As long as XenonMage has had her Tyranid army, and as long as she’s been thrashing me at Warhammer 40K, something has felt like it was missing on the battlefield. Our planet’s landscape is littered with Eldar Eldritch Ruins and invasive plants like Barbed Venomgorse, but the Tyranids haven’t – up to this point – made much of a mark on the physical landscape of Andoan’s second moon. That changes here! When I saw that a seller in Canada had an old Forgeworld Brood Nest for sale, and that it was being sold super cheap, I jumped at the chance to finally add some Tyranid flavor to our games, and to add something nice to the pile of backlogged birthday presents for her.

There’s an old expression that if something looks too good to be true, it probably is – and I can’t complain much given that I spent all of $5 on this terrain piece, but I’m almost positive that it was a recast, and it wasn’t a great recast at that. I had to break out the green stuff and reconstruct the jaws of both of the Tyranids and plugged up a whole slew of different holes and flaws in the surface of the chitin and the “meat” of the nest alike, and even then, I found that once I started to paint I noticed even more, less major holes and flaws that I’d have to start over to effectively clean up. Tyranid terrain is so hard to find, though, that I was determined to make this work, and…to be fair, having bubbles in a Tyranid piece just kind of gives it a more organic or porous kind of look, so…it could definitely have been worse.

In the end, despite issues with the build I was very happy with how this came together, once mounted on an 80mm base and given some extra terrain bits and bobs along the edges. It’s definitely not my fanciest or most polished build but I’m pretty happy all things considered with how it came together, and I’m glad that XenonMage is finally going to get to add some Tyranid flavor to our games, and other games she plays down the road. I’m still hoping to finish my Deathworld Forest table, but I’m also going to keep an eye out from here for any handy third-party Tyranid terrain pieces that we might be able to use since the GW stuff is so scarce.

And one last thing before I forget – with my last couple entries, I’ve neglected to update my running “Hobby Bingo” card, so here it is. I felt like this was a little small to count as a whole terrain piece, so I used up one of the “Any Model” spots, and used my last couple Sisters entries to fill up some of the “Unit of 2+ models” categories. Now, I just need to get some units of 10+ models on the go, and I’m all set!

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