I Don’t Even Wanna Know What That Yellow Shit Is Supposed To Smell Like

Let’s take a quick look at one of the new Tyranid beasts that joined us in the Leviathan box set: he’s gross, he’s tentacled, and he is spewing what I presume is a noxious cloud of foulness. That’s right, it’s the Psychophage.

While the little gribbly guys are fun and all, when it comes to Tyranids, I like the beasts. The bigger the better. The Psychophage joins the Screamer Killer that I showed off last time, while I am currently painting up Old One Eye.

But, what in the fuck is a Psychophage anyway? Other than a big bug with a slightly ridiculous name? Well, I would say it’s a weird bug, for sure. It’s got a decent amount of wounds and a good 5+ feel no pain rule, allowing it to be moderately tanky as it ignores about 33% of incoming damage. What more, it hands out a slightly-worse but better-than-nothing change for fellow ‘nids to avoid damage on a 6+ so long as they are close by.

Where the Psychophage really excels though is anti-infantry. I have to assume that the disgusting cloud spewing from the carapace chimneys has been crafted to represent the auto-hit attack that is made for clearing lightly armored troops out of cover or erase them in overwatch. While his melee attack is designed to hit medium infantry, like a space marine, and gets more efficient if the target unit has taken damage previously, it reigns supreme when chomping on psychic units. Watch out Grey Knights and Thousand Sons, this guy has you on his menu. His current rules give him a 50% chance to wound a psychic target with no chance to make an armor save. Ouch.

Long ago, I used the Guilliman Flesh contrast paint for fleshy bits and guns on my old Tyranid models, it worked fine back then but now I am kind of stuck with it. Now I feel stuck, having to use it in situations like the dangerous mouth of this creature and also the bloated thorax of the beast. While they may not be amazing looking, for sure, but the process was fast as shit and I have had to constantly remind myself that these guys are a tertiary army of bugs: they are practically what contrast was designed for.

The Psychophage hit my painting table alongside a landslide of other Leviathan Tyranids release, and languished in a miserable half-painted state much like the aforementioned Screamer Killer. Check out that article if you wanna know how I painted the red body or blue-black carapace. Where this guy was different was the gaping maw and roiling cloud of death-stink.

The real fun came when I was trying to decide what color to paint the fumes emanating from the The only spot color I had used across the army was the color of the beady little eyes: bright yellow. I had immediate concerns about dumping this amount of bright yellow on top of the new model: I was afraid it would like like a child that had eaten all but the primary colors before attacking a page is his dirty little coloring book.

The final touch was the sundered Ultramarines arm dripping core across the desert base. Here, I continue to incorporate the narrative of the first Tyrannic War, like the Behemoth color scheme detached heads on the bases of Ultramarines: Marneus and the new Terminator Captain in particular. I giggled in delight as I spread Blood for the Blood God technical paint across the little plastic severed limb.

In the near future, I will likely bring more newly-painted bugs, as well as some Ultramarines to go along with the missing arm the Psychophage is snacking on. Until then…

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