The Tyranid hive fleets are descending with a host of terrifying new beasties bristling with deadly bioweapons. The Hive Mind is always adapting its repertoire of living weapons, each with a specific function designed to aid the swarm in conquering fresh planets.
Warhammer Community tapped into the synaptic network at the Warhammer Studio, and chatted with Mark and Filip, who adapted many of the older units into their terrifying new forms.
Warhammer Community: Can you explain some of the guiding principles behind updating and adapting the old Tyranid designs?
Mark: The Hive Mind constantly adapts, and it is unlikely to ever truly ditch a good idea. We went right back to look at some of the earliest metal Tyranids for inspiration, and elements from those eventually worked their way into the Neurogaunts, which were designed by our colleague Christian.
Jes' original Carnifex model really stood out. The shapes are incredibly well-defined on the carapace – they look very organic. We wanted to keep that direction in mind with the new miniatures – it’s easy to make Tyranids look like they are factory-built rather than organically grown. The hive fleets need to make efficient use of matter when creating their invasion swarms, so we kept that in mind when developing the new look of horns and chimney structures, which feature organic bridging elements that look less built, and more grown.
Filip: The oldest Lictors had claws scything out of the waist, which disappeared in the next design, and we wanted to find a way to bring those back to keep the organic adaptation idea in mind. We worked on the idea that Hive Mind would leave no potential element of the body unused – so while there are always six core limbs on any Tyranid, it’s fair game for strange protrusions and vestigial elements and limbs to split off from other areas of the body.
Mark: There’s even more bifurcation and fusing of elements on the new miniatures. We can fuse fingers, add fingers, turn things into wings, add eyes, remove them – every element of a Tyranid can be adapted as long as it fits in texturally.
WarCom: Deathleaper and the Lictors are two of the biggest updates to the range. What went into them?
Filip: Deathleaper was one of the earliest miniatures we worked on. It made sense to do this imposing character miniature in a single pose, whereas the Lictor sprue presents a lot of modularity.
Mark: There were some challenges, like how you are supposed to pose a creature that is so good at camouflage you can’t even see it!
Filip: There’s actually a lot of added weight and detail beyond the standard Lictor, and we broke up the silhouette with the fleshy skirt. Some more personality (for a Tyranid) was added in the pose while retaining its status as a pure killing machine with the detailing. It’s the most maximal the Lictor design can go, no inch is wasted.
There are many nodules on Tyranid miniatures, building on the idea that the Hive Mind could take any of these elements and push them further – every surface is covered with sharp talons and spikes. Deathleaper’s scything talons are bigger and more dangerous than the talons on a Lictor, which suggests that they’ve grown out more than normal, so for the standard Lictor we made those same claws slightly more restrained.
Mark: We spent a long time thinking about how the claws came from the back, which is a classic element of the Lictor design. There’s a split between the back armour plates that reinforces the lengths the adaptation has gone to.
Filip: Deathleaper has that same split, and it’s where the nasty-looking tentacle hovering out to one side comes from. If you take both kits side by side, you can see responsive design between them, related elements and textures that are taken further on Deathleaper, right down to the fact it has six eyes.
The Lictors are very modular kits despite their organic design. There are three poses – a sneaking one, one lunging forward, and another rearing up on its legs like the original, talons ready to strike. There are also two heads, one of which harks back to the very first Lictor, while the scything talons can be built as fully open, half open, or closed, giving you lots of freedom when building your own. If you cut off the positioning blocks on the ball joints, you can change a pose drastically by freely turning them. I have six different variations sitting on my desk now!*
WarCom: The Biovore and Pyrovore also have a radically different design
Mark: The older Biovore had a very brutish, Orkish feel because the original idea was that it was based on the Tyranids taking all sorts of DNA and combining it with theirs to make new creatures.
The new Biovore, designed by Alex, moves away from that, and it’s more about the idea of the symbiosis between the creature and its weapon. Instead of feeling like a beast of burden with a weapon fused to it, the new version is more like two separate creatures working in concert. There had to be as much attention on the gun itself as an organism that clings to the back of the carrier almost like a limpet. The carrier had to be more realistic, with multiple limbs that help be more mobile and stay steadier when firing.
WarCom: Even the Termagants and Hormagaunts have received a large update
Mark: People’s memory of the old Termagants and Hormagaunts compared with the new ones is that they are not that different – but there are so many little differences. Despite their new design, they are actually a little smaller, which alongside the more organic shape,makes them look even more like a swarm.
Filip: The same straight tail on every miniature was a little less interesting than the new direction with the slithering, snaking tails. The way they arch, tilt, and lean to show motion adds a lot of believability to the swarm.
Mark: You painted a lot of those old ones right?
Filip: I did a diorama for Golden Demon and spent a lot of time reposing them, so I really wanted to make the new kits a lot more dynamic!
Mark: I knew you’d help do them justice after spending all that time posing them by hand!
Filip: Yes, we really pushed to make them the best yet. Our colleague Paolo worked on the Hormagaunts and devised a run-and-leap cycle for them that informed the final poses. We picked out elements of that cycle and then worked on them to create a sense of coherence. When together in a big unit, they almost look like a rippling wave of creatures.
The new Termagant kit is the same push-fit from Leviathan but with a sprue of optional elements that bring in some new upgrades which are actually based on very old second-edition weapons. The strangle web and spike rifle sit alongside the classic spine fist, devourer, and fleshborer, plus there’s a shardlauncher, which is adapted from the Bargaunts.
Mark: The new Genestealers are also very different. Angus did a fantastic job avoiding the old aeroplane pose, but keeping that sense of them rushing forward. When you compare them with the older miniatures, it really is a very stark difference. They are now even more linked to the other Tyranids, with some work done to the armoured panels on the back that bring them closer to the rest of the range.
The Tyranid army as a swarm is at the heart of the fiction for this faction, so it was essential to get these smaller creatures correct. If you look at the early art, a planet will be utterly crawling with all sorts of Tyranids creatures down to the microscopic level. We can’t represent the things at that smallest end of that scale, so we brought back Rippers and spent a lot of time on the standard swarm-level Tyranid beasts.
Thank you both! Tomorrow the studio will join Warhammer Community again to talk about new elements in Tyranid design, and how they informed the design of the towering Norn Emissary and Norn Assimilator. In the meantime find out how they perform on the tabletop, and how new Detachments in Codex: Tyranids provide you even more options for harvesting biomass.
* In fact, Warhammer Community Magos Arithmeticus Charlie calculates there are at least 7,776 potential permutations in the Lictor kit.