Up now are former (?) staples of Free Dwarf lists, with not one but two lightly converted regiments of Berserker Brock Riders! Over the years, I had picked up a few incomplete bundles online, as well as one NIB box second-hand. Months ago, I sat down and sorted everything, and then got to work.
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| The more heavily-converted regiment. |
The first unit needed the most work. For them I lacked both heads and weapon arms, and went with a lot of GW Irondrake / Ironbreaker bits to supplement things, as I had picked up a lot of loose bits a while back. The arms were old arms bits or quickly sculpted with green stuff, with weapon-swaps from leftover bits from my Vulkite bundles for my recent Berserker regiments.
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| Another angle of the unit. |
I tried to do greying ruddy beards here, and then simple steel for the rest, presenting a cadre of aging Berserkers. I think this goes contrary to the fluff, but the Mantic novels are frustratingly hard to find, so we’re just rolling with it. The weapons do have a lot of detail, but I kinda liked the brighter, plain silver for these old meanies, and we'll leave it for now.
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| The second regiment. |
I went mostly stock with the second, just adding little axes and doodads to hide the missing middle saddle bits, and some assorted shields and icons to hide some of the missing Brock plating. Most got axes, because throwing axes was an option in 3E, though not anymore. Oh well, the bits add character.
Aside from these two, I have two other regiments planned out. One is NIB, with everything Mantic has to offer, and the other is just missing a few arms, which I might toss entirely for lances or something cool or unique, or maybe utilize the Banners from Mantic's metal Berserkers on foot, and spread those between both units. I couldn't decide so kicked the can. While the plan was to hobby up all four regiments-worth of Brock riders, I don’t think that idea will be proceeding anytime soon.
I just don’t see me fielding many units of these anymore. Some troops could be a slick way to pay a specialist tax, but they aren’t really cheap, and my lists so far are already very hungry for specialist slots. Even if a Lord swaps these into Core, you are unfortunately still limited to just two units, and troops still count as Specialist, not Auxiliary, so unless you are going multiple Battalions just to field these... the Brocks seem like they might be more of a rarity on the battlefield now.
Aside from slot concerns, the cavalry units are in a weird spot in the new edition. Hindered charges are excruciatingly debilitating, particularly for a unit that hits on 4’s innately. We’ll hold on to the extra units for now, but I am a little doubtful that they will see the hobby table, let alone the gaming table anytime soon ,given everything stacked against them. Still, we've got our two regiments to max a Battalion, and we'll see what they can do on the table sometime!