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Equipment Identification A friend of mine recently asked me some questions about her new army. Most of the questions involved identifying the weapons carried by the models. Although it was easy for me to figure out, it's not so easy if you are unfamiliar with the army in question, or if you are just getting started. Whether you've just picked up an army box from the store or you bought stuff on ebay, it can sometimes be a challenge to understand what everything is. While GW sometimes explains what things are, they often leave out that information. There are, however, resources available to help you. I set out to see what I could find out about Tyranid weapons identification, from the point of view of a new player. I started my search with the Codex itself. With an entire book dedicated to the army, the information should be right at my fingertips. Hmm, perhaps not. There aren't any listings for weapons identification, and there aren't any good pictures where they talk about the different weapons. Well, if the information isn't in an obvious place, maybe I can find it elsewhere. Although the Codexes generally don't bother to identify equipment for you, there are places you can look. Each army Codex has a section on how to paint the army. As they show you pictures of the 'Eavy Metal team's beautiful models, they have captions underneath, explaining what is depicted. Sometimes they identify the weapons held, which you can compare to yours to see what you have. On pages 21 and 22, Devourers and Spinefists are identified, as are Scything Talons. (There is also a picture of a weapon sprue frame and identification which covers about three of the weapons, but most codexes don't have this, so I'm ignoring it for our purposes.) Page 23 has a picture of a mutant gaunt with a Venom Cannon as well. Page 26 has a picture of a Barbed Strangler. (There are some other pictures of the same weapons, I'm just listing the first clear appearance for each.) Lash Whips are only identified if you read the modeling information on a Tyranid Warrior on page 22, otherwise you'll have to guess. On Page 17, there is a picture of Termagants. If you read the codex entry for them you'll know they come with Fleshborers, but that is the only way to identify a Fleshborer in the Codex. There is no identifying picture of a Deathspitter or Rending Claws. (There are pictures, but the weapons are unidentified.) Okay, so we got most of them, but not all, which would have been nice. Where else can we look? The Games Workshop Online Store. They give pictures of the models so that you can buy them, surely we'll be able to identify weapons there! Uh, bizarrely enough, we can't. Part of this is due to the fact that the weapons are primarily plastic and available on the sprues, where some armies have to buy the special or heavy weapon models as separate pieces. Those would be easily identified at the Online store, but it's no such luck for the Tyranids. We'll have to try somewhere else. Web galleries offer lots of pictures, but they have some limitations. At places like coolminiornot, they are interested in the painting and so you usually won't get information on their weapons. Although it isn't a gallery, Ebay has a lot of pictures of various Tyranids. Most of them either aren't labeled, or are labeled incorrectly, however, so they don't help either. Individual website galleries are sort of hit or miss. Some of them have well-organized pictures clearly labeled, others are just a jumble of pictures with no useful information. Since it encompasses a number of sites, this will be a more time-consuming search for information. Fortunately, Warpshadow is an excellent repository of knowledge and has a large Gallery section. From there and other websites, I was able to determine Scything Talons, Rending Claws, Deathspitter, Venom Cannon, Barbed Strangler, Spinefist, Devourer, and even Lash Whips. It did take an awful lot of searching, however. Finally, there's deduction. Take what you know and subtract it from the total and see what's left. For example, using the Codex I found Devourers, Spinefists, Fleshborers, Venom Cannons, Barbed Stranglers, Lash Whips and Scything Talons, leaving Rending Claws and Deathspitters unidentified. Looking at the sprues and identifying the stuff I now recognize leaves me to conclude that the Claw-hand things are Rending Claws. The Deathspitter is a harder guess, though, as it looks a bit like a shortened Barbed Strangler, much like the Warriors have smaller Scything Talons than TMCs do, and gaunts have smaller ones still, but they are all the same weapon.  
So, after a lot of looking around, I managed to get the answers I was looking for. It did take a lot of work, however, and it would have been a lot harder if I was new to the army (and thus didn't know about as many Tyranid websites) or new to the hobby. Aside from GW publishing Guides to each of the armies, there isn't really an easy solution to this problem. It can, however, be taken care of individually by using your resources, and, of course, by asking friends. If you enjoyed this, email me and let me know |