Many of you are aware that I did some creative modeling with the first two boxes of gaunts I got when the Tyranid Codex came out. They turned out incredibly well and have continued to influence my Tyranids over the past couple of years. They were, however, an awful lot of work for those 32 Gaunts, which kept me from getting new ones for a while. Well, I've gotten a bunch of new ones now (about 150 or so) and I've recently revived my interest in making them creepier, like their forebears. The old method, however, was just too slow and time-consuming, not to mention a lot of fiddly work. I've come up with a new method, however, that is a bit easier and faster, so there is hope now.

There is some history behind this conversion. A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, a man named Sherman Bishop had a large number of converted Tyranids and interesting stories about them and he put them up on a website. One of the conversions he had was a 2nd Edition Metal Hormogaunt that used an extra pair of Scything Talons to replace it's legs, giving it 6 spiky limbs and making it look more spidery and FAR more creepy. He called it a Stalker. I was taken by that conversion, but, given the cost of the metal Hormogaunt figures, decided that I couldn't afford to use them in my army.

Fast forward now to the release of the 3rd Edition codex for the Tyranids and the accompanying plastic Gaunts. There was a page on the GW website devoted to different conversions and paint schemes of the various new plastic Tyranids, and one of the gaunts was converted using 6 Scything Talons and a Warrior head. As soon as I saw it, I remembered the old Stalkers and said, "Yes, I must have it!" So I started building my own.

I quickly ran into trouble, however. You see, the box has 16 gaunts and a total of 16 Scything Talons (you are supposed to make 8 Hormogaunts with those and 8 Termagants with guns for the others and just use the running or leaping legs the models come with.) That left me 80 Talons short in each of the two boxes of Gaunts that I had. I decided that I needed substitute talons.

I tried casting some, making molds of the talons and pouring resin into the molds. The results were very stinky and took a lot of time to cure. They also weren't always very good looking due to sometimes getting air bubbles in the resin or not getting enough resin into all the nooks and crannies of the mold. In addition, the resin wasn't always very strong and was susceptible to heat, meaning a trip in a hot car could give my bugs wobbly legs. I also tried casting them with clay. These results were a bit faster and stronger, but they were more brittle and didn't take details very well.

I finally took a look around and realized that I had extra limbs available (which was the hardest part to get the details right on.) The sprues come with a lot of (useless to me) guns for the Gaunts to use. I had an epiphany and cut off the gun from the arm. To quote Emeril, "Bam!" I had a good limb. Now I just had to put a talon on it. After a bit of looking, I realized that I could cut off parts of the sprue material itself (the stuff left over when you take all the good bits off the plastic and just have that frame sitting there with little projections coming off it at wierd angles.) After cutting myself quite a few times, I realized I could get better results more safely by shaving a tiny sliver of material off with each stroke, effectively whittling it. That was how I finished off the first 32 spidery Gaunts.

As I continued to use them, I realized that the rest of my army looked out of place next to them, so I started by replacing the limbs on my (2nd Edition) Hive Tyrants with Scything Talons. Then I did my (again, 2nd Edition) Carnifexes. Eventually, I even did a Lictor that way. I liked the look so much that I converted 2 more Lictors out of Warriors and did them the same way. I've had people tell me that my army gives them the creeps, and one person at the GT said my Hive Tyrant was going to give him nightmares, so I know that the look has the same visceral impact on other people that it does on me.

Somewhere along the way, I picked up a bunch of cheap Gaunts on ebay, with an interest in running a game of Bug Hunt at a local gaming store, since I didn't have enough Gaunts to pull it off. Much later, I bought a partially created Tyranid army that was being prepared as part of a group project for the 2003 Seattle GT. I had to fit in with the theme of the rest of the project, so I needed to use a lot of Gaunts. I ended up with 108, if I recall correctly. This leaves me with about 150 Gaunts that have regular legs, and then I got bitten by the Arachnid bug again.

With so many Gaunts to convert, I estimate that I'll need about 700 Scything Talons, and I really don't want to create that many by whittling each one. Even without any accidents, I'd probably cut off my thumbs in sheer frustration! I still wanted to do it, however, and then the idea hit me. A couple years ago, on one of the Tyranid Forums I frequented at the time, the usual lament had been raised about there only being enough Scything Talons in a box to outfit 8 of the 16 Gaunts with them, and pretty much everyone preferred Scything Talons to any of the guns that were available. Someone suggested using plastic fork tines instead. (The tines are the business end of the fork, the bits you stab your food with.) Now, plastic forks come in a variety of sizes and shapes, so you have to take a look at your fork and see how it would work. The forks I have in front of me are fairly large and made out of a heavy, rigid plastic. They have a slight curvature to them. After looking at it for a bit, I decided I'd have to use the front half of each tine (so they'd be the same size as regular Talons) and the curvature was just about what the standard Talon has. They are a bit more broad than ordinary Talons, but I think it looks pretty good, more of a pickax than a blade, but still very deadly, which is what I want. They make it much easier and faster to assemble these talons, which gives me some hope that I can actually do this project.

Here's the details: I start by taking a gun arm (a Fleshborer is the example) and I cut off the gun and hand and any ammo feeds or other connections to the gun, leaving just the bare arm and wrist. Then I score the fork tines about halfway down each tine (scoring is cutting a groove in it, but not cutting all the way through. It can be very effective with semi-brittle materials, especially those that are difficult to cut directly.) Then I apply pressure to the tine and snap it at the score-marks. A bit of super glue or Zap-a-Gap on each piece and hold them together for a bit and you've got a Scything Talon. As a note, you can vary the angle you put the Talon onto the arm, which gives you a greater variety of poses when you put them on the Gaunt.

Once that is complete and drying, I turn to the Gaunt body. There is the matter of those four pesky legs. Typically, one pair will break off from the body fairly easily (the pair that came as a separate piece, of course.) If you have not yet assembled your gaunts, this pair will not yet be attached, so you only have to deal with the other pair. The other pair, however, is molded right in with the body. The hind leg can be cut off near the hip, slanting in from the top to cut all the way down to the abdomen (belly) of the Gaunt. This is a thick piece of plastic, so be careful with your cutting. I find the easiest way is to cut about halfway through, then bend it until the rest of the leg peels away. Note: it is possible to use the bottom part of the hind leg for another Talon. The middle leg is a little trickier, as it is more heavily connected to the body, even though it is smaller. Place your blade between the abdomen of the gaunt and the leg to try to separate it form the ribcage there. Try to keep this part in one piece, it can also be used to make another Talon, though it is shorter than the standard limb, so you may need to add something to it to make it look right. Then cut around the hip area of this leg in a tight half-circle. Finally, make two deep, cuts along the sides of the leg, going diagonally into the body. Even if they don't directly meet, you should be able to put some pressure on it and the plastic will peel away. Now just clean up the cuts on the body itself to make little sockets for your new limbs to fit in, glue and breathe a sigh of relief.

Through much experimentation, I have found that the best look, for sheer creepiness, is to have one of the front talons raised up and the other on the ground (also helps balance) and raise the middle Talon on the opposite side. This gives you 4 limbs on the ground for stability, but also gives the appearance of movement and that front Talon makes it look very aggressive. You can certainly vary your look, but that is the one I have found to be consistently the best. If you put a few of them up on flying bases, it can add to the leaping look (if your Gaunts have the Leaping Biomorph) and helps the general look of variety and constant movement. In addition, this adds another really good pose or two. The first pose is to elongate the front and back legs, as if pushing off the ground with the back ones and reaching out with the front ones. By adjusting the angle on this, you can have some starting their leap, some in mid-leap, and some just about to touch down. The second pose is to have the back legs extended out in a leap, while the front and middle legs are poised forward, like a spider threat display, ready to strike a creature in front of them. This is a very good, aggressive pose and really helps add to the scariness of your swarm.

For the Medium-Size creatures (Warriors, Lictors, etc.) You can use a similar process. If I used the whole fork tine on these plastic forks, I'd get something about the size of a Tyranid Warrior Scything Talon, which is pretty handy. I could again use some of the gun arms they come with for the new limbs and maybe even use the lower part of the legs for more limbs. On the other hand, the body of the Warriors and Lictors is more vertical than the Gaunts. The best look I've come up with is to cluster the lower 4 limbs together into a small group directly around the lowest part of the Warrior body. (Using the leg sockets, then just making my own sockets for the 2nd set of limbs down there.) I use the Monstrous Creature Scything Talons in the shoulder sockets and either fill in or just ignore the middle sockets.

For the Monstrous Creatures, I only have experience with the old, metal models, so you'll need to modify this to fit your models. I took off the hips and pelvis from the body and spaced the Talons more or less evenly around the model. I've modeled my Hive Tyrant fairly low to the ground, with a similar pose to that of the Gaunts that I mentioned above. The Carnifexes, on the other hand, I put the four rear legs on the ground almost vertically, raising it up very high. Then I put the top arms reared back like they are ready to strike. They are some of the tallest models I've seen and really look like a very large spider doing a threat display and rearing back. The talons on these are much easier to mold from modeling clay, though it doens't always give as good a detail as I want.

If you enjoyed this, email me and let me know

Return to Warpstorm!