What I did on my holidays

Hi folks, as I intimated in the last post I was away all last week. Well, as is usual for me it was something of a busman's holiday and took the opportunity to finish once and for all the core of the Goblin army. As a result the pirates progress counter jumped by a cool seventy models and we have stuff like this to show for it:

First up are the Bonechewer Boys, one half of what was formerly planned as the third horde of fifty. Frankly, three 50 strong units was a bit unwieldy so I broke the last into two to act as gobbo detachments. They've still got nets, expensive in a unit this small but damn do they save their bacon against halbardiers, and only really suffer in the longevity stakes. Well worth making the change. I had decided that the smaller units would be unpopular goblins who the hordes wouldn't tolerate. The Bonechewers are a unit of cannibals. All gobbos will eat their own in times of hunger but the Bonechewers are... a bit fond of the taste. Units camping near them tend to post guards and sleep with one eye open. But even the Bonechewers are popular compared to the next lot:

This small ragged lot are the Disciples of Joodee. Now follows a brief recap on the subject of Joodee: Joodee was an unremarkable, unreliable 2nd level shaman in the Bitter Moons, until one fateful night when a ritual (an RPG scenario) went wrong and a miscast at exactly the wrong moment left Joodee possessed with a demon. Yup. Demons wearing goblin skin. The other lads didn't mind Demon Joodee as the burning eyes made it easier to find him in the dark and despite the spooky voice he had good and funny ideas. Unfortunately, Rhagat was in need of more Archnaroks (they tend to die a lot) and so got Pappow his Shaman Lord to burn the demon within Joodee to force grow more from their eggs. Joodee went back to being a normal shaman. But some of the lads really missed him. They have formed a quasi religious cult around restoring Joodee's "true nature". The champion dresses like him (yeah it's a quick conversion) and their shields and banners bear the burning eyed gobbo. Their standard even bears a replica of the puppet that Joodee believes is the real caster of his spells. Suffice to say: A bit odd. Just another one of those cool things that can develop over a long narrative campaign. Oh, and the banner is a skaven clanrat one to keep variety across the army.

Now to be fair, the spiders were a bit of a cheat. I'd all but painted this regiment and had started the other last year before all motivation left me. They are a complete sod to paint in this semi-realistic stripy scheme (I counted, eighty stripes per spider, 800 in the unit o.O). So these sort of belong half in this year and half in the last.

The second of the units was the box set spiders rather than skull pass so a bit more variety in spiders and weaponry/command. I can't tell you how glad I am to finish these. They were ruinously hard to stay motivated through. But the end result is so, so worth it. Not to mention that I now have a full thousand points of nothing but spiders and spider related units - The Blackhead Tribe. This arachnophobiac's nightmare gave Charlie's Empire a near-run kicking at the weekend to blood them and though they are a bit glass hammer in action they work nicely. With all of this work all that is left of the Bitter Moon army to paint is fun stuff like rock lobbers, squigs and characters. Hurrah!

Oh, yeah and a whole other goblin army but that's just because I'm a glutton for punishment. Well, I'm back to work this week so more shinies soon :)

TTFN