Night Goblin horde

Greetings all, remember when I said in the Cygnar post that Warmachine would never be a big project? That is because the largest unit size I can find is just ten figures, whereas Night Goblins now, they are a big project, for example:

This is a unit of 50 Night Goblins, that's more figures than my entire planned Warmachine army. I have another 2 just like it planned for the full army. Pretty much all of the basic troops in the army are from the old Battle for Skull Pass box set. By buying two and swopping out the dwarfs for more goblins I wound up with hundreds of them. Adding a box of goblins and scavving netter arms from friends allowed me to have different command squads and also netters in the front ranks.

Because this army will work on a mass effect basis, the individual paint jobs do not need to be anything too special. The paint scheme for the army is simplicity itself. Start by base coating the entire model in the midtone of the black highlights. Use a mix of different colours across the unit, in this case I think I used (all mixed with black) Charadon Granite, Adeptus Battlegrey, Khemri Brown, Fenris Grey, Vallejo German Black-Brown and Vallejo Dark Sea Green. The point of this is to create a rag-tag look to the unit whilst keeping a degree of consistancy. Next add the metal colours, in this case Tin Bitz with a Boltgun Metal and Tin Bitz highlight. I then washed the whole model with Badab Black.

The skin is my favourite Orc and Goblin method, starting from Knarloc Green I then highlight with a 2:1 mix of Knarloc Green and Rotting flesh followed by another thin highlight of 1:1 Knarloc Green and Rotting Flesh. Wash the skin with Thraka Green. If you want to go the extra mile on the skin then go back and rehighlight with the same highlight shades as before. The woodwork is painted with Vallejo Beige Brown and then woodgrain streaked on with Vallejo Deck Tan, all string is painted Dheneb Stone, the rope around the waist is painted Khemri Brown. Then the brownish areas are washed with Devlan Mud. The yellow is a modification of Andy "Lair of the Brevicks" Walker's method. Starting from a basecoat of Iyanden Darksun I then highlight with increasing amounts of white in the Iyanden Darksun. A wash of Gryphonne Sepia added the shading. Finally, once everything has fully dried glaze the yellow with a thin coat of Yellow Ink. Dotting the eyes in with Blood Red finishes the model.

This shaman is an example of going the extra mile on the highlighting on the skin. I also put more effort into the woodgrain for a more realistic effect.

This next unit is the first archers unit, both will be 20 strong and follow the same colour scheme as the archers.

All of the command squads have a little extra effort put in. People pick out the command squads to examine more closely so it is worth improving their appearance.

The lunatics above are the Night Goblin Fanatics, there will be two in each unit of spearmen. For the uninitiated Fanatics are the signature weapon of the army. They are released when an enemy unit comes near and plow through like whirling dervishes. After that, things get kinda random. They spin in random directions afterwards and so can often do as much damage to your army as your enemies. But your forces are worth 2 points a man, knights are in the region of 40. It's worth the risk!

To support the infantry I have the Spider Rider cavalry. The paint scheme for these includes black warpaint across the top of the head to help to blend them in with the Night Goblins.

The spiders are painted in the same colours as common garden spiders (I have a mild problem with spiders so I wanted to make them look fairly realistic). Khemri Brown basecoat followed by Bestial Brown stripes with a Vallejo German Cammo Black Brown stripe in the centre of each one. The fleshy parts of the spider were painted with normal flesh tones to make them look even freakier.

Here's a detail shot to see the overall effect. All of these models were painted over the period where my computer was kaput and I had clean forgotten to photograph them! They are all really quick paint jobs though and I think I can get the entire 2500 point army finished in a couple of months. Here's the list if you are curious:

And another one showing my usual painting plan progression:

I figure that the order will be: spearman horde, character, archer unit, spider rider unit, monster. This twice and then one more unit of the spearman horde followed by the giant spider riding character. I am currently working on the giant so the first rotation is almost complete. I'll have pictures when he is finished, until then.

TTFN