Hobby Update: Herd Tribal Hunters & Varangur Chieftains.

The Herd have not gotten a lot of love recently, and even this attention is pretty mediocre. No new paint. Not technically even a new unit. Just some rebasing.

Uh.. yay?

I painted these guys up over a year ago. Back then, I still wasn't decided on basing, so one troop was largely based individually, to give me some flexibility. Since then, I've decided that 1) I like multibasing for Kings of War, and 2) I don't want to use these minis for D&D. So I spent an hour or so semi-recently redoing this troop.

So, not a big update for my Herd. I have about 1000 points of Herd painted, out of a goal of 3000. That said, the majority of what I have ready right now are Troops... so I can't legally field the entirety of my collection. My intention is to run a bunch of Lycan units as my primary unlockers for the army, and I was hoping to have some ready by the end of the year, but I think that finishing those is probably unlikely. So, the Herd trudges along.


The Varangur also didn't get a lot of love in November, but that's ok, they've got 4000+ points of stuff already this year, and even more on-deck. Up now though are two new Chieftains done up in late November to help lead the Varangur to victory.

My WHFB Chaos army made heavy use of core chariots. While most of these were converted Tomb King chariots, I did pick up some actual Chaos Chariot kits, one of which was cannibalized for parts. The chassis for that kit became a Warshrine, and the Gorebeast and warrior were built up into this Slaanesh hero.

Originally, I wanted to add chains to this guy, and have the rider yanking his mount around, but I gave up on that idea. Instead, a few blobs of greenstuff was added and colored green to suggest magical control of the beast via the little rod in the warrior's right hand.


Another component of my old Chaos army were two units of Skullcrushers, because they were just so darned powerful! Then, like now, I wanted a big collection in the hopes of playing bigger group games, and ended up buying 3 kits, to make 2 units of up to 4 Crushers and have a hero to spare. All are being transitioned over into KoW right now.

All my Khorne heros were painted with black armor back in the day, so this model didn't get any real touchups; just a new base. I don't have a unified color scheme for the Varangur, so I'm not too worried.

Game-wise, these are not a bad choice at all. They have an pretty impressive stat line, as you can see here. They can take a hit very well and will take some concerted effort to remove from the game.

On the offense, they've got a great number of attacks for a 50mm frontage, and a lot of special rules that will help them really bring the pain. Strider is helps them get there, Hindered Charges can really ruin things. Elite also helps the attacks land. Mix in Crushing Strength 3 to all that, where all but Def 6 is wounded on a 2+ roll... and you have a hero that is leading by example. 

Additionally, being able to take a Gift is also a boon (Brutal would probably be my top pick). Lastly, the lack of Thunderous Charge is another benefit, meaning that this guy can grind out fights if needed. All around, a very powerful unit.

There are a few strikes against him though. First up is the Speed, which at 6, isn't stellar. He can keep up with Infantry, but struggle to keep up with the faster elements of a Varangur list (Fallen, Mounted Sons). The second strike against him is the cost. While quite powerful, he will not be worth it for everyone. Still, I look forward to seeing these chiefs on the table sometime.

And... this actually brings the blog current with the things I was working on in October/November. With the time off of work, I've been hobbying up some more Varangur, which will be posted soon, and hopefully the Halflings will be finished by the end of the year too... but we'll see how that goes. There's just so many little models to paint for them...