Hobby Update: Abyssals

I’ve had a pretty slow start to hobbying this year, but I’ve already made some good progress on both the Herd and the Abyssals over the last few weeks. All of the Herd stuff is still WIP due to the more involved basing, but some Abyssals have made it over the finish line! First to be completed were some assorted heroes, which helped me figure out colors for the army. Instead of deep dark red, I went with a pinker base color. Hopefully when they are with the neon-blue Herd on the table, it will all look “rad.”

Ta-da. The first hobbying of 2018 for me.

I’m really pleased with the Efreets. I just love their menacing pose! The Champion and Temptress are adequate, though the latter is top heavy. The archfiends are both cool models too. I typically don’t name my models, but the winged one (still WIP, in the background) is Razzamatazz, and the wingless one if Jazzamatazz. The song popped into my head one day (no idea where I originally heard it) while working on Razzamatazz, and I decided to go with it. Jazzamatazz may need a little more work on the eye too, but it works for now.

With a ridiculous amount of hero points completed, I’ve now turned to hobbying on the units to unlock them. Originally, I intended to spend lavishly on a new Abyssals army, since Mantic makes a pretty decent line from what I’ve seen. However, given my lack of games, I decided to save my money, and take some old models out of the closet to hobby on.

The old models in question are 30+ each of WHFB Bloodletters, Daemonettes and Pink Horrors, which will eventually hit the table as Abyssal Guard, Succubi and Flamebearer. I also have a horde of Mantic Lower Abyssals I picked up last year, to serve as Lower Abyssals. This should cover all of the generic Abyssal infantry. Future purchases can get me fun things like Molochs and Gargoyles and the like.

My immediate goal with the Abyssals (and the Herd) is to get both up to 3000 points without any new purchases. Without getting games in, I just can’t justify spending money on new models. Based on my estimates these last few weeks, I should be able to get there!

And the first units are looking good.

The first actual units completed for the Abyssals are the Succubi Regiments! About 20 models had been painted previously (pink hair, black armor, purple claws, Slaanesh grey skin), so these were repainted pretty swiftly.

Most of these models came from a bits store, so I ended up lacked a lot of claw hands back in the day. Luckily, old Empire Flagellant arms were more or less the right size. The kitbashed unit fits in more with the KoW style, but will likely need to be the unit that receives any kind of magic item, in order to be more wysiwyg.

Ideally, I’d probably have done up a mix of unit sizes, but model count made that difficult. I wanted to use up these models and not buy any more, and regiments of 11 is how the numbers shook out.

I’m pretty pleased with how these turned out. I think their white hair is pretty striking, and am happy I was able to pull that effect off.

So... the first models of 2018 are finished. While not a legal list, 1300 plus points in Abyssals are now ready. More to come!