Aaaahhhh! Run for your lives! Some maniacs have herded together a bunch of psychopathic space hoppers with teeth and are prodding them our way! Aaaaaaargh!
By which I mean, it's Squig O'Clock baby yeah! As I mentioned in the
Bolt Thrower post, the Bitter Moons have been missing a certain something. They had all the core troops in the world (when you count your core miniatures to the nearest hundred you know it's got real) but none of the specialists that help to soften up the enemy. So while they could "tar pit" like a good 'un, they lacked that killer punch to make them really dangerous. The artillery was a start; A few dozen bouncing S5 maniacs will also help considerably...
You might notice something a bit different about my squigs compared to the normal look. They're not eyeball searing red. Squigs are traditionally red for one reason and one reason alone: Dodgy print reprographics. Back in the day (by which I mean the '90's) the photos that GW were taking needed to pop from printed pages made up of much cruder tech than we use today. That meant nice bright contrasting colours and primary tones if possible. Everything was sodding red. The squigs, got it hard and somehow, it became de rigour for squigs to be red. I - not so - humbly disagree. I always think that a monstrous variant of something real is more scary than any hundred neon monstrosities. It's just a personal preference. What animal do the squigs resemble most? Welp, that's toads. So toad-esque the colour scheme became. (This notion had its germination back in a
random character model a while ago).
I also decided that as I wasn't keen on the squig hoppers as a unit, I would include some in the main squig unit to increase variety and to add even more character. I see these as ineffectual strap-on idiots making no impact on the fighting ability of the squig whatsoever and a useful imbecile disposal method for the herders. The painting of the squigs is actually fairly straightforward. A basecoat of German Camo Black-Brown is highlighted by adding Beige Brown. Little spots and blobs are added with a darker mix of the base colour to make the upper surface mottled. The belly is Stone Grey feathered out as it meets the upper surface. Then the whole thing is hit with Athonian Camoshade. Lips, gums and tongues are painted Bugman's Glow with a mix of Carroburg Crimson and Athonian Camoshade as a glaze, more Carroburg Crimson got added to the tongues. Grey-black claws glazed brown and teeth picked out and you are basically done. They got a hefty coat of Dullcote as they are metal models in a close packed unit and liable to chip. The mouths got a hit of water effects to make 'em look good and drool-ey. Done.
The riders and the herders just got painted like every other goblin in the army so not much there. Instead I'll wax rhapsodic for a moment about how nicely thought out most of these models are. From a screaming snotling tied to a stick; to the massive cymbals that the player can't figure out will hit his nose - hence bandage; to the wonderfully executed squigpiper (who has the right pleats in his robe that you could paint it as a kilt if you wanted). They are wonderful. Heck the backwards facing idiot and the wooden sword on the riders are equally brilliant notions. I added a couple of netters I had spare from the box of gobbos I bought to make war engine crews as in the old school fluff, the netters and clubbers were who caught the squigs. The herders just pushed them into battle.
And speaking of old school, I couldn't resist these old herder models I found on eBay. They're from the first generation of Squig Herders and from the (I think) Kev Adams school of Goblin design that informed so much of the character and personality of the GW gobbos. They're cracking figures, if a little dated now, but I couldn't have cared less. I figure they're worth one goblin in a fight because the notion that both of them wielding that trident improves matters is beyond laughable.
Finally, lets quickly talk basing. These are chronic pains in the arse to rank up (yes I know you Age of Sigmar chaps don't have to worry about that any more but I say it's a small price for spectacle). In the end I realised I could just skip a rank and move the herders back one sensible pace to the rear. In game they count as a four deep unit, we just ignore the empty space and treat them as a 7x4 unit. Fortunately I've the kind of gaming group that couldn't give less of a damn about such things if they tried. "If it's cool, do it" is kind of a mantra with us.
Well, that's all for today folks, but not all for the goblins, two more projects hove into view on the horizon, large ones, lob-bey ones, rock-ey types... Buah ha ha haaaaa. Ahem.
TTFN
