Hobby Update: Beastmen Warband

My second fantasy warband was hobbied up late June and early July, and saw me dipping into some Beastmen. I still had 30ish Beastmen minis sitting around, and I wanted to play around with some more pale skin tones. I picked up some un-Gor and a Shaman from ebay to round things out, and dipped into my pile of shame to get the rest, opting to hobby up all my remaining Bestigor. I chipped away a bit at my pile of remaining beastmen, but not nearly enough. I've still got around two dozen minis left.

The gang.

I was going for a bit on an apocalypse feel for these, like this warband were marauders and just scouring the wastes. I copied the boring base from the Apocolypse Orks for the Grimdark Future game, just browns and some gray dry brushed rocks. The bases look a little too sparse here though; I'll likely add some grass or tufts in the future if I can find a suitably subdued color. 

I primed in black, which was probably a mistake. I was going for pale skin, so black was not doing myself any favors. The "Pallid Wych Flesh" took about a half dozen layers before it looked good on anything, so I wasted a fair bit of time stemming from the wrong primer color. Priming in a gray or white or even zenithal scheme would have been much smarter. Even doing a gray base coat to kick off the painting part would have been smarter too. 

The hounds turned out pretty darn nice!

The pale skin was basically off-white. I needed a wash, but wasn't sure what. I had a half-spoiled pot of Death World Forest, to which I added some water to get a bit of a sickly green wash. After a test model, I ended up applying this to all the models in the warband, though this turned out best on the hounds I think. I don't know why. Exposed skin was an issue on the other minis, but it just worked on the hounds and the scorpion tails look poisonous in person.

Next best were the Bestigor.

The Bestigor had limited exposed skin, so things turned out pretty nicely with them; just a nice, slightly greenish tint. I think I could have done more, maybe with a rust effect or something though. Grass and rust... ok, two things I can fix down the road.

The shaman was a great model, though I could not get the skin tone to play nice with him. Even in person that left leg looks gnarly, and not in a good apocalypse way. The ungor were similarly bad. Watery flesh layers just didn't seem to work out and the wash turned out a bit yucky. The normal gor seemed to turn out ok though, so I just don't know what the deal is.

The ungor look a little too inky. It works, and I am likely not going to repaint anytime soon, but I am a little disappointed. Not sure what the issue was.

The warband is mostly all "out of the box." The only conversion work in the warband was on the "boss," a bestigor body and head with axes from the champions of both a gor and bestigor. He's got two large axes, so he's gotta be in charge, right? I certainly thought so, but it didn't quite differentiate him enough, so I gave him a cape, I think from the GW Chaos Marauder kit.

Yeah, the cape sells it a bit more. Nice, simple solution.

The leader also got a piece of bark for his base, making him a little higher and hopefully having him stand out just a little more on the table. I have heard that bark > cork board for more natural rocks so I wanted to give it a try. During the pandemic, I went on a lot of walks. There was a fair amount of bark around, so I grabbed some, took it home and baked it (to kill bacteria and dry it out), and then threw it in an old takeout container to store it. 

This was the first attempt at using it. I sanded down part of it so there would be a pretty flat join to the base. I then covered it with a layer of Elmers glue (as its known here, also known as PVA glue, or white glue, or school glue I am told). I figured this would "seal" in the bark a bit, and protect it from moisture, etc. I let that sit for a day because what do I know about drying times, then spray painted it black and then painted it.

Sanding the bark down is a pain. If you have a legit sanding power tool... maybe that's better, but I'd worry about fingers getting sanded. Sawing to get the flat join is also possible, but it depends on the piece - you could be trying to saw through an inch or more of bark, which might be frustrating with just a hobby saw. 

Posing a mini on the bark can also be difficult. The wide stance of the leader worked well for me, but could easily have backfired. The barked looks good and worked well and I'll be trying it more, but the more rugged basing requires a little more planning (or more sanding to get footholds where you want to place the model).

Overall, this ended up being a nice warband. Despite some hurdles, the pale skin worked well enough more often than not, and overall the warband looks nice and unified colors-wise. It was a fine hobbying diversion!