From an Ancient Aberration to a Modern Monster
When the Tenth Edition Warhammer 40,000 Leviathan Box was revealed through a flashy trailer, the star of the video to me was the Screamer Killer. Screamer Killer you say? What the hell is that all about?
While the name is rather silly, the original model was sillier still. There was a time that Games Workshop was not satisfied with taking the living wages of adults, but aimed to take lunch money from kids. This was called the Red Era, when nearly every model was painted with vibrant red and yellow tones, and posed on a base covered with Goblin Green.
I’ll age myself here a little: I started playing at the end of the Red Era. I still paint my Dark Angels with bright red gun casings, so sue me.
But, I digress.
The new design is a nice amalgamation of the funny-looking ancient Carnifex design. Because it has a set layout of weaponized limbs, the creative freedom of being a mono-pose design versus a modular scheme allows for far more dynamism and character. That there is ferocity and violence built into the model is quite evident.
I really do love this new model. However, it’s value on the table top is still to be determined, and whether it appears on my gaming table after the new-model novelty runs out remains to be seen.
When the Leviathan box was finally in my hands, my first project was the turn the bare plastic Space Marines into a fully painted army in blue. The process of turning push-fit minis into Ultramarines fighting force took way longer than I had anticipated, like from the end of June to the beginning of August. This was due to the fact that my trigger finger issue had returned, which slowed me down until I couldn’t paint, then I had to get it treated, and give it a rest to get back to normal. But, eventually they were complete and it was time to move on.
When I finally got to the Tyranids half of the Leviathan box, well, I hit a trifecta that stretched the project out for months. My hand was just barely getting back to normal. While I was away from painting, I re-discovered a love for video games and remembered that I have a Steam library of hundreds of titles, so I bought a few new games to play, of course. Lastly, as you may have read from a few previous posts, I picked up ‘game-mastering’ again and began running a Pathfinder Campaign.
On top of those terribly reasonable reasons for the delay in painting the ‘Nids, I found myself feeling a bit of hobby burnout. That was the proverbial icing on the cake. So, while I would start the process of adding the buggy half of the Leviathan into my painted Hive Fleet Behemoth army, the latter part of the project was too take a while. Months actually…
On a positive note, the painting scheme that I had set myself up with for my Behemoth Army was quick and easy. To get these guys on the table, I need only a couple contrast paints along with a couple acrylic paints for extra highlights and the armor panel feature color.
These models were primed Mechanicus Standard Grey, and then sprayed with Gray Seer to get them ready to go. I applied Blood Angel Red contrast paint across most of the model, followed by the newer Black Legion contrast over the armor and claws. As a side note, Black Legion covers so well that going forward I will just start by cover the whole thing with red instead of chasing missed areas in between the two colors.
The armor panels were layered with slashes of Sotek Green followed by smaller and fewer slashes of Temple Guard Blue. Talons, hooves and other blade-like protrusions were highlighted with Mechanicus Standard.
The only real problem I ran into is that the tone of the basing material I had used on the previous 3k worth of Tyranid models had shifted pretty significantly toward a warm yellow tone. I found myself mixing colors and painting over the texture paint, which I tend only to wash and dry-brush. This was pretty minor overall and literally only took a few extra minutes for each unit.
Stay tuned for a few more models from the Leviathan box that I particularly enjoy.
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Tyson
Obsessive and neurotic collector of little plastic men, novels about the same little plastic men and paints to make the little plastic men pretty. Married to Kera, who puts up with him and pretends that she doesn’t hear him speaking to the little plastic men in between making pew pew noises in the hobby room. Requires adult supervision. A menace to himself but rarely to others. More beard than man
