Modeling Tutorial: Cheap Plastic Zoanthrope Kitbash

Not if I have anything to say about it!  Chaosheade the Thrifty Heresiarch to the rescue!

Hey everyone, welcome to the long awaited Kitbashed Plastic Zoanthrope modeling tutorial, A.K.A. the "I'm about to save you a @#$&load of money on Zoanthropes" tutorial.  As you may know I am working on making a null deployment Tyranid army and that means I want to have some Zoanthropes.  Being the thrifty gamer that I am, however, I have a problem with paying $25 per model for the 6-9 zoanthropes that I eventually want to have in my collection and I'm not going to even comment on the whole "Finecast" issue and the complaints you see all over the internet.  I think that poor dead horse has seen enough abuse already.

Getting back on topic, I decided to try my hand at converting a zoanthrope using an assortment of plastic bits.  The first attempt was decent but not great and had several areas that really needed some attention.  The second version was a huge improvement over the first and will be the basis for all further conversions.  In this post I will be converting my third zoanthrope and documenting the process to show you exactly how I made them and how much money I will be saving compared to buying them at retail prices.  All right then, enough with the introductions, jumping right into it after the break.

Modeling Tutorial: Cheap and Easy Mycetic Spore Pods

Hey everybody, Chaosheade here with another tutorial.  Our subject this time is Mycetic Spore pods, the Tyranid version of drop pods.  This is just one of the many units in the codex that does not have an official model, making it a prime candidate for substitution, conversion, etc.  There are a number of tutorials out there most often using foam balls or eggs but most of them were either too much work or just didn't look good to me.  There are also some models made by other companies such as Plasma Hatcher toys (~$20 or more depending on availability) or the models from Chapterhouse Studios ($35) and Mr. Dandy ($42-48) but these options are quite expensive. I finally found one that really caught my attention in this thread on The Tyranid Hive forums.  This method is much more economical than purchasing one of the 3rd party models and in my opinion looks better and is easier to make than any of the other methods I researched.  I can't take credit for the original idea but what I have done is create a formal step-by-step tutorial that more fully explains the process of making these spore pods.  More after the jump.

Tutorial: Swappable weapons without using magnets - Tyranid Termagant edition.

Hello and welcome to another tutorial by Chaosheade.  In this tutorial I will show you how to model the humble Termagant so that you can swap the weapons between the standard fleshborer and the much more shooty devourer and the best part is we will not need a single magnet.  Not a single one.  Any Tyranid player can tell you that if you play Nids you will probably end up with a TON of termagants especially if you plan on using Tervigons at any point.  Instead of using up your precious stock of magnets or ordering different size magnets just so you can magnetize smaller bits, we will be using the humble paper clip.  Using this tutorial, 10 cents worth of paper clips can do the work of $10 worth of magnets.  Learn more after the jump.

Modeling/Painting Tutorial: Super cheap objective markers, with crystals made from pieces of sprue.

Because Scott Adams is the man... and objectives

In this post I am going to show you the objective markers I am working on just finished.  They are very simple and dirt cheap to make.  All it takes is a few lava rocks or whatever kind you have lying around in the yard, some old sprue, some PVA/white glue, whatever paints you might need, a little bit of gorilla glue or equivalent, and the basic techniques I learned for making crystals and Gorilla Glue terrain pieces, which I will adapt and expand on.  I'll bore you with my ramblings and explanations at the end of the post, right now let's jump right in to creating our objective markers.

The finished product.

Magnets! Two Models for the price of one. Pt. 1

 Welcome back to Maximum Heresy. It this 2 part writeup I will assemble a Necron Destroyer Lord using small magnets. The benefit? Two models for the price of one.

Modeling tutorial: Rhino combi-melta and infantry flamer

Hey all, Chaosheade here again. My last post was about painting, and this one will be a modeling/conversion tutorial.    Here is a preview of what you start with (top) and the end products (bottom).

Long winded intro and the meaty details of the conversion after the jump.