature, what could be more appropriate than a creature that straddles almost the entire history of Warhammer 40,000?
We’re talking, of course, of the Screamer-Killer.
As an evolutionary off-shoot of the dreaded Tyranid Carnifex, the Screamer-Killer is a hulking monstrosity in a thickly armoured carapace – but where its contemporaries carry a massive bio-cannon, the Screamer-Killer only packs a quartet of razor-sharp talons. This hyper-aggressive attitude made it the perfect Tyranid to headline the Leviathan boxed set, dwarfing almost every other miniature in the box with its outstretched blades.
Despite how dangerous its claws clearly are, they aren’t even the worst part about facing down a Screamer-Killer. The creature also brews volatile plasma that it can spray from its mouth with a harrowing scream – one that shell-shocked Guardsmen soon named it after.
The Screamer-Killer has a long history in Warhammer 40,000. Its first model arrived in 1991, arriving as one of the later releases in the Warhammer 40,000 Rogue Trader era. This was a couple of years before even the very first Codex: Tyranids - yet despite the 30 years between these models, the most defining features remain intact.
They still have a gaping maw that catches them mid-scream. The digitigrade legs, carapace, and arms are all present and correct, with the tail being the only true adaptation. Clearly the Hive Mind is a big believer in “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”
Way back in the early days, it was joined by an eclectic mix of other Tyranids, ranging from the iconic Tyranid Warrior to the saucer-headed Zoanthrope. These miniatures didn’t quite have the cohesion of today’s range – though they did start a stylish trend of curling tails that would end up on the modern Screamer-Killer – but nonetheless made it clear that the Tyranids were an adaptational powerhouse whose biological experiments would only get more refined with time.
It also shared its naming convention with other early bio-organisms. What would become the Termagant was once called the Hunter-Slayer, and there was even a Grabber-Slasher that never made it out of the Rogue Trader era!
These flawless ancestors set the stage for an explosion of towering Tyranid monstrosities, not least in the Carnifex line itself. It soon came to be one of the most adaptable bioforms available to the hive fleets, with later iterations mounting all kinds of bio-cannons, crushing claws, and even aberrant regenerative mutations.
One notable example is the apex-beast known to the Imperium as Old One Eye – first found frozen in ice with a gaping head wound caused by a heroic (and almost certainly deceased) Space Marine. As soon as the creature thawed out, it laid waste to the investigators swarming around it and escaped to be reabsorbed by the Hive Mind, taking its extraordinarily fast regeneration with it.
Although we’ve nearly reached the end of our journey through the history of the world’s greatest miniatures, we’re not quite done with our celebration yet – we’ve got one more to reveal.
Warhammer Day is nearly upon us, and there’s still plenty more to see from the annals of Warhammer history as well as some top-notch up to date reveals of exciting new miniatures that carry on the legacy of this rich heritage.
