he author of Codex: Tyranids, Studio Games Developer Phil Kelly has a soft spot for all things gribbly. We asked him about how he adapted his Tyranid army for the release of Apocalypse, and how his initial commitment to paint up a Hierophant Bio-titan ended up as a massive project that has doubled the size of Phil's original Tyranid collection and terrorized the Studio gaming tables ever since.
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Phil: Unless you have been hiding in a spore chimney for the last few months, you will know by now that Apocalypse is a chance to take your favourite army and really go to town. You might want to up-scale your collection for a special game, for an event at your local gaming store, or just collect a new unit or two for the fun of it. Apocalypse is an excuse to revisit the first army you ever collected, to add troops you never thought to use or just haven't had the points for (a Greater Daemon, Tank Company, or even a Titan, for example), and to bring your collection to a truly impressive size. I would say the sky's the limit, but if you add a flyer or two to your collection, even the sky is up for grabs (sorry, no more puns, I promise).
A WHOLE NEW WORD
llow me to introduce a crude but useful new term that's snuck into the Studio: "to Apocalypticise" (or "to Apocalycize" as the Americans call it). You've heard of upsizing – well, Apocalypticising is the next one up. It means to take your army and add Battle Formations, special characters, and Legendary Units to it until you are ready to field it in a game of Apocalypse. You can Apocalypticise your scenery collection, too, by making large and impressive pieces for the action to centre around. (Click here to see some of the amazing terrain created by the Studio's Hobby Team.) Right now, though, I'm going to stick to what I know, as scenery was never my strong point.
Here are my Tyranids before Apocalypse steamrollered into view – you might recognise them from the Warhammer 40,000 rulebook, where I banged on about how easy they were to paint. Well, they are easy; at least the little ones.
Phil's army before Apocalypse crested the horizon.
The extent to which you Apocalypticise your army is of course up to you. Most gamers are already most of the way there – the minimum points value of models you need to play Apocalypse is 3,000, and the majority of us already have between 1,500 and 2,000 points of models in our favourite army. Add a couple more Elite squads and a Legendary Unit such as a Baneblade or Titan, and bingo, you have an Apocalypticised army. That in itself can be a really fun project.
In case you haven't figured it out by now, I am a bit of a geek when it comes to Tyranids. It wasn't enough for me to just get my collection to 3,000 points and leave it there (though I had an awesome 3,000 point game against fellow Studio Games Developer Alessio Cavatore where my Tyranids took on his Eldar – led by all six of the Phoenix Lords). I had a simple-but-ambitious idea, which would mean painting a hell of a lot of gribblies, but once it occurred to me, I knew that I was going to have to do it. I think most hobbyists can relate to that feeling. Several of you have probably had the same idea already.
Phil's tyranid force would feel incomplete without a brood of Genestealers.
My idea was to collect one of each of the Tyranid Datasheets so that I could field them all at once.
But every grand idea has to start somewhere. The trick with any really ambitious project is to break it into a group of smaller tasks. Never is that easier than with an Apocalypse army – just paint a unit at a time.
Simple, right? Well, not that simple as it turns out. But then that might be because I started with a model that is nearly a foot tall – the majestically hard Hierophant bio-Titan.
