Media - tyranids - Page 1 | virtualwolf.org

A photo of the game board for the full Warhammer 40,000 game. The board itself is red desert, and all the terrain on it is ramshackle Mad Max-esque junk terrain, or stepped hills that have been painted to look like they're in a desert. On the left are the so-called Tyranids (which are actually 3D-printed proxies that look kind of Tyranid-esque in that they're clearly xenomorph-type aliens but for legal reasons are not actual Tyranids) and on the right are the shameful Space Marines.

A photo of the much-smaller game board for the Combat Patrol game. The board itself is grey urban ruins, and the terrain is a mixture of Warhammer 40,000-looking ruined urban buildings, and a set of grey stone ruins that look like it might have come from some sort of fantasy game. On the left are the absurdly heavily armoured golden Custodes, of which there are all of eight in total, and on the right are the mechanical hunched-over zombie-looking Necrons.

Today I went over to a friend's place to hang out and watch a couple of games of Warhammer 40,000! (I have my mind full with Kill Team, plus I absolutely cannot be bothered painting that many miniatures to make a single full 40K army so I'm happy to just observe.)

The first game was a full-sized game of Tyranids versus absolutely shameful Space Marines, they were mostly unpainted and three-quarters of them were held together with Blu-tac. The second was an introductory game of 500-point Combat Patrol for a friend who hadn't played before, Adeptus Custodes versus Necrons, and both games were absolutely one-sided blow-outs. The Tyranids won 29 points to 4, and the Custodes wiped all but three of the Necrons off the board by turn 3, oof.

It's also hilarious how large the boards are versus Kill Team... the cut-down Combat Patrol game which was just two players is still double a regular Kill Team board, or the standard size you'd use for a three or four player game, and the full game board is just HUGE. I used to play 40K way back in the day and know it's a 60"x44" board but the vastly smaller scale of Kill Team has made me forget just how big that actually is. 😅

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Posted on 31 January 2026, 18:58

A photo of the battlefield at the beginning of the game. It's played on a roughly six-by-four foot play mat that's decorated like grass, and the terrain is almost fantasy-looking, there are some sections of hills and a bunch of various stone ruins. Closest to the camera are the orange-clad Space Marines, including two large walkers (the Dreadnaughts) and a gravtank with a big lasgun on its turret), and on the opposite side are the hordes of "Tyranids", which all look like a cross between crabs and the actual Tyranid models. There are a ton of small ones, and two HUGE ones that a towering over everything else.

A closeup photo of one of the large "Tyranid" units ( I don't remember what it was, but it's all chitin and huge claws and if it was actually alive and real size would scare the fuck out of you) towering over a squad of Space Marines.

Today started with me hopping on the Metro first thing after breakfast to go to Crows Nest to pick up my last two fully serviced and restrung guitars (the Ibanez JIVA10 and the Epiphone SG Standard), then I headed over to a friend's place for lunch (it was tuna mornay and it was gooooooood) and to hang out and watch a game of Warhammer 40,000! It was Space Marines versus "Tyranids", where the Tyranid miniatures were some custom 3D-printed alien crab things. They didn't end up doing the final turn because the Space Marines were already ahead 50-35 and it wasn't going to be possible to bridge that gap.

There was some hilarious dice rolling though, including a squad of 20 Termagaunts firing their Spinefist weapons at a squad of Space Marine Scouts, which involved rolling forty dice. 😂 (The Scouts ended up dead, unsurprisingly.)

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Posted on 8 November 2025, 18:38

A photo of the box of the Ravagers squad for Kill Team. The squad consists of five large snake-like alien miniatures, very much in the vein of the xenomorphs from the Aliens universe. Most of them are rearing up, and they all have multiple arms that end in extremely large claws, and generally look extremely unpleasant in a "going to eat you alive" sort of way.

Yessss, plastics for the plastic god!

Looking forward to painting these, I haven't actually painted any Tyranids before except for a single Genestealer over three and a half years ago. I have no idea what colour scheme I'm going to use for these though, I wasn't super-happy with the one I did on that Genestealer.

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Posted on 17 September 2025, 14:34

A photo of a game of Warhammer 40,000: Kill Team. The board looks like the metal of the inside of an ancient steampunk starship, and the terrain is a bunch of walls all connected together in the same steampunk style to form number of interconnecting rooms. On the right of the board are the xenomorphs from Aliens pretending to be Genestealers, painted in a very dark blue colour. On the left are the six hulking and putrid Death Guard in large military green amour with all sorts of tentacles and demon faces coming out of the armour, and at the far side away from the camera are six Ultramarines of broadly the same shape armour as the Death Guard, but it's a rich blue and doesn't have tentacles and demon faces in it.

A closeup of my Death Guard Fighter, who is wearing hulking green armour with a HUGE toothed mouth in his chest armour going across his whole abdomen and chest and wielding two plague knives, facing off against one of the xenomorph "Warriors", which is down on four legs and looks like it's about to pounce. To the side is a smaller xenomorph more upright behind a set of ammo crates.

A close-up of a Space Marine aiming his boltgun (complete with a 3D-printed muzzle flash weapon effect) at one of the Tyranid Warriors, while a second one lurks just around the corner behind him.

We had our rematch of the Death Guard vs. Tyranids vs. Strike Force Justinian tonight, and because tomorrow is a public holiday we all stayed slightly later and managed to finish the whole game, AND I won 8-7-4! 🎉 (We did slightly fuck up one rule up about injuries and so my Heavy Gunner did better in close combat versus the Space Marine leader than he should have, and ended up killing the leader.) Instead of ten Genestealers, my friend playing the Tyranids took three Tyranid Warriors instead and used, uh... some different type of Aliens miniature for them that looked very cool.

The Death Guard felt extremely thematic, it was just a slow, steady, plodding advance across the battlefield, and they were hard enough to kill that they were difficult to dislodge from the objectives once they were on them. My plasma gunner was my MVP, he only shot three times but each one was a killing shot, taking out two Space Marines and a Genestealer. I also took the dual-plague-knives Fighter for the first time and he did okay, but he definitely served well as an extra close-combat threat beyond just my leader. The Disgustingly Resilient rolls were a lot swingier this game than usual, I either did fantastically well (my Plasma Gunner took nine damage from the Space Marine sniper and would have died but ended up rolling so well he only took four, and subsequently ended up vaporising the sniper in his own activation), or really badly (my Fighter took something like ten damage in his first melee combat and saved NONE of it), with nothing in between.

As with the first game, we had a couple of very cool cinematic moments, my Fighter facing off against one of the Warriors and a Genestealer, and one of the Space Marines shooting at another of the Warriors while one lurked behind him ready to pounce.

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Posted on 31 March 2024, 23:45

A close-up shot of two of the xenomorphs behind a pile of metal crates, on the other side of the crates is the Space Marine Captain in his huge armour, holding a plasma pistol in front of him.

Sunday night Kill Team tonight was a three-player match, Death Guard versus the Space Marines of Strike Force Justinian versus a Tyranid squad of just Genestealers, on the Gallowdark map. My friend who was playing Genestealers actually used the xenomorph miniatures from one of Aliens games and it looked SO COOL having them lurking around inside an old ruined starship!

We only got through three turns rather than the full four, the Genestealers won 5:4:4, but it really could have gone any way, and I was in with a pretty solid shot of winning if we'd had time to play the final turn. Most ridiculous moment of the game was one of my regular Death Guard Warriors being on two wounds left, getting smacked in the face for five melee damage from a Genestealer, and rolling FOUR successful Disgustingly Resilient rolls so he only took one wound so he had a chance to hit back and take the Genestealer down from its starting 8 wounds down to 3. There was also a very cinematic moment of the Genestealer leader fighting in close combat against the Space Marine leader (the Space Marine leader got utterly shredded).

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Posted on 4 February 2024, 23:15

A photo of a big boxy stompy green Chaos Dreadnaught being overrun by eight purple, four-armed Alien-esque Genestealers.

My Dreadnaught got, uh, slightly swarmed. (We lost due to not paying enough attention to objectives, though we also didn't actually finish all the turns before my teammate had to get back home so technically it could have gone either way.)

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Posted on 26 February 2022, 15:47

A photo of a table with lots of home-made terrain on it, all either rocky or scrap-looking metal constructs. On this side are Chaos Space Marines, painted in green, next to regular Space Marines which are shamefully unpainted (and also held together with Blu-tac). On the other are Tyranids and Necrons.

Look out, we're playing Warhammer 40,000! Pretty sure this is the first time in seven years...

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Posted on 26 February 2022, 15:15

A photo of a Tyranid Genestealer. It's an Alien-esque creature with a long tongue and four arms with huge claws on it. Its skin is dark red and it's got a black carapace and all four arms have hands with huge yellow claws on them. The base looks like muddy ground with small swampy-looking grasses on it.

A photo of a Space Marine Reiver painted in Space Wolves colours (primarily blue-grey with a yellow shoulder pad). He's heavily-armoured with a helmet that has a skull design on the front, and is aiming a pistol and wielding a huge combat knife in the other hand.

I've been doing a bit of experimentation with my miniature painting! First was finding a good colour scheme for my Tyranids and also using the "Muddy Ground" texture paint and little grass tufts I bought back in October.

The second has been "zenithal highlighting" where you base coat in black and then do a second prime with a lighter colour just from above, where the light would be hitting it. Very pleased with both!

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Posted on 12 January 2022, 20:00

A photo of three Tyranid Warriors (huge hulking Aliens-eque miniatures that have four arms and are all covered in chitin, all their weapons are biological as well) and five Genestealers (smaller hunched-over Aliens-esque miniatures who also have four arms, which end in either giant talons or sword-looking things that are also actually part of their arms).

And that's the Tyranids kill team assembled! (Though not undercoated because it's been raining today and the spray undercoat doesn't go on smooth if it's really humid, which makes your paint job look like shit).

Next task is going to be actually PAINTING all of these miniatures, heh.

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Posted on 4 September 2021, 22:20

A photo of two cans of Games Workshop undercoat spray paints, a box of Tyranid Warriors (four-armed Aliens-esque towering freaky alien things) and a box of Genestealers (also four-armed freaky alien things, but smaller and more hunched over).

I don't have a problem, I swear.

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Posted on 30 August 2021, 15:22