Tyranid Zoats

[Jonas]

So it was time to paint me some Zoats... What can I say about the Zoats? I guess they are kind of a strange race, but I guess most of the Rogue Trader stuff is kind of strange, so they fit in fine with the setting. I have been wanting some Zoats for some time and this year I decided to do something about it and so I managed to get 5 Zoats fairly cheap from Ebay.

In the Rogue Trader days the Zoats were a Tyranid slave race created for war. Apparently they usually would roam around in groups of 4 sporting weapons like bolters and heavy bolters. But since they were allowed same equipment and weapons as Tyranids, they could also wear power armour, use gravitons, conversion beamers or whatever stuff you can think of from the Rogue Trader days.



When GW made some Zoat models I guess Tyranids were already becoming something else and so the models were equipped with more bio engineered weapons, but the fleshborers still kind of looked like bolters, the missile launcher looked pretty funky and the leader was equipped with power glove and a flamer which looked like a mix of the fleshborers and an imperial flamer.


My combined Tyranid forces so far.

So when I painted my Zoats I decided to give them a look of semi bio enginered and tech equipment. It will not really work perfect with the never Tyranid background, but I think it will work fine with Rogue Trader weirdness and still be fine with my Hunter-Slayers. So the weapons was painted red, to look semi organic and tie the Zoats in with my Hunter-Slayers and I still decided to paint some metal parts on the flamer, missile launcher, power glove and armour. I also decided to do the hazard stripes on the flamer, it might be kind of silly, but I think it ended up looking good and when the organic weapons already looked a bit like bolters and flamers then why wouldn't they also mimic the hazard stripes?





I am not planning to do a complete Tyranid force for later 40K gaming, but I have acquired 8 more Hunter-Slayers which I will paint and I have a bunch of the old plastic Tyranid Warriors, which I will probably paint at some point, so I guess that some day I might have enough Tyranids for more than just small skirmish games.

I don't really count the Genestealers as part of the Tyranid army, but if needed I have 24 painted Genestealers and a Patriarch, so they could reinforce an army too. So that almost concludes my Tyranid adentures...

I just got one more thing to hunt down! I would REALLY like to have the Proto Tyranid to lead my forces, but so far I have not managed to get one.



DEATHWORLD ADVENTURES

[OSHIROmodels]

Yay, Zoats! 

Certainly in my top five of figures that I love 

I like your take on them, keeps them on the RT side of things 

I always thought that the genestealer cults and tyranids proper were 'different' anyway and not supposed to tie in with each other. Like different strains of the same family, if that makes sense.

cheers

James

[Jonas]

Yes, I think so too.

The Genestealer Cult was never really part of the Tyranids as far as I understand, while the Genestealers themselves became part of the Tyranids in 2nd edition.

The Genestealers would go out and make Cultist colonies, which in return would serve as a psychic beacon for the Hive Fleet and once the Tyranid forces arrived the Genestealers would join them and the cultists would be eaten like the rest of the planet.

What would become of the Hybrids was never real clear I think. But so much stuff didn't make sense back then and since they keep evolving the fluff things tend to become more and more stupid, hahaha...

 

[OSHIROmodels]

Yup, but fun stupid 

cheers

James

[Plynkes]

What would become of the Hybrids was never real clear I think. But so much stuff didn't make sense back then and since they keep evolving the fluff things tend to become more and more stupid, hahaha...

 

In the current fluff (at least according to the Role-Playing Games - which are considered canon) when the Hive-Fleet starts consuming the bio-mass of a planet everything gets absorbed. Nothing gets special treatment. This includes all the Tyranid forces currently still on the surface. They are the last things to be re-absorbed once everything else of use has been taken. The signal goes out and the Tyranids home in on acidic digestion pools where they are rendered back into raw biomass which is then sucked up from feeder tendrils that descend from the sky. This stuff is then used to build new forces as and when they are needed (seems the concept of reusable shuttles hasn't occurred to them).

So I don't imagine that any brood-lords, genestealers or their little cults would get a pass either, seeing as actual Tyranids get eaten too.

[Jonas]

Ah, yeah I guess so... What a shame. I kind of liked the Rogue Trader fluff where Tyranids actually is a space faring alien race, made for living in space. Zoats could turn rogue and roam around in Fantasy worlds and such.

[Diakon]

Lovely mate. I love Zoats too. The whole force looks great together. Also really like the spiky cactus scenery. Classic. 

[Plynkes]

I like Zoats too. I have a grand total of one - the fella with the massive gun for an arm. Sort of wish I had bought a few more at the time. It's actually not too bad a paint-job for teenage me, either. 

Great stuff. Forgot to say that before.

[Jonas]

Thanks gang

@Plynkes: Take a photo of your guy... Also, if you have patience it should not be too hard to get the other 3, they are popping up on ebay almost daily and the prices are not always too unreasonable. I think I paid between £5 and £20 each.

[Mason]

Great stuff, Jonas.
 

I always look forward to an update from your RT adventures.
 

[OSHIROmodels]

I ignore the modern fluff as it's rubbish and made more for kids to go 'Ooo' (even though I was an older kid at the time of RT  ).

cheers

James

[Plynkes]

Even though Rogue Trader 40K was the first war game I played or bought, I actually do prefer the modern fluff. I don't play the modern war game, though (RT is the only edition I have ever owned). I play the Rogue Trader RPG for my 40K fix these days. Don't have to paint a single figure for that. 

[OSHIROmodels]

I'm assuming the RT rpg isn't all gothic etc?

cheers

James

[Jonas]

I never actually played 40K before the 3rd edition. But I had 2nd edition and was collecting/painting marines back then. I was already interested in the Rogue Trader days, but I was not very old and didn't have the money or understanding of the rules.

Now I collect and paint all the stuff I remember seing as a kid, but I rarely play any games at all anymore, so it is mostly about collecting and painting for me now.

I like the fluff too, but mostly read in the old books, I don't know much of the current alterations or the novels.

I really hope I will get some games played with some of this old stuff, but I have no idea if the rules will be RT or something else.

[OSHIROmodels]

The RT rules were a bit heavy if you started with anything over a couple of squads of infantry although I really did like the openness for vehicles design etc 

cheers

James