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

Like a Shaman in a Web

For those who have been following my progress on Project Goblin will know I have been building the various elements as separate tribes. So far the Bitter Moon Night Goblins and the Black Head Forest Goblins. The Bitter Moons are the big one, tons and tons of night gobbos with attendant leaders and shamen. Until now, all the Black Heads had was their chief, Arakkit. But not any more baby!

Yes indeed, the Black Heads now have religious guidance and magical boom all of their own (and not having to rely on Shaman Joodee...) in the form of Shaman Skuttlit. Now, those with Orc & Goblin army books and possessing a law abiding spirit will be saying "but Jeff, there's no option for a spider mount for a goblin shaman..." to which I say "bum to that". Seriously, why the hell can shamen ride wolves but not spiders? Heroes can ride spiders. So I ignored the army list, transferred the cost from the hero and went with it. None of my usual opponents would care and frankly, anyone determined to make an issue out of it is unlikely to be a person with whom I would enjoy playing. Anyhow, enough of that. Painting and modelling! The basis of the model was a regular spider with the champion backrest and the awesome goblin shaman. I'm intending to use him again so I needed to make some modifications to prevent them looking like twins. I extended the staff with bits from the arachnarok (the kit that keeps on giving that one) and switched out the bone and skull for dagger. I'll probably remove the topknot when I paint the common goblin contingent.

In order to make him fit on the spider in his vaguely "arachnid surfing" pose I needed to sculpt a new chunk of carapace to smooth out the flat area the goblin normally sits on. Painting the spider was handled in the same way as each and every damn eight legged crawling thing in the army (just 10 to go...). Skuttlit was painted in the usual way for goblin skin, just adding a couple more intermediate steps to the highlights. I chose black for the robes to help him fit in with the Bitter Moons and then got to the fun bit:

Details! The cloak collar is normally painted as fur, but for a "jungley" shaman type I thought tropical bird feathers would add a splash of colour. So I did a bit of research, chose a bird for each layer and went for it. The fetish staff - genius design by the way, wolf, voodoo-ish fetish and moon, feels like one of each type of gobbo to me - was fun to pick out all the little details. The chicken foot especially worked well. Highlighting yellow with bone is the way to get that naturalistic animal yellow.

So a simple conversion and paint job leading to a nice finish, now to wear the shiny model syndrome off with a game or two... and the inevitable head-exploding miscasts of course...

TTFN

Forest Gobbo Spider Hero

Greetings all! Today we learn how to save over a tenner on a Forest Goblin Hero on Gigantic Spider!

It was my birthday yesterday (I'm 34 this time) so I treated myself to goblin painting. I knew from the off that I wanted each flavour of Goblin in the army to feel like a real army in it's own right. So the Forest Goblins now have a leader and will have a shaman too, helps me to see the army as - currently - two tribes bound by fear of Rhagat Neckchopper. Should there ever be a re-cutting of the common goblins and the spider riders then there will be three tribes. But, for now, on with the Big Boss show!

Disturbingly, the scale is appropriate for the male and female of the same species. So... The Arachnarok is Mother... shudder.

The model in question is a conversion of the Heresy Miniatures Monstrous Spider. When I assembled the Arachnarok I realised that you got a free shaman model if you didn't want a character level of blummin' big spider. This got my brain rolling as the £23 price tag of the GW character spider is perchance a little steep for an ok spider, nothing special. The dude riding him is nice but... Then I remembered that I had picked up a Heresy spider a while back. Buah ha ha haaa!

Starting from the Catchweb Spidershrine piece from the Arachnarok kit, I constructed a rough wooden platform out of Plasticard planks and rods. I added woodgrain by scraping a razor saw across it to cut grain into it. I was totally intending to photograph this as it would have made for a neat how-to but failed utterly to do so. I'll just have to do more scratch building won't I? With the platform/howdah finished I turned my attention to the rider:

I already had a shaman planned for the army so didn't want this chap to look like one. Conversion time! The weapon was going to be based on the staff of the shaman so needed to be some sort of polearm. I kinda wanted it to be a non-goblin weapon so I went for one of my favourite looking weapons, the Tomb Kings Khopesh. Painting it as antique, patina'd bronze was fun too. I needed a shield too, well, following on from my usual policy of shaming armies I either own or play regularly I decided that he had "liberated" a Dwarf shield from it's owner. Job done. Incidently, I totally hadn't noticed the extra freaking eyes on this chap before I started working on him! I suspect the legs are also supposed to be mutant features but they looked more like a vanity feature held on with webs. His story has become that his spores landed in the nest of the Arachnarok and the growing gestational fungus was repeatedly attacked by the magically mutated babies causing some physiological changes. His appearance - and the brain damage from repeated neonatal poisonings causing aggression - meant he rose to the top of the heap in the Blackhead tribe.

The patina on the antique bronze was created by stippling a few layers of Val Scurvy Green with increasing amounts of white added. Another layer of the Sycorax Bronze was stippled on top and painted to create a sharpened edge before the whole thing was glazed on Coelia Greenshade.

The niftiest bit? I magnetised the howdah so that I could use "Father" as a normal spider too! Yay! Plus he's much, much easier to transport. But that's not all!

While painting the spider my brain was whirring away on the subject of using hordes (I'm drafting a Beard Bunker article) and it occurred to me that I had not followed one of my main points. That adding a hero to a horde turns a horde from an inconvenience to a full blown problem. The solution? Change the army list, save myself £30 in trolls and add another big boss! Now, every version of this model I've seen painted has been dominated by the squig. Why? Because it is always bright freaking scarlet. Why? Because squigs were invented during GW's red period and the scheme kinda stuck. Following my usual policy of monstrous things being more scary if painted as real things I decided that toads were probably the closest thing to a squig in the real world. A quick google search gave me the message that pale underbelly and stippled dark topside would be the win. It was fairly experimental and I was playing a lot so I can't give you exact mixes but Val Stone Grey and Val Camo Black-Brown were involved along with a wash of Athonian Camoshade. I really like the effect, whaddaya think? If I ever expand the army beyond the 3k it is at Squig-toads will totally be a thing.

Finally, this is totally not the first of these I've made, the chap above was made at least five years ago, probably more, as a conversion contest thing. He's based on the shelob monstrous spider doodad and has a scratch built howdah nailed to the carapace. I really, really, don't need this chap anymore. He's not even based so would fit into whatever army you have. Anyone want to buy him? About £30 or nearest offer. Email me if you want him :)

Well that's it for today, more Eldar in next week.

TTFN