The Mother of All Tyranids

 Well, some of them. In the old days, Games Workshop would often release rules for a unit without making a model for it, or waiting a very long time to make the model available. Unsurprisingly, people would convert their own versions. This was the case with the Tyranid tervigon.

The tervigon is a sort of biological personnel carrier, whose job it is to give birth to units of termagants and to bolster the ones that are already on the battlefield. Unsurprisingly, large and unwholesome egg sacs are involved. 

While this is appealing in a gross sort of way*, I find it hard to imagine how it would work in practice. A typical game of 40k probably takes about 15 minutes in "real world" time, and to squeeze out a load of termagants and for them to become awake enough for battle in that time shows some serious parenting skills. I reckon it would make more "sense" for the tervigon to have a sort of portable teleporter on its back, that would make termagants zap onto the battlefield.

Alternatively, the tervigon might act as a sort of biological delivery van: it doesn't actually produce the eggs, but collects an egg sac and dumps it in the battlefield, then scuttles back for another. Anyhow, enough speculation, and more monster.

*

Years ago, I had a load of plastic tyranid bits and a burning urge to make my own tervigon. So, I bought the mid-section of a plastic dragon, turned it upside-down and got to work. The legs were carnifex limbs lengthened (pretty obviously) with sprue. The head was a carnifex head, and the egg sac was DAS clay and green stuff.

I found this thing and decided to give it a fresh new paint job (red ones grow faster, after all). Some of the conversion work could have done with a tidy-up, but I left it as is, largely out of laziness. I painted it in the style of my recent oldhammer termagants. I also added a nasty bum-pipe coming out of the bottom of the egg sac, through which it can poop minions. 

The shape of the model is quite reminiscent of the very old Tyranid bio-titans for Epic 40,000. Here is a picture of the tervigon with its babies.

And that's it for now. More Eldar, I think...

* Although I maintain that about the most unwholesome thing GW has ever made, zombies included, is the way that a Space Crusade Tyranid Warrior holds his gun.