Hobby: Building the Tyranid Culexus Assassin

By now, you've likely read the article espousing the glory that is the Culexus Assassin, and how I enjoy using it in my Tyranid Lists.  Naturally, being a fluff-minded gamer, I can't in good conscience take the default model and just throw it into my bug army.  It'd look jarring, it'd make no sense, and it'd completely break whatever immersion I had in a narrative experience.

Luckily, the Tyranids are an adaptable force, constantly evolving new creatures to deal with the threats they face on the battlefield.  As such, it's totally feasible for the Tyranids to create an organism with the same role as a Culexus assassin, but you know, with more legs.

Meet the Umbrathrope

My idea for my Tyranid assassin was to create some sort of aberrant Zoanthrope subspecies, although it wouldn't utilize it's own psychic ability, it would be driven to devour all external sources of psychic energy.  This fit neatly into my army's fluff, which is that of a mutant-filled swarm, with an instinctual need to follow and consume psykers. 

The Umbrathrope is a bizarre creature by even Tyranid standards.  It's relatively diminutive, albeit rather tall.  It has no legs, instead hovering a few inches off the ground, guiding itself across the landscape with several ropy tendrils.  It's body is festooned with antennae and spines of variable length, and it's head is composed of a mouthless capsule of brain matter, terminating in a set of tusks. It's name comes from the Latin "Umbra" meaning "Silence," representing it's desire to silence Psychic powers.  It's effect against psykers is so powerful that it operates completely out of sync with the Hive Mind, with other Tyranids considering it a bizarre presence.  They avoid it on the battlefield and generally seem to keep their distance from this mutant kin. 

This model was actually incredibly easy to build.  To create her you'll need: 

• 1 Mawloc/Trygon mandible piece
• Various Mawloc/Trygon antenna bits
• 1 Genestealer Torso
• 1 set of Genestealer Arms
• Green Stuff
• 1 Head from "Bathalian Mastermind," by Reaper Miniatures 

Simply attach the Genestealer Torso to the end of the Mawloc Mouthpart.  This creates the body and the hovering "tail."  Then attach the Genestealer arms in whatever pose you'd like.  The Spines and antennae are optional, but I find that they add a bit of weirdness to the model, and create a sort of "deep sea fish" aesthetic.

The green stuff is used to create tentacles that replace the second and third set of limbs.  They can be used to give the model the appearance of hovering, if you'd rather not glue her tail directly to the base.  I opted for using a scenic piece of ancient ruins from Scibor miniatures to hide this, but feel free to experiment! 

You can probably predict what happened to these Terminators.

The most important thing to remember when building this model is that it's supposed to be bizarre and different looking.  There's really no right or wrong way to create it, but I always say that weirder is better in these situations!

-Vitsika