Hobby Update: Stormcast Ogre Shooters

I was able to put in a little more work on my small Stormcast Ogres army, and I'll declare a few units done. Unfortunately, both of the finished units are irregular Shooter Hordes. I'll need to do a bit more hobbying in order to unlock them!

The First Horde.

I am working with Stormcast minis, and these are all Judicators with whatever trademarkable name their weapons are. They are big cool crossbows. These were one of the few NIB purchases I made, as I honestly liked the look of the minis since AOS launched. Maybe I should have played Custodes at some point, but the big crossbow + armor was the right amount of overkill that appealed to me. I dig 'em.

The Second Horde.

In 2nd, Ogre Shooter Allies were everywhere for a while. I did not get on that train, but do know they caused a lot of hullabaloo and rules changes. In 3rd, they are irregular, and so cannot be allied in. They seem like a pretty strong shooting platform with 30" range and Piercing 2, but this is mitigated by hitting on 5's and having Pot Shot. They are not terribly mobile shooters. But they are still Speed 6, Def 4, have Melee 4+, CS1 and Brutal, so the Shooters can always resort to just being Ogres if they happen to be threatened. They definitely seem like a potent threat on the table!

I decided to keep this army really simple for color schemes. We've got the base gold, some silver, and then yellow trim and blacks and greys for the armor inserts. The bases are brown with dark grey and light grey dry brushing, and some shrubs for a little extra pop. 

More thoughts still to come in a separate post on trays and converting, but I think I'm getting better at the tray approach too.  Here, they got some very thinly applied basing paste and the same basing colors, topped off with a few matching shrubs. Since I'm using round bases, the shrubs are easy to sneak in and really add a lot I think. This seems like a good way to go when using round bases + trays, no naked MDF, and the unit looks more uniform, full and complete. The only thing I think I need to do is figure out what to do with the edge/trim/lip of the tray. The interior edges look good with the burned effect, but since I got stuff up on the top-side of the edge, I think that needs a color now too...

So the Shooters here are done, and I'm working on a handful of other units now. The original goal was to have 1000 points or so on hand for learner games, but I a) overdid it with my purchases, and should have about 2.5k in Stormcast Ogres, and b) am finally making some progress with local games, so I'm not sure if these will really be needed. So, not sure when any of this will hit the table, but I should have a playable Stormcast Ogre army very soon!