Tyranid Warrior/Ossiarch Bonereaper Conversion: building a better warrior

 Back to the retronids, sort of.

It's interesting to note how old some of the GW miniatures are. I was at school when the plastic Leman Russ tank came out. The current tyranid warriors are probably twenty years old or so.

And they do look a bit dull. Actually, this isn't such a bad thing, as it wouldn't take too long to get a tyranid swarm ready for gaming - for one thing, they don't have clothes or equipment, really, so you wouldn't have to paint all the little bits. But the current warrior models are a bit uninspiring.

As if happens, one of the many, many weird little factions in the Age of Sigmar world is (are?) the Ossiarch Bonereapers. It's hard to describe these things: they're like undead, but they don't seem to be the animated remains of anything. They're more like Necrons painted to resemble bone, with swords. Anyway, they're weird.

Among them are Stalkers, four-armed spindly monsters. I've seen several people on the internet suggesting that they resemble the very old tyranid warriors from the mid-90s, but I've never seen anyone trying to mix tyranid and ossiarch parts. Which is where this blog post really ought to have started.

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I bought a Stalker off ebay and got to work. The first thing to point out is that the Stalker models are spindly and, while well-sculpted, fragile. I challenge anyone to cut one of these things off the sprue without damaging it in some way. In fact, this whole conversion was awkward and fiddly, so be warned that it isn't easy at all.

The photo gives some idea as to which bits came from the original kit. Essentially, it was a head and upper arms swap. I only had the back half of a tyranid warrior's head, so I had to chop up an old genestealer head to provide a face (as well as cutting off its oversized tongue and what seemed to be testicles coming out of its chin...).

Here is a guide to what I did:

1) Cut "little tail" off groin piece. It looks weird anyhow.

2) Cut flaps of ragged cloth off left and right body sections.

3) Attach groin piece to legs and build body as usual. Leave off the chestplate (it'll get in the way).

4) Add lower ossiarch arms as usual (use the bigger of the two sets of arms). Be careful to make sure they won't get in the way of the upper arms, which will be tyranid arms holding the gun. Test-fitting is advised. You could also use genestealer rending claws here, if you don't want boneswords.

5) Add tyranid gun arms to upper body. This will be awkward and fiddly. It'll require some cutting, and probably some green stuff work too. 

6) Add tyranid head to body. The neck may take some filing down to fit.

7) Your giant death prawn is ready to eat. It'll probably be eating space marines.

And this is the end result:

I really like this guy. He looks very weird, but so do all tyranid warriors, one way or another. I think he's got a nice balance of old and new styles, as well as a suitable H.R. Giger shape (despite being bright red). As giant alien dinosaur shrimps go, he's doing well. The only way he'll serve the Emperor is to the Hive Mind, on a bed of lettuce.

I've got a choice now: I could do some seriously retro tyranids, or wait until some new models arrive. I found some brilliant fantasy soldiers on ebay, and they would be fun to paint. We'll see!