Hobby Update: Forest Shamblers

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.

The leaves on the Hunters were basically one-offs and easier to highlight. I tried the same thing here, but with all the dry brushing on the bark bodies, there just wasn't enough variation between the bark and all the leaves after my first painting attempt. It looked like I had wanted everything to be the same colors but forget a step on the leaves, which wasn't a great look. I threw an ivory dry brush over the leaves to set them apart, but didn't like that result either, since that didn't really look like leaves at all.

In the end, I used some Speed Paints over the leaves. A quick pass of Pallid Bone gave a yellowed effect much more like dead leaves. I then added Zealot Yellow on spots that got poor coverage from the Pallid Bone, giving some nice gradation for the dried leaves, and I am much happier with the results here after using the Speed Paints.

Bad warping, but better leaves.

The minis are great, but unit bases proved to be quite a disappointment though. I have a stockpile of spare unit bases from Ironheart Artisans that I've been dipping into as needed. They are usually great, but the manufacturer seems to have changed their processes in the last few years, and now the bases seem to be weaker and more prone to bending. Here they developed a very definite warp, with all the corners lifting up a few millimeters. I didn't add any cork board sections on these bases, so maybe all the basing efforts was just too much glue in total, or was too much applied to quickly, causing the warp?

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.

I tried brute force, bending and flexing the bases, but to no avail, and the bases continued their upward bends. I have heard applying glue on the underside can help, but with minis already glued down and the bends so corkscrewed, I wasn't sure if I could get the surface flat enough for the glue to stay put to cure properly, let alone sitting in the right areas to fully counter the corkscrew.

In a little bout of madness I chose to try and steam the bases, hoping some gentle heat and dampness would mess with the MDF and let me bent it back into a better position. I selected two, and over a large steamer / strainer implement, brought some water to a gentle boil, and then let the units soak up the steam for a few moments. Just that proved to be too much though, and the underside of one of the bases began to flake and deteriorate. Still, both seemed more pliable, so I clamped them to the coffee table for a few hours. 

As a fun aside, the clamps I had are apparently for "Medium Duty" clamping, which just tickled me as a concept. I have only ever heard "heavy duty" as a way to describe allegedly durable hardware, so this was a fun chuckle while working. Unfortunately, these methods were also to no avail, and once unclamped, the warping persisted and the regiments still refused to stay in their trays. Sheesh. 

Already yellowing...

As if all the warping wasn't enough, I noticed some yellow discoloration on some of the units already. I had noticed this in some of my older snowy units, but never quite figured out why. Looks like excess super glue is the source of this evil! Some paint around the join should solve this, but I had had enough of fiddling around at this point. Thankfully, I had just enough spare large infantry unit bases in my stockpile to just set about redoing all the bases entirely.

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. 

I am not good with green stuff, but tried my best, and appear to be learning a few tricks after all these years. What has done me in previously is adding in too much too fast, and not leaving any time to let things cure and harden. I hoped to avoid that mistake here, adding in a thin "femur-like" connection first. 

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.

For the new bases, I also took things slow over a few days, in the hopes of reducing any potential warping. Doing all the basing a third time was something I was quite desperate to avoid!

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!