Hobby Update: Herd Hunters of the Wild

Over the last few years, I picked up a fair bit of plastic (some 200+ models), with the intent of making a multi-system Elf army sometime, in the vein of classic High Elves. We'll see if that plan ever comes to fruition. I have more than enough armies as it is right now! And not a ton of time to devote to any other game systems. So for now, I dipped into that pile of shame to make some Hunters of the Wild for the Herd, an army I have a bit of, but has generally not been well-represented in the blog. The collection is a little wonky, with a huge allotment of Lycans, so I'm hoping some more generic unit additions like these will help balance out the collection more, so I can run a more sensible list, and the army can then see the table a bit.

We'll kick things off with a group shot.

The models are GW Dryads. Everything I got came second-hand via ebay, though some of these were new on the sprue. It's not a bad kit, and via ebay again, I was even able to pick up a few spare bodies to make my existing sprues go further, since they come with extra arms and heads and such.

We'll call this Regiment 1 for the sake of the post. The units should be interchangeable though.

Honestly, the minis were a pain to work with. I remember a fastidious friend building some of these up years and years ago for his Wood Elves and that cleaning all mold lines took him forever, as there are a fair number of mold lines, especially on all the branch bits. Normally, mold lines are quick to remove, and here, even though it is tedious, I would recommend you take the time to remove them all if you choose to hobby these up for yourself.

A Troop from Regiment 1.

Assembly is a little better. As already mentioned, there are a good variety of heads and arm bits and such, so that's all great and you should be able to get a good variety of poses despite just having four basic body options.

The other Troop from Regiment 1.

These are very fun to paint though. There are a lot of details like leaves that you can zero in on, or, if you are like me, these work fantastic with just drybrushing, so long as you remove all the mold lines. I originally started with a complete base coat of Citadel's Rhinox Hide, but eventually decided (after I had base coated everything, of course), that I wanted these to look more like living terrain.

And we'll call this Regiment 2.

To help get that effect, I switched over to more generic craft paints like Apple Barrel, as those are the same kind of paints I use for terrain. I restared with a generic burnt umber color as a base coat, though I wasn't too picky on the coverage, since I was painting over the darker Rhinox hide, and any missed spots would (hopefully) just give the illusion of more depth. This step ended up being more of an overbrush. Then I went to Citadel's Deathclaw Brown to help tie the units to the rest of the army, since that color is used for stumps and such in the rest of the collection, and then a generic gray as a final, light drybrush to create a bit of a weathered effect on various limbs. Leaves got a generic tan color and then a brown wash, and other bits (like brambles) got other colors as needed. 

A Troop from Regiment 2.

These were a ton of fun to paint once I got going though. All the bark ridges take drybrushing very well, so even newer painters should be able to get these looking fairly good, provided they take the time to remove the mold lines! I was leaning towards a more verdant and vibrant green and white color scheme for my theoretical elf list, with the dryads as mean birch trees. I still have a dozen or so dryad minis left, so we'll see when/if those hit the hobby table sometime for a new elf army.

The other Troop from Regiment 2.

Overall, I like how the units turned out. I put in 6 minis per troop, but I think I could have bumped that up to 7 models. The dryads were a little thinner than it seemed they would be, and the ponds and stumps and such didn't take up nearly as much space in the end as it seemed they would when I was trying to plan everything out. If I find I have some extra dryad minis down the line, I may bulk these units out a bit more, but everything is good enough for the table right now.

This is already a long post, but stumps are the next hobby bit to discuss. Previously, I've hacked apart cheap, spent, pen casings and covered the husks in green stuff to make broken stumps. I felt like the lack of a woody core to the pen-stumps gave them a bit of an older or decayed appearance. That was the hope at least. I wanted to have stumps here, to help wysiwyg the Pathfinder special rule, and tie this unit in with the rest of the army. Unfortunately, I only had one pen stump made already, and couldn't find any more casings.

I used wire, pliers, and aluminum foil to build the stump, then covered with green stuff.
The finished Dryads/Hunters lurk nearby, waiting for their bases to be hobbied up.

I have tried sculpting things a few times over the years, but never with much success. However, I have seen a number of additional videos over the years now, and so attempted to test out some methods for some new low-risk stumps. First, I haphazardly cut some small lengths of some old armature wire. Second, I found two similar lengths and held them with the pliers, twisting the lengths round and round, with the ends splayed for an attempt at roots. I then used some aluminum foil to bulk out the armature "skeleton" and soften the edges. This was the big improvement over my previous attempts.

When I have used wire before, typically it moves around, complicating the sculpting I am trying to get done. Adding padding like the foil helps cushion everything, minimizing accidental movement and provides general stability, as well as bulks out the model with something more lightweight than the clay or putty. This worked well, though some of the ends still tended to poke through and rip the foil. Were I to do this again, I would start with one long section of wire, fold it in half, and then twist and such. The roots should be left even longer, so they can be bent backwards against themselves as well.

Once the foil stumps were covered completely with green stuff, I let it sit for about 20 minutes to firm up, and then tried adding some lines / gouges to the putty to suggest bark. It kind of works, but not really well, if you compare the stumps to the miniatures. I think I need more of a flatter, chisel-like tool to make indentations along the putty instead of gouges. Still, it's all vaguely tree-shaped, painted, and I think most folks will know what it is supposed to be. 

Last up on the hobby-side of things is the snow. I opted for two layers this time, using a bottom layer of a softened ivory color with the glue and baking soda, followed by a top layer of the same mixture but with white. I thought that multiple layers should provide a more realistic appearance to the snowfall, and the difference in color should hopefully add some sense of depth to the base. This is working out well and will likely become the new norm for my snow as long as I am not dealing with miniatures with stands. 

All-in-all, I am very happy with the units. While there is always stuff to improve upon with my hobbying, like the texture to the stumps, I think all these units turned out really nice and should look just spiffy on the table. ... though I honestly have no idea how they will perform on said table though! The last time the Herd saw play was a pair of intro games back in 2017.

Generally though, the Herd seems like a quick and glass cannon-style army, able to apply quick pressure to overwhelm a zone early, and  then hopefully capitalize on that to snowball into victories elsewhere on the board in order to take the game. I wouldn't call myself an aggressive player, so I am not sure the presumed playstyle is a good match for me, but it will be fun to mix things up I think and should lead to some cool battle reports. We'll see when they might manage to hit the table!