The Imperium is really in for it this time! What were once thought of as vast hive fleets now appear only to be the tip of the tendril, advance parties ranging ahead of the main swarm. And now the main swarm is finally here.
Codex: Tyranids is the first supplement to the new edition of Warhammer 40,000, and it’s bursting with nasty new bioforms ready to eat both the Imperium at large and your face in particular. Still, at least they’re going to look really spiffy while they’re munching away. We sent the new models out to some top painters in the community, and they came back with a load of lurid Lictors – and a bucket of other biological nasties for good measure.
We begin matters with a bloated Biovore in a classic Hive Fleet Behemoth pattern from Adam R of Siege Studios fame. The striation on the shell is sharp enough to cut glass.
The ever-dependable Darcy Bono has produced a lizard-like Lictor with a coruscating viridian carapace, a gleaming white underbelly, and skin the yellow of an overripe banana. This guy is hiding from no-one.
David McLennan from It’s Tabletop Time has painted his Neurolictor like a nightmarish treefrog – you can practically see it emerging from a jungle canopy to rakishly waggle its rubbery mandibles at the poor Guardsmen whose brains it’s about to totally freak.
Fletcher Giles of Tabletop Tactics is basically just showing off here, layering some incredible, pinpoint white highlights on the armoured ridges of his Norn Emissary and Deathleaper. You almost want them to eat you, just so you can live on as a milky point of light on a pristine carapace.
Matthew Herrington of Goonhammer has only gone and painted an entire army of new Tyranid beasts in an especially stylised Leviathan scheme – we especially like the veiny mottling on some of the flesh, like freshly burst sutures. Let’s face it, nothing coloured purple and black is ever going to be good for you…
It’s always Tabletop Time for Murray Maud (from It’s Tabletop Time), even when he’s coming at us with perhaps the most conspicuous possible colour scheme for an apex organism that’s supposed to do its best work on the down low. Still, this electric blue, red, and bone scheme really brings out Deathleaper’s fancy side.
Vincent Knotley is the man who can’t pick a scheme, a hobbyist so given to experimenting with colour that he regularly submits 10-model units painted 10 different ways. How does he manage it? Some of us struggle to paint 10 models in one colour…
Whichever of these schemes is your favourite, you wouldn’t want to meet any of these motley monsters in a dark alleyway, on a battlefield, or really anywhere else at all.
Thanks to all of you – this is magnificent, terrifying work. Thanks also to the others whom we couldn’t feature, and to all of you at home just for reading this. All of these Tyranid reinforcements are up for pre-order right now!