They get in your mind. They make you see things. They make you do things!

Astra Militarum after-action report on Hive Fleet Cerberus (suppressed)

Work continues on Tyranid Hive Fleet Cerberus this week with the Neurolictor. The Neurolictor is a psychic infiltrator, able to project a neural disruption field that causes terror in its prey. I knew as soon as I saw this model that I was going to have to give it a glowing LED brain!

Modelling

I bought this model on the day it was released in September last year. I planned to start working on it immediately, but the more I thought about how I would illuminate the model, the more complex I realised that task was, which put me off making a start. In the end I didn’t begin work until January. This project has taken around four weeks of hobby time, compared to about two weeks for a standard space marine.

If you’d like to replicate this model yourself, then the techniques set out in my LED Psyker tutorial are probably the best starting point. I began by recasting the two parts of the head that I wanted to illuminate – the front and the rear of the brain – in polyurethane resin, as per my Resin Casting tutorial. You can see the initial test casts in the left-hand picture below.

This miniature uses four 3V Blue 0805 SMD chip LEDs, each in series with their supplied resistor. Two of the LEDs were evenly spaced under the forehead to illuminate the top and bottom of the front brain. The other two were then used to illuminate each half of the rear brain.

This miniature is powered by two CR2032 coin cell batteries in the base. Two of the LEDs are connected in parallel with each battery. In theory I could have run all four LEDs from a single battery, but as there was room in the base I decided to use two batteries. This will give the miniature more longevity on the battlefield between battery changes.

Painting

When painting the Neurolictor I used the Hive Fleet Cerberus recipe described in this post. For this colour scheme, simple weapons like claws are black, but more advanced bioweapons are blue. In the case of the Neurolictor, I decided the ‘advanced’ description applied to the feeder tendrils. This also helps them stand out against the rest of the miniature.

When it came to painting the resin brain, I wanted to give it a little texture and depth without dulling the light that was passing through. You can see the bare resin in the left-hand picture above. I played around with a few techniques, but in the end I gave the resin two very diluted glazes of Soulstone Blue, the end result of which you can see in the middle picture. Next I painted the brain with two very diluted glazes of Lothern Blue. You can see the final result in the right-hand picture above. This gives the brain area of the miniature some depth and interest even when the LED is switched off.

That’s all for today, I hope you’ve enjoyed seeing how this Neurolictor was built. I’ll be back with more LED miniatures soon. Thanks very much for reading, and please remember you can also find me sharing my work on Instagram, Threads, Twitter/X, Bluesky and Mastodon.