I got a small work bonus work in March, so I let myself pick up a few new things to hobby on, including these new Forest Shamblers here.
The finished units. Two shambling hordes of trees. |
These "Young Ent" models are originally from Castnplay if my STL sleuthing is correct. The models are pretty fun-looking, and have 4 variants. With only 3 models in a normal large infantry regiment, you can easily make units that look similar but with unique posing, which is great for wargaming. The poses and faces are menacing, and the models have a lot of character.
I picked mine up from an etsy shop, The Bard's Forge. I thought the minis would be far bigger and take up roughly a 50mm base each, but most fit quite easily on a round 32mm, with only the striding one needing a 40mm base due to the very long stride. Being smaller than I thought, I actually had to go back and place a second order from the shop to run the two hordes of Forest Shamblers like I wanted to. Both transactions were speedy and wonderful, so feel encouraged to browse their offerings if you are in the US.
The shop did a great job scraping off all the supports from the print so there wasn't much prep work I actually needed to do! I still rinsed the minis with warm water, and in between rain and snow storms (Wisconsin seemed to get something about once a week in March), primed them once they dried. I tried to copy the bark paint scheme I had with the Hunters of the Wild. I think I dropped one of the many, many layers here with the Shamblers though, but they are close enough, and the minis took the dry brushing quite well.
Yeah, too much white I think. |
I was just going to deal with it for now and make future me deal with potentially rebasing in the future, but the warping was significant enough that when I went to put these away, every regiment easily slipped up and over and out of the movement trays I was intending to use. I was moving slow and was able to catch everything, but I decided that I needed to try and find a solution before calling these units finished. Dropping units on the floor is something to be avoided!
Medium Duty clamps in action. |
Already yellowing... |
The setbacks kept coming on these units though! The miniature with the early yellowing issue proved hard to remove, as the super glue had seeped in deep, and in attempting to remove him, I ended up shattering him, breaking both forearms off, a claw bit, both lower leg bits as well as one thigh. Resin minis are quite brittle as it turns out! I ended up totally losing the claw and thigh pieces, and both of which needed to be green-stuffed back into existence.
New bits are all cured. |
Since the connection would hold the weight up the miniature, I propped this up among some paint pots and small tools, arranging things so that it should set while still being upright. All balanced, I let it sit undisturbed for 12 hours to fully cure and harden up.
The bark effect for these was basically just a lot of gouges, so over the following day, I mixed up just a tiny amount of green stuff at a time, rolling out a tendril-like piece and then wrapping it around the femur, waiting a few hours, and then doing it again. Over a day I slowly built the leg connection up piece by piece, letting it all cure for another full 12 hours after adding in the last piece. I was still a little unsure about it, but after throwing some paint on it, the fixed mini blended in just fine with the others, and I was feeling satisfied.
Redoing the bases, slowly. |
I felt like excess glue likely caused the most of the warping issues from before, so I tried to reduce the amount of glue used this time. I first glued on some cork board, adding basing paste the next day. The paste is basically just glue and sand, so this was added quite sparingly. Empty spaces would either be done up as little ponds, or eventually covered with the snow effect, so heavier or complete coverage with the basing paste was avoided here.
For future me, basing colors for the ground are any gray for a base coat, followed by a full layer of 09021 Snow Shadow from Reaper, then a dry brush of ivory, or some other off-white color, to better accent the whiter snow effect added later.
Finished horde #1. |
Finished horde #2. |
On the table, these should be pretty unique units for me, and I based them in regiments to give me even more flexibility in any future lists. Surge and Shambling moves can be a big part of the game, but are not something I have really explored at all yet in any of my main armies. These particular units intrigued me though, since in addition to the surge shenanigans they can pull off, they also have both Pathfinder and Scout. A Scout-move ignores Shambling, so these seem like a neat way to apply pressure early and box an enemy wing in. I'm not sure how sound a strategy that really is, as these don't hit particularly hard, but it certainly should be fun to test out sometime! I was hoping I'd had a more balanced list and a debut battle with the Herd in April, but the Shamblers here took a long time and delayed a lot of my hobby efforts. We'll have to introduce them to the table another time!
No comments:
Post a Comment