Hive Fleet Manakeet

[Urkh]

Hello everyone! Urkh here. I'll try not to BUG you too much, but here I go. At the beginning of 10th edition, I SOMEHOW found myself with a fledgling army of Tyranids *shifty eyes*.  Times have been very busy, but it has slowed down enough that I've decided to try and find a paint scheme for these insidious insects. So naturally, I thought I'd come to the hive mind to get some opinions.

 

Now, I want my armies to all be different colored for the theme. My first army is Black Templars, which are black, of course. Then I have my orange Eldar and my yellow Leagues of Votann. I also have a rescue army of Necrons I got from my old 5th edition buddy, which, I will be painting purple as my dynasty color. 

 

So I'm here thinking to myself, what color do I want to paint my 'Nids? My brother already has red and blue Tyranids, and with the other colors taken by other armies, I fell on green. My first shot at this was to make a more normal green body, with a forest green chitin, bone color accents, with pink muscular tissue.

 

Then I decided to invert the greens, and make a forest green body with a normal green chitin, because I do like the idea of a darker chitin then the body:

 

But then I thought to myself, what I play around with the forest green idea and try to make them a tree?I came up with this:

 

Now,.I like all three of them, but I think I'm leaning towards the tree nid. Here is a photo of all of them together

 

These are all only base coats and a preliminary wash, but let me know what you guys think! This army will slowly get painted to this level to break the monotony of getting my Votann to parade level.

[Focslain]

So welcome to the Hive.

 

The tree one is more striking, It would make the larger bugs pop more then the mostly green versions. The darker green chitin is my second pick. 

 

Also just simply amazing work by the way. 

[Urkh]

Small progress report:

 

 

Five down!

 

Edit: when the squad is done, I'll paint all their bases black at once. I don't want to put basing materials on them until I get base extenders, since they're on the wrong size for modern gaunts.

Edited October 23 by Urkh

[Focslain]

Looking good so far. You going 10 or the full 20 for the unit?

[Lathe Biosas]

I really like your earthy Tyranids. How are you going to base them?

[Urkh]

Thank you, you two!

 

I have 10 slotta and 10 new horms, so it will be a 20 man unit once done. I wanted to use the slotta ones as the scheme test subjects.

 

For basing, I'm planning on gluing down some of the rocks that you can see in the pic of five (that are currently being used as a counter-weight, haha!), then some stirland battlemire and grass tuffs to create a sort of natural environment that the nids would camouflage into.

[Lathe Biosas]

I do have a point of caution. You don't want them to camouflage too much into their environment - as you can lose your model into your base.

 

 

[Evil Eye]

Very nice scheme! The orange soft-tissue looks really good on them and contrasts nicely with the muted brown and green. I will say I wouldn't worry too much about rebasing or extending the bases on them; the newer Gaunt bases are only marginally bigger than the old ones to the point it really doesn't make any difference gameplay wise.

[Urkh]

I'm honestly not too worried about them actually be camouflaged into the ground too much. If I ever get to the point where I want to make them parade ready, the differences in the browns and greens I would use, as well as the way I do my highlighting will make them stand out from the base. Thank you though!

 

As for the bases, my OCD won't let me have the mixed base sizes, or not being the proper size. I would just feel... Dirty, if that makes sense. And even though I'm planning on putting real rocks on the bases, a bigger base can never hurt the tip-over-ability of the old slotta gaunts. Thank you for the comments about their tissue! I was trying to go for a sap/amber effect, since they're supposed to be trees!

Edited November 3 by Urkh
Just adding more.

[Focslain]

On 11/1/2025 at 10:30 AM, Lathe Biosas said:

I do have a point of caution. You don't want them to camouflage too much into their environment - as you can lose your model into your base.

 

 

This literally happened to a eldar ranger I did in winter colours on a ice table at the local bunker many moons ago. Found the little guy a month later on a visit, still sitting in the little crevise he was left at.