Hobby Update: KoM Beast of War

Back in February, I picked up a bunch of new plastic. Among the purchases (that apparently didn’t make its way into the pic) was a toy dinosaur, with an eye to running him as a Beast of War with the Light Ballista upgrade, because at 10 points… that’s a heck of a buy.

I decided to go the herbivore route with the dino model, since I’d need some kind of howdah for the ballista, and that would fit better on a herbivore dino than say a T-Rex.  A triceratops probably would arguably have been the best choice, is it would easily represent thunderous charge and all, but my inner child seems to pretty much run the place most days, and he demanded an ankylosaurus.

Yep, the love of the ankylosaurus goes back a long ways, apparently. I was probably between seven and nine when I did this? Cray pas on paper. It somehow made it into a local art show for elementary kids, and was proudly framed by my parents afterwards. Because parents. Once I finished with that front leg, I came to understand the importance of conveying more with less with regards to details, hence the "hint of scales" on the flank and knee. I could probably do better now. Also, artistic shortcomings aside, this guy leads a rough life. Standing on a cliff, with an exploding volcano AND impending comet behind him? He is not long for this world...

So I’ve had the toy for months and months, sitting on a bookshelf in my bedroom, unsure of how to approach it with regards to the howdah. After writing up the battle report for Battle 5, I decided that it was time for me to put a monster on the table. Just having a bunch of dudes wasn't cutting it for me.

Just imagine how much hobbying I could get done if I were a teacher!

So I sat down, and sketched out some ideas for a howdah. That was the easy part. I grabbed some hobby popsicle sticks, and a 40mm x 60mm base from something (Warlord Games Romans maybe?) and started building, using some liquid super glue to attach all the pieces. It's not pretty, but it should be large enough to hold a handler and a gunner for the ballista.


Howdah underway, I then needed to figure out how to attach it to the beast.  I could think of two main approaches.

1) Attach the howdah, and then extend it down around the beast a bit for the appearance of stability.
2) Do something needlessly complicated.

I of course, chose the second option. It seemed to me that a tower would just topple over no matter how you strap it. I didn't like the aesthetics of *boom* tower, so I started sketching out ideas of how to attach a structure to a large animal.

The Beast...aka prehistoric Blastoise.

In retrospect, just tying the howdah or even a tower right down onto the beast probably would work, but I ended up running "logs" (pen casings) parallel to the spine, and using those to "anchor" the structure. Kind of like giving the beast an external frame backpack. It looks rather unwieldy, but I’m just going to go with it. I can’t imagine a real howdah feeling all that safe.. Plus, I can always build another new and improved one later if I really want to.

A handful of popsicle sticks later, and I had a working model for the Beast of War!

The howdah.... doesn't quite fit, so more popsicle sticks sturdy timber planks are added...

The model was affixed to a base, primed, then then received a lot of paint. Yellow is not a great color to paint with in my opinion... but the inner child wanted a yellowy body and and brownish, orangish armor, so... away I went.

Tall and imposing! Though I may have overdone it with the washes around the feet.

Three coats of yellow paint later, I had a pretty good covering on the body. As the forth coat was drying, I started slopping orange pain along the top of the model, and then a lot of washes were applied to gradate it a bit.  

The Romans are extras from the Legionary box set, which came with Legionaries AND a Scorpion war machine sprue. Their bases have been sliced off as best I could, allowing me to stick them right into the howdah. It was hard slicing and scraping around their weak ankles... but I don’t think many people will be looking into the howdah and at their feet, so meh. It’s good enough.

I think the gunner needs more bolts... might have to fix that.

The ballista is from Eccentric Miniatures, which I still think is an AMAZING buy for anyone looking for a model. While arguably a bit big for whatever a “light ballista” is, I think that its heavier shape fits the heavy-looking howdah nicely.

Spare chains from some old Chaos Chariots were added to for the lead and some brass rod and green stuff used to make the bit. It's not a pretty set up, and I may have to do more work on the bit part. And god help the driver if he drops those reins...

Spare shields from Fireforge's Mounted Sergeants were added to the sides for more color and to make it look a little tougher. Unfortunately, the shields are all curved slightly, so it's not a perfect fit, but it looks good enough on the table. The Beast had a nice debut in Battle 6, and I'm looking forward to it hitting the table in many games to come!