Hobby Update: Varangur Draugr

I finally hobbied up some Draugr for the Varangur! These were a very cool additions to the army roster for 3rd Edition, bringing some much needed cheap, chaffy bodies to the army along with a lot of fluff. I mean, who doesn't like undead vikings shuffling about on the battlefield?

Three cheap regiments, ready to go.

The minis are mostly a mix Mantic Ghouls and Mantic Zombies, plus Celts from Warlord Games, as they were all sculpted with a similar ball-and-socket connection for the torso. The connection wasn't always perfect, so most got a tiny ball of green stuff plus glue to help it all stay together. The heads are a mix of the same, plus a few extras from other manufacturers like Fireforge and Gripping Beast. I wanted a good amount of helmets in the unit, as a nod to their better durability and Iron Resolve. I am quite happy with the look of these! All the weapons and armor do really set these apart from my other Zombie units. 

Prep-work back in early September. 

Hobbying work on the minis started on back in early September. Every mini had a stand, which needed to be carefully cut and removed so I could reuse some old unit bases. It took a day or two since time is always at a premium, but I managed. These were soon assembled and primed up, with the intention of hobbying on after some minor surgery and a few days off of work. That didn't happen, so these sat, ready for me to hopefully get to over the winter.

So many minis! Many more than I am usually aiming to hobby on.

These took a long time to get to. Three regiments is bit more than I can comfortably tackle in my tiny hobby space and takes a 45 minis is a large number to paint up even if I had oodles of space, and I wanted to paint them all at once so there would be some better cohesion to the unit. Thankfully, I was motivated after my games, had some time over the holidays to spread out, and so these were painted up over a few leisurely days.

Showing off some facial hair colors. Pre-blood effect.

I also didn't know the colors I wanted. Sitting down to paint, I eventually went with a blue (Macragge Blue) shirt and a dark gray paint for the leggings. Shoes and belts and such were brown, with metals getting a nice dark Leadbelcher. The skin got a variety of flesh tones, and then green or brown or skin washes to get some variations. Hair got browns, but was more often Zamesi Desert (a dark yellow) and Deathclaw Brown. The latter usually comes off as rather vibrant, so I was surprised at how muted it seemed alongside the greened skin tones. 

Where there seem to be exposed flesh and muscle, especially on the ghoul legs, got a pinker overbrush, and exposed organs from the zombies got a darker fleshtone. Everything was hit with a variety of washes to give some good discoloration and depth, and then a blood effect (the technical Blood for the Blood God paint) was applied, though this was used far more scantly than my other zombie or undead units. Here I kept it mostly for the spikes in the ghoul bits and exposed zombie flesh and organs. 

An old base. The super-glue I used them appears to have yellowed. Not all my snow bases have yellowed over the years. I was using a real cheap glue, so this could be a problem of quality. Will need to check on everything as the years go by.

I had a number of used Varangur-style bases from decommissioning the old Warbands of 2nd Edition. I had tossed the bases in a box, and figured I needed to reuse them now or throw them out, and these were the reason I clipped all the stands. The bases would get touched up with black, dark grey, and light grey on all the exposed cork to recreate the rocky ground effect. Then the snow got touched up with a mix of ivory and white paint to hide the glue discolorations, and then another thin layer of pva glue + white paint + baking soda snow effect. I let that dry for a day, and then went in with an old brush adding the blood effect here as well. I guess what I was going for here was "droppings" for lack of a better word. I figured blood would be dripping from them or their victims, so tried to focus on adding blood to the legs of the minis, and to set up a bunch of blood spots on the bases to suggest footprints and blood falling from wounds and such. Looking at the pictures here, it mostly works, and I think another pass to get the effect on both the feet and the base would sell it more. You can kind of tell things were done separately and then glued together.

Unit 1

I originally discounted these, thinking they had Shambling. Possibly needing to tech into Surge when nothing else in the roster needed it seemed like a bad move. I'd probably be correct. However, Draugr have Speed 4, but do not have Shambling, meaning you can just take them as-is, with no additional commitment. That's great.

Unit 2

As regiments, they have a fait bit of Nerve to chew through for their points and can help populate a battlefield cheaply. For 75 points, they can be cheap early drops. They can babysit objectives while other units go kill things. They can help screen out scary things from your better infantry, such as the mighty Huscarls. They are also regular units, and can cheaply unlock some nice toys, monsters or heroes for your lists.

Unit 3.

And you can always run them as hordes, or even legions. I maybe should have built my units up differently to let me run a legion (that is, run one regiment as two troops, so that these can slot in to make a legion), but I don't really have an interest in running the Draugr this large, so it is what it is, and I guess I am doin' me. 

The Draugr have a neat interaction with the Magus, which most people aren't using from what I have seen. I think it's a very minor upside and just too many criteria to meet it. Basically you can transfer 1d2 damage from a unit within 6" of the Magus onto a Draugr also within 6" of the Magus for free. That's neat, but there is a final caveat that a unit can only be targeted once, so that's a lot of hoops to jump through. Your positioning matters, distances matter, and you need to run Magi to enable the feature which while fluffy, is not as likely as they are not inspiring on their own. I don't think this will come up too often in games, and is not something I'll be aiming to achieve on the battlefield normally. 

The Draugr regiments should be welcome additions to the army, bringing more drops and more Nerve at just a pittance of a price. Hopefully they will hit the table soon!