Tyranids in Planetstrike.

Now, I'm sure I'm not the only one to wonder how you're supposed to excuse 'offensive' races defending in PS, Tyranids are probably the biggest issue in this situation.
Dark Eldar could be, I dunno, farming slaves or something.
Chaos Daemons, it's just a Daemon world, basically.
Tyranids present a problem however.


The only rational explanations I can think of for them defending are:

They're a stranded force, the Hive Fleet flew off without them or got destroyed, and a bunch of Tyranids were left on the planet without a higher chain of command, so they dig into the ground and try to survive. (poor guys)

They're in the process of digesting a world, and the attackers are striking at an important digestion palace or whatever.

A curious behavior of using an unresisting planet as a breeding ground, using the resources up quicker than they could in the Hive Fleet itself, and preparing a large strike on a nearby planet.


Now, all three would use the same sort of terrain; but what terrain is this, you say?

My idea was having underground 'hives', representing Bastions.
Massive chitinous mounds in the ground, with spore chimneys sprouting from the top, and weird tube-tunnels going inside as doors.
Turrets? A Carnifex torso integrated into the structure by huge tentacles and such, holding some nice guns. (Deathspitters for TL AC, Venom Cannon for Lascannon, maybe with some changes)

For defense walls, you could have little rows of the Capillary towers that Forge World do, tiny protrusions from the ground that give your guys cover.
Walls of bodies would work, although might look a little strange.
Woven tentacles, kinda like roots for the Hives.
Stuff like that.

Ultimately though, Imperial stuff with some Tyranid additions would suffice quite nicely, just be sure to have a LOT of Tyranid stuff hanging off them; plant growth, Capillary spine things, spore chimneys, creepy muscle doors, etc.


There would also be good ways to represent stratagems, for example.

The Battlecannon thing (put one on a bunker) could be represented in a similar way to the auto-guns, but this would involve heavier conversion; have a Carnifex with either a massive Bio-Cannon held like normal, or make its torso the weapon.
For the former, beefing out a Barbed-Strangler, or sculpting a larger one would do fine.
For the latter, I was thinking something along the lines of a Bio-Plasma attack; have his arms replaced with tentacle restraints, tying him to the structure; have massive tubes coming out of his back, with appropriately large amounts of squishy stuff on the joins; and have a huge Bio-Plasma mouth, with a dropped jaw, and a sculpted 'nozzle' thing.

Things like Landmines and Las-maze would be fairly simple, have spore mines poking out of the ground, or a little pool of acid, or something.

I don't actually have the book, so I don't know all the stratagems; but I think you get the picture.
Get creative with your models, make them something to look at and love; done right a Tyranid defense outpost would look incredible!