Hobby Update: Herd Spirit Walkers

The weekend weather was unexpectedly gorgeous. Unfortunately I didn't have anything new prepped, so I did not get any additional priming in for the coming winter months. But I got a handful of very pleasant walks in, and I got to spend the evenings hobbying on some Herd.

When I first saw the unit entry in 3rd Edition, I originally wanted to do a Warcraft 3 tribute with some printed / converted Spirit Walkers with some some teal phantasmal forms... but oh man is that way too much work! I don't have a 3d printer or enough stuff to kitbash all that! What I did have though was 23 leftover old GW Gor with additional Hand Weapons, so that is what I used. These were already primed up from last year, so I'm just chipping away at some old piles of shame with this.

One Regiment.

The bases essentially got my old tundra style basing scheme, with some texture paste, a light blue / grey base coat, and then an off-white drybrush. The puddles got a variety of blue paints, and then a layer of Acrylic Glazing Medium to get the glossy effect. Then a snow effect was added with the Elmer's Glue, craft paint, and baking soda mixture, though this time I opted for two layers of snow. The first used a more ivory paint, and after that layer had sit for 15 minutes,  I added a second later of snow effect with white paint, glue, and baking soda. I treaded this like a dry brush, with the white layer not covering the full base. This multi-layer approach isn't a "must" but does look to add some "depth" to how the basing looks. I decided to omit the trees from these bases, as while I had green stuff, I didn't have any old pens to mangle. Additionally, the bases were hobbied up last, and looking at them, I wasn't sure if all the minis would fit nicely. Since the minis had been already painted all all green and spooky, I wanted to give myself a fighting chance at using them all up on this project! So, no trees. 

Some of the minis on the stir sticks,
during the dry-brushing stage.

I experimented a bit with some hobby techniques this time around. First and foremost, after some trial and error, I ended up super gluing all of them to coffee stir sticks in groups of 3-4. I am a bit of a barbarian, and don't use any kind of handle normally while painting, often gripping a stand or some other part on the model. Putting everything on sticks this time let the very washy technical paint get better coverage in one pass since my fingers weren't getting in the way, as well as made dry brushing a breeze as I could do up 3-4 miniatures at a time and get more consistent coverage with my dry brushing, and any unexpectedly strong strokes could be spread out to other minis. You can see some of these stronger strokes in the final product, but since a few of the minis have it in each unit, the unit still looks good overall. Just some variation between phantasms!

For the actual painting process, I had primed the minis white, and then did an off-white base coat. There was a nice layer of the Hexwraith Flame paint from Citadel to get a good green gradient going. Once that had set, I went with a dry brush of "09415 Dungeon Slime" from Reaper Miniatures, which is just a color and not an effect, and a color I have used on some of my undead phantasms before. The last step was a lighter dry brush with the Dungeon Slime and some ivory craft paint, giving some nice definition to the minis. 

The other regiment.

On the table, these should function quite similarly to the Fanatics of my Kingdoms of Men, as low-defense / high-attack infantry. Glass Cannons. The Spirit Walkers cost 10/15/15 points more though, gaining 1 extra speed and Pathfinder, and utilizing Thunderous Charge instead. All in all, this is not something you want grinding in combat, but the Herd has a number of screening and flanking units, so we'll see how they get used in-game.

The Spirit Walkers should open up some nice list possibilities for my Herd. My collection is very troop heavy, needing a lot of unit unlocks. I had gone all-in on Large Infantry (3x Lycan Hordes, 1x Lycan Regiment, and 1x Guardian Brute Horde) for my unlocks in 2nd, but things don't quite unlock like they used to in 3rd! These Spirit Walkers should let me unlock and run whatever I want for larger games. But hobbied up as regiments, they should also open up the possibilities of smaller introductory games with the collection too, where I tend to avoid hordes.

The Herd is sitting at around 3000 points, and I now have the unlocks to run what I have and however I want to run it. I've also finally made my way through all of my old Beastmen minis now, reducing my pile of shame. The collection of Herd is in a good spot! We'll see if they manage to hit the table anytime soon.