Friday 40K Blogging: The Great Devourer, Part 1

I mentioned back when I put up some pictures of my 'Nid fleet that it wasn't the fleet I was most proud of, due to the need to tie its paint scheme in with the 40K army I started back in 1994. The inescapable corollary to this is that I shouldn't be too fond of that army, either.

For some reason, though, that isn't the case. I mean, objectively, it's the crappiest army I own, both in terms of painting technique (an unfortunate combination of youthful inexperience and the inability to paint miniatures fast enough to make redoing the older models again) and in colour scheme (I followed the GW colour scheme of the time pretty closely, which means my 'Nid army is one of the few remaining examples of a "Red Period" force). I mean, red, cream and black mixed with pink, dark blue and orange? What were they thinking? What was I thinking liking what they were thinking? Whilst contemporary Tyranids generally look like this:

I felt compelled to doggedly stick to this:

Still, there's no getting past the fact that this was the army I fought with throughout my first three years I spent as a GW slave (much as I love my hobby, had I not suffered a relapse in 2000, I could have probably afforded a palace by now). The earliest models have been in my collection for more than half my life.

None of which will stop them looking ugly as all Hell to an impartial observer, i.e. you guys. Still, if nothing else, there might be some scholarly interest in seeing examples of various antiquated miniatures; the army contains models released in support of all three Tyranid Codexes.

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The entire army gathers at the foot of a huge alien temple, that is in no way the bottom of my shitty sofa.

A Fourth Edition Carnifex. The Third Edition variant was absolutely goddamn awful, looking for all the world like a beetle mixed with a puppy dog:

This newer version is a massive improvement, possibly even over the original:

which I didn't think was possible. Certainly it's nice to once again be able to put together a Carnifex that's not so rubbish as to need to lug a gun around.

A Second Edition Hive Tyrant, the original and still arguably the best (well, it's arguably better than the current one, it's unarguably better than the Third Edition attempt to just rip off the Alien Queen), along with a Fourth Edition Tyrant Guard, a great improvement on its massively silly predecessor.

That should do for now, I think. It took me 12 years to finish painting this army; I don't have any problems splitting its showcase over two posts. More next week.