Death From Above

Mycetic spores are the nid equivalent of a space marine drop pod - only an imobile T4 monstrous creature (tank shock bait?). Anyway in all previous editions, my nids had to slog it and take it on the chin the whole way. Now I can drop 20 infantry models (that's a lot of gribblies) or one MC where you need it. Combine it with the Tyrant’s tactics and you get them on a 3+ turn 2. So I had to take the opportunity to put a couple of these in my list. Problem is GW doesn't have a model for it. Not a problem, because I do enjoy the modeling aspect of the game. The "Alien" movies were the original inspiration for my tyranids and this should be evident in the way I constructed the spores. It all started with a Nerf football. Here is a before and after.

This little project took longer than I thought (about 2 weeks) since I had never done anything like this before and was working with non-standard materials. I will spare you the painful details and instances of rework, but here is how I did it. Use a knife to cut across the end of the football making an “X”. Pull out the “guts” of the football until you get it hollowed out. I used copper wire along the inside of each petal to have it hold it’s peeling shape. I also glued tubing and wire of various sizes along the outside to represent veins and such. The added texture was accomplished by tearing strips of a paper towel, gluing them at odd angles and molding it to create the folds.

Lots of carpenter glue was used to secure it all in place. I had some lexan lying around and decided to use it for the bases. Lexan is very difficult to work with, so I would caution against it. Pinning the pod to the base I then wanted to have a pulpy/fleshy mass on the inside. Think about the life of a pod. It's very violent and brief. The pod gets spit from orbit, shedding layers as it burns through the atmosphere. It then smashes into the ground, most likely a mortal wound in of itself. Then it gives birth to the waking nids inside, which tear their way out (most definitely a fatal wound by now). There is some tentacle thrashing and then it's lights out. I wanted the stuff inside to be the active remnants of the brief and violent birthing that took place. I first dropped a handfull of spaghetti in but it never dried and looked like crap. So I used expanding foam, also not the easiest to work with on fine detail work (I feel your pain Big_D). I threw in a few pieces of spaghetti for tentacles. Using a toothpick, I then pulled the foam this-way and that to get a stingy sinew appearance. I must say it looks pretty realistic (and gross).

Once it dried I base-coated the whole enchilada black. The color painting was by far the easiest part of this project and was complete in a couple hours. The colors match that of my army (greens and browns). The inside of the pod was done with a more soft and fleshy series of colors.

There you have it. I think they fit the bill. Can't wait to put them to good use and drop some Zoanthropes or 20 toxic hormagaunts on somebody.