Tyranid assault hiveship (BfG)

Moving on to the big stuff, this is my first completed Tyranid hiveship.  In an effort towards frugality I continued to try & use up every piece on the 'Nid sprues, so decided that I would have two main types of hiveship.  I have an extra-large carrier hiveship in progress, based on the Carnifex body & tail with various modifications.  I'd also like to make a pyro-acid-heavy one of these to add some long-range firepower to the fleet.  However, various carapace & weapon options come with the Carnifex (& Warrior sprues), so I for each Carnifex-based hiveship I should be able to get two slightly smaller ones similar to this:

Although mounted on a battleship base, these hiveships are more on a par with the battlecruisers & grand cruisers in other fleets, & follow my cruiser layout from the previous post, but with the Warrior torso turned on it's back, & a spare Carnifex main-plate as the dorsal armour bulk of the bio-ship.  I have used the plain shell section here as the one with open glands lends itself well to my carrier & the spiky one suggests 'boarding torpedoes' to me...  For my first hiveship, I just had to go with the ridiculous massive claws/feeder tentacles option, & make it an insane all-out assault creature that looks a lot nastier than it's actual effectiveness in-game.

The view above shows a closeup of the feeder tentacles, leftover from a friend's old Epic 40,000 bio-titan. The vast scythes are from the Carnifex kit, as are the carapace sections used for the forward pair of 'engines'.  For the thorax weaponry slot I've taken the bio-plasma option to keep this vessel specialised for close-in action (an upside-down fleshborer in the shell alcove each side).  I think I will take one of the other weapon slot choices & make it a pair of bio-plasma projectors on each side, but only take the full complement of weaponry options on my larger hiveships.

The view above shows the battle-damage on the starboard side of this monstrosity.  I've only used this hiveship in a couple of engagements, & whilst it is potentially devastating if it can get close to the enemy, it is very slow & cumbersome.  It does serve to draw a lot of fire away from the smaller bio-ships however, which can be useful.

 

Finally, above is a dorsal view of this leviathon of the void.  Unlike the segmented sections, I found it quite difficult to come up with an interesting pattern to fill the large area of the main carapace plate, so I'm not entirely happy with that, but overall I'm happy with the model.  I haven't settled on a name for this species yet, but my friend Tim has nicknamed this model 'Snippy'.