Space Fleet Tyranid fleet

Space fleet... the final frontier... LA LAAAAAA LA LALALALAAAAAAAA...

Erm... sorry about that.

Today I'd like to tell you (again) about Space fleet yes. The reason for this is I've had the opportunity to get some rather unusual models from the excellent Chris Steadman lately.

You might know after confrontation, I have a slight obsession for Space Fleet as you can read here :

Part 1 about early designs and both imperial and Eldar fleet

Part 2 about how to adapt the game nowadays and the Tyranic fleet

Now take a look at this :

All models kindly labelled by Chris himself, this saved me a lot of time and trouble believe me...

I'm usually not the kind to display bare lead for the sake of it as I'm a painter at heart but those are not models you see that often and more importantly, I'm using this opportujity to think out loud about how to procede with them.

Let's take a look at what we have here  (all painted examples taken from Solegend):

HIVESHIP :

The Hiveship is the usual terrorising tentacle monster eating people like the legendary Kraken.

It has tentacle attacks and mind attacks (as you'd expect) which prove quite effective at close range but the most intersting thing about Hiveships is that they can spawn new units and "heal", sort of a space necromancer alien, if you want...

DRONES :

What could be more intimidating that a swarm of giant male genitals flying all around you ? Not much I reckon, The fact they cost nothing and you can have 3 per square makes them pretty useful (think "mosquitoes during a hot summer night" level of fun).

You can see those actually started their carreer as models for the Star cruisers range,

DARK PROWLERS :

Quite a strange idea to design space alien ships like moths but WTF after all ! Giant moths which can play twice per turn are good in my book so gimme moar !

DOOMRIPPER KRAKEN :

Once again, those are taken directly from the Starcruisers range, I just love the design of those, it's like an inverted squid with a shark fin and a giant mouth which acts like a giant tick. It might not be the easiest model to use but it can be pretty fun I guess and quite annoying for the opponent once you get the hang of it...

SPORE MINES :

With models taken from the Star cruisers range once again, spore mines seem to be the annoying trick you pull to piss the opponent. Pretty simple to play once again.

Looking at the models, we can see that the paintjobs ignore most of the sculpted details. Before getting the models, I thought I'd have to add some myself to avoid big flat surfaces I despise (I'm not exactlly a great blender...) but when I got those in hand, I found them actually very neat and precise and as often with very old models, they had very fine and small details that were perfectly captured by the casts.

Rules wise, I've never had the opportunity to play Tyranids and they seem to function a whole different way than edlars and the Imperium. There's two sides to this, one is that the gaming styles are different and therefore fun to switch once you get bored from one but it also means you have more rules to absorb. The good point is that Space fleet rules are quite easy, you basically just have to worry about how many dice you roll for attacks and a few more things like solar winds for eldars and action points for the Nids.

I now have a total of 820 points that may rise to 920 thanks to a pending trade. That means I'll have to break it into 2 swarms if I want to play by the rules :

Keep in mind I can totally ignore that chart if it become a limitation...

I'll soon do the same with my imperial fleet to see if numbers roughly match and to see what kind of table size I'm going to need. I've also been thinking abot a colour scheme that uses the details on the models and which looks properly organic. I'm not going for the old studio job which despite its glorious vintage touch has 0 appeal for me.

I'm still hestittaing as I'd like it to have have both a visual presence AND some organic credibility, yeah I know, good luck with that JB... If you feel like you have a good suggestion , don't hesitate, I'm considering all ideas at the moment (apart from : do as the old studio PJ).
I might want to read some space operas and check some old school art just to see if I can grab a good idea...