Mucolid Conversion

Hey guys, Ron here with another Tyranid conversion. Today I am going to be showing off my legs... err my Mucolid legs.

As most of you know, dakka flyrants are all the rage right now, and a 15 point troop choice that can unlock more of them is nothing to scoff at. But even not factoring in Flyrants, the rules for Mucolids are pretty darn good. Three wounds, Toughness 3, with shrouded built in, makes them fairly durable for the points, and if they manage to get in to combat with anything (even including flyers/FMCs!) they explode with a nasty s8 ap3 large blast.  No they don't move fast, but if you have a lot, you can make your opponent have some bad options for movement. Which brings us to the biggest problem these guys have: obtaining them.  The 'official' model only comes in the Tyrannocyte/Sporocyst dual kit, but the kit is cleverly designed so that you only have enough tentacles for the Mucolid if you build the kit as a Sporocyst.

So what do you do when you build a Tyrannocyte, leaving you with a Mucolid top, but no legs to support it with?  You support them from a metal rod and call it a day as shown!  ...Just kidding, we've got a little more work to do.

As you can see from the photo above, I started this process by assembling the tops and mounting them on to 1/16" brass rods.  I bent the rods with pliers into shapes that would allow for tentacles to cover them for the most part.

I then started making putty sausages (this is one of my favorite putties called ProCreate).  You can make these easily with your fingers, and you'll want to taper them down on one end.  You can accomplish this with increased pressure as you move down the putty sausage (TeeHee). Once you have your tentacle sausage simply squish it into one of the holes in the mucolid top that the official tentacles go in (this entire paragraph is so wrong).

I twist them around each other and bend them back and forth to try and emulate natural positions. I used the smaller spore mines as a reference.

I also included one of the official upper plastic legs to break up the monotony of the smooth tentacles, and cut/bent them in to shapes that matched (this is the leg that doesn't go into a socket, but rather a circular notch).  I used my trusty heat gun for official plastic bending and there were a couple tentacles that I just left as-is off the sprue.

After that I made a small green stuff mold of the spikes on an official leg (apologies for the poor image quality).  Basically you just cover it in water/lube, mush on the green stuff, pull it off carefully, then let it dry over night. I then used this mold with a small sausage of green stuff to add some spikes on the center tentacles as shown.

And there you have it, Mucolids without paying $30 dollars for legs on ebay, or gutting $63 kits for a 15pt model. You usually can find the tops on ebay for the 10-15 dollar range, which makes these conversions doable even if you don't have a ton of the kits for Tyrannocytes.  

Stay tuned for shots of the painted models coming next week (hopefully).

Thanks for reading! I'd love to hear your questions and comments below.

Ron