Tyranid Bastion

[dwez]

A Bastion - the logical progression from my Tyranid Aegis Defence Line. Of course if I do the Bastion then the logical next step is a Skyshield Landing Platform and then a Fortress of Redemption but lets not run before we can walk.

Occasionally I'll draw myself a little sketch of what I'm after and so my first attempt tried to match the proportions of the existing Imperial Bastion but this is going to be completely scratchbuilt. I'm all for Tyranid infested Imperial terrain but a completely scratchbuilt affair holds appeal for me because it will be unique, match my army, be a challenge and will cost me nothing [importance not in that order].



However, recently I've seen a variety of Xenos bastions that use the GW moonscape as a base and as I have a couple of spare pieces I thought they might be a potential stepping stone. So this is the revised concept sketch, however mounting the 'heavy bolters' on it's compass points will be difficult given the Chitinous towers already situated there. What I may do is make the towers sit slightly angled opposite each other that way the left and right weapon can be in the East and West positions and then the North and south guns will be asymmetrically opposite, one in the right hand Southern wall and the other in the left Northern wall. With 'sphincter doors' [as seen in Advanced Space Crusade] in the left Southern and right Northern.



In the end I went for the bigger crater so I have more room to work with. This is the skeletal beginnings. You can see the height to the roof is 150mm and then you have a 20mm wall that will go round the roof with some ridges that will add a centimetre up to the 180mm max height with the Tyranid Capillary styled towers that form the compass points.



Next up I'll be adding the cross-members and probably be cutting slots in the crater base so that I can have it glued straight to the mounting card base underneath. Then I have to decide how to fill out the gaps between the frame and how to create the Capillary Towers. More details and pics on my blog.

I've added a template to my blog should you wish to try your own version and need a starting point, it's here:

40kaddict.blogspot.co.uk/2013/06/you-asked-and-great-devourer-provides.html

Updates will be following shortly on the blog and in this thread, it's going really well, here's a little further on



And the crater base with slots to fit the template:

[gman25639]

OMG! looks awesome! NID BUNKERS!

[coredump]

Thank you for not making it look like a 'Nid square' or 'Nid circle'.

As for the guns, my suggestion would have been to make the towers irregularly spaced, and then you could place the guns at regular intervals.

[dwez]

Jun 15, 2013 6:16:18 GMT coredump said:

Thank you for not making it look like a 'Nid square' or 'Nid circle'.

As for the guns, my suggestion would have been to make the towers irregularly spaced, and then you could place the guns at regular intervals.

Interesting, I'm glad it's not square too but I think there'll be folks who have an issue with it because it's oblong nature does confer certain advantages that a square/circle does not and I aim to exploit those now, although that was not the original intention

The blog has been updated, here's the next progression as the body of the Bastion is filled out.





40kaddict.blogspot.co.uk/2013/06/nids-part-82-tyranid-bastion-growth-pt3.html

[dwez]

Latest update on the growth of my Tyranid Bastion using lemonade bottle plastic to fill out some more of walls and chitinous plates:



A standard Imperial Bastion can hold 15 miniatures on the roof and so can a Tyranid equivalent. However, I imagine it will be considearbly less on completion due to the sculpting but less is better given the size of the thing



The base of the lemonade bottle provided the five chitinous plates on each 'capillary tower' - fiddly to work with but cheap and cheerful.



more pics and details:

40kaddict.blogspot.co.uk/2013/06/nids-part-83-tyranid-bastion-growth-pt4.html

[dwez]

I've 'iced the cake' with some tile adhesive/grout, next up sand it back for a decent base to sculpt on.





40kaddict.blogspot.co.uk/2013/06/nids-part-84-tyranid-bastion-growth-pt5.html

[gman25639]

Coming along nicely.

[Imasho]

What a cool concept! can wait to see the end result.
Fantastic blog as well !

[dwez]

Jun 20, 2013 10:55:52 GMT Imasho said:

What a cool concept! can wait to see the end result.
Fantastic blog as well !

Cheers, I think given the model of Imperial Bastions most nid players would dismiss using one. Although I've never tried one I'm struggling to see why they wouldn't be cool for us. Anything inside is immune to Synapse and can't be targetted [except by template weapons and maybe grenades?] so a squad of Hive Guard positioning inside it when it's just on the edge of your deployment. They're out of sight first turn, run in and they can shoot through the fire ports.

Alternatively it's deep in your deploymentz zone in front of an objective, squad of Devgaunts inside or on the battlements with enough firepower to discourage anyone coming near it. Additionally it's going to shield almost any Monstrous Creature during set up, it's easily hides a Trygon and I think I could get a Tervigon out of sight behind it as well. And lest we foget it's AV14, which is a tough nut to crack although my cursory look at the rules suggest each penetrating hit lowers it's AV by 1. Either way it seems tough and it's only 75pts.

Last thing, I've never actually played against anyone with a Bastion in 6th yet. I'm not sure folk know how to deal with one so I think the unknown is yet another factor that will affect my opponent and when this thing is done it will dominate a battlefield despite being only just bigger than a standard Bastion, but if you actually read the rules a Bastion is classed as a 'medium' building which is in turn classed as anything between 6"x6" and 9"x9" so it will be well within those specs.

[dwez]

The next step was to sand the 'icing' back so I could have a nice base to put my sculpting on top of. Admittedly this doesn't seem a huge amount of progress [that's the next step] but effort now really helps later on.



Here's the sketch that helped me position the fire points and emplaced weapons



Which I then transferred onto the model itself so I can see where I'm going to sculpt and what I have to cut back into the model



More pictures and info at the blog:

40kaddict.blogspot.co.uk/2013/06/nids-part-85-tyranid-bastion-growth-pt6.html

[coredump]

Well, it seems like you are probably learning a lot through the process.

Unfortunately, that usually means that when you are done there are a lot of things you would have done differently.

Fortunately, I am a 'giver' and want to help out. So when you finish this, feel free to send it to me and I will use this 'version 1'; and you can then move on to make your 'perfect' version that you can play with.

See, told you I was a giver.


(BTW, very cool.)

[gigasnail]

yeah, looks nice, for sure.

[dwez]

Coredump you're generosity of spirit is astounding, I really was worried how I could live with the potential 'failed experiment' I have on my hands. Now I know their is someone ready to pick up the pieces, thank you Sadly for you I think I'm 95% happy with it and my threshold for success is probably 75%. There's really so little of it that I dislike it's surprising.

When you do something like this you always know in a month or two you'll look back and be amazed at what you went through to get to the finished product. I'm feeling that now 2 weeks on from those pictures above [it takes a while to prepare my updates as I like to spend more time 'doing' than blogging]. This takes my Tyranid Defence Line and peepees on it from a great height!

[dwez]

here' we go folks, some proper sculpting. These are the bits that will be Bonewhite.



All done with DAS air drying clay, which was fun to use and cheap



However I think there are paper fibres in it somehow which makes it slightly less durable than Milliput, with a bit of effort I can sratch the surface with my nail, but it should be durable enough. I also smoothed out some of the interiors of the Capillary Towers, ripe for their fleshy fibre bundles



Now going back to the original concept it's quite close, if a little taller than what I had in mind [which actually I was desparate to avoid but hopefully the Capillary Towers will help it fill out at the base to taper more]



More pics and info here:

40kaddict.blogspot.co.uk/2013/06/nids-part-86-tyranid-bastion-growth-pt7.html

[dwez]

Although it'll be a while yet before this is an actual update it's just taken me 30 minutes to paint the turquoise striations on one Chitin plate on the Bastion, not one Capillary tower, just one plate on one tower! There are 20 plates in total, although it was the largest one. I may be some time...

Meanwhile, next update on Friday.