They're Not My Favourite... Yet.... New Tyranids are here! 

GW needs to make a new swarmlord. Current one is outdated.

Holy Jesus, that Norn Emissary looks spectacular! Hope to see some Tyranids in Hive Fleet Typhon tutorial for Contrast Paints. Best of luck, good time to love painting :)

I’ll be painting these models sub assembled. There are just too many details to get fully assembled.

Imperial fist next with the new compamy squad?

Its sad that the norn emissary looks not very magnetizable for a $115 kit.

I built up my Deathleaper earlier today and it was so fiddly with the claws on the legs and arms. They do have a positive connection but they indents on them aren’t great. I was gonna build up the new Lictor today too but looked at the sprue and decided against it as it looks just a bad. It feels like they added steps just for steps. Gorgeous model though. The Neurolictor and Norn Emissary however were joys to build up

I think the disconnect between the older models and the new is on a similar level to last edition's Necrons. You put them on a tabletop with a coherent colour scheme and they should still be visually appealing. But the more damged, less clean look and many of the more subtle changes (proportions and suchlike) means that they don't quite mesh together the closer that you look. The new Tyranids are possibly slightly less of a departure stylistically but there is a bunch of little details and the carapaces looking more organic is the most glaring one for me, especially as they are such a large part of most models. Overall the ones that I have put together so far have been a decent experience, even the hormagants being not too bad really (oddly worse for mold lines than others). I have not done the biovore, Death Leaper, the Neurolictor or the Emissary though so there are a fair few things I cannot comment on.

I think you should up the rating to 9 out of 10. I went halfs on the leviathan box with a friend he wanted the marines i wasnt to fussed about them but since ive started painting them they have massively grown on me.

Tyranids being the best faction is quite easy to answer, at least for myself. For someone like me, who isn't super much interested into Space Marines and always prefered Warhammer Fantasy over 40k as a teen, the Tyranids were probably one of the first factions that caught my eye, when I learned about them. First in terms of visuals, secondly in terms of lore and all around it. When I first tried to start the hobby around roughly ten years ago, I was a big fan of Lizardmen. Dinosaurs riding dinosaurs, what's not to like about that? But here it was also the lore part, that convinced me too, as Lizardmen were basically what the Imperium of Mankind is for all the worlds they had conquered: The first guys, who had to actually stand up against Chaos after their creator's demise in a brutal, devastating war in order to protect everything else that was created. So not only were these aztec-inspired lizards cool looking, but they featured quite a lot of good lore, but without all the bad stuff with which the Imperium of Man has to deal. Sure, here and there they sacrifice a guy, that trespasses their temple cities, but honestly - I'd be pissed, too, if some greedy thieves enter my domain, just to ruin my wall tapestry and also stealing all of my community's goods. So while I might not personally say that it's okay to charge someone for crimes with a brutal death on base of magical-religious nature, it's surprisingly tame in comparison to other factions in this universe and, to get it in line with my last comparison to 40k, also less pointless than millions of Imperial soldiers dying every day on some godforsaken world by both enemy and allied fire power upon them, so that they can maintain their minimum life standards for their probably-soon-to-be-dead-family. But yeah, to come full circle as this was mostly me being excited over Lizardmen instead of Tyranids: Because of my euphoric looks upon Lizardmen, it's pretty much what made Tyranids interesting for me, because they share similiar optics and designs. Notably the Tyranid Warriors looking sorta similiar with their skull plate and overall frame with the tail to the Saurus Warriors at first glance. The chitin look was something that intrigued me at the time and just looking at models like the Carnifex or all these masses of Gants made them look really fun. Furthermore colour patterns like the ones from Hive Fleet Leviathan really made these striking for me - just like with the Lizardmen it doesn't matter what colour you give them as long as they look interesting. Unless you declare them xenos, you can't really paint humans green. You can, but it looks for 95% of the people around you wrong for certain. Painting Tyranids green or with regular flesh skin colour? No problem at all! Already you have in terms of creative freedom all the choices on how you want to individualize your model in terms of the paint job. The space bugs don't need to be realistic in terms of looks, just paint them however you want to! In that regard they are also similiar to Lizardmen. Now for the lore pros: In a grim dark universe full of factions, that make all the wrong choices and pretty much represent the worst aspects of society, each of them showing in their own way how they're all evil in their own political and ethical regards, Tyranids are surprisingly simple. Sure, they are evil just like everyone else, but on a basic, fun level. They are pretty much the Outer Enemy, that just wants to eat the galaxy. That's it, no deeper masterplan, no moral or ethical questions about how they treat their own guys, they're just a massive horde of space bugs on the hunt for more biomass. Of course the Hive Mind is more complex than that, but by keeping the focus more on the armies and explaining only few things about the Hive Mind and it's motives, Games Workshop did a good job at making the Tyranids way more mysterious and horrific than for example Chaos. Sure, one can argue that Chaos and the Gods behind it also adds some horror to the galaxy, but it's a horror about which we all know, a horror with ambitions that are known to us. It neither helps that the whole Humanity VS Chaos conflict is also entangled with events that predate 40k and pretty much can be summed up as 'Hell invades the galaxy thanks to a family feud gone wrong' and 'Evil Space Marines fight more evil Space Marines!' Thus personally I prefer the approach "I'm the hungry, hungry caterpillar and I eat all the evil stuff" , because that's all I need to know. Just a swarm of weird bug aliens, who can knock at any time at your army's door step and eat your whole sector without any consequences, even if you manage to repell them, is something I dig. And finally, I also love how adaptive the Tyranids are in general. One of the rule books described actually from Imperial perspective the steps of a Tyranid invasion of a world, step by step, which really emphasizes how versatile these swarm fleets can get in terms of their tactics. Not only do they feature endless hordes of small bugs, but they have also assassins, that eliminate targets behind the enemy backlines, deep strike tunnel forces, that burrow up from below, massive monsters, that shoot and claw their way through your army lines, winged terrors that harass the enemy from the skies and creatures that support either with artillery fire or psionic energies the main forces from the backlines. And I love, how all these elements allow you to create an individual army, that pretty much reflects this terror. The joy in playing Tyranids comes most likely from not imagining what your guys are thinking, but rather what the enemy guys are thinking. It's like being the director of a horror movie, where you decide what horror your victims have to face next, because you're the person with all the monsters, that they want to slay. And in that regard, Tyranids have a satisfying ammount of options from which one can choose to build up said monster army. Again, these are personal viewpoints, nobody has to share them. But that's at least how I found my fascination for these awesome bugs of galaxy-wide mass destruction.

I love your videos. The analysis of the sprues and where to take care when removing parts are awesome. I can see myself referencing these videos prior to building my own units. Well done! One thing that would make your viewers' life easier, however, is to add chapters pointing to the different kits being presented. Either that or put links into your discussion section pointing to the various sections. Cheers.

That Emissary is GORGEOUS! I was very pleased to see ten Genestealers in a box. That, plus dynamic new poses, makes them an automatic purchase. All in all, another great review! Thanks!

Are you maybe planning to do some other non GW stuff? maybe the upcoming new Marvel starter box. Really love your tutorials

Since I'm using your scheme and tutorials to paint my Leviathan nids, I'm over the moon that you'll grace us with your tutorials for this release!! I can't wait to expand my nids horde with a BIG THANKS TO YOU!!

Great video Josh The current big monsters are way better than the old Termagants / Hormagaunts / Genestealers so hopefully they will still fit in with the new big bugs

I think these look pretty cool, and i never cared for Nids at all. Cant wait to see how everyone paints them

Cheers for putting the work in mate, I'm picking up nids and these videos will be indispensable 😊

its strange to me how the hormagaunts are more expensive despite less sprue / options etc :D

I'd love to see your take on the Excelsis color scheme for Cities!

I’ll look forward to your CoS videos again.

For the algorithm

They look sooo cool

WHERE IS THE NORN EMISSARY PAINT TUTORIAAAAAAAL