Hobby Update: Abyssal Ghouls

You wouldn't know it since I haven't actually finished anything in a good long while, but the Herd have been absolutely dominating my hobby time over the last few months. I've usually only have an evening to spare here and there, so it has been a long slog, and hopefully things will be crossing the finish line very shortly. But to get there I needed a break from all the blues and whites, so I decided to give the Abyssals some attention again. One remaining goal for that army is to build out a few more regiments of Lower Abyssals at some point, in order to have some infantry hordes as options. Hobbying on those units would have been sensible choices, but sensible is not how I roll these days. So up now are some Abyssal Ghouls!

Fluff-wise Ghouls are depraved humans. They are drawn either to the Undead or the Abyss, and then corrupted by those forces. While I really like that Kings of War lets you spread units across multiple armies, I know that I am not going to do that here, and that I wanted to make this unit more unique and clearly Abyssals-only. 

The front.

Hobbying-wise, the bodies are Ghouls, and the heads are some leftover Lower Abyssal heads. If you snip off the nub of the head, as well as the neck of the Ghoul, you can get a pretty decent join, which you can tidy up with more trimming, sprue goo, or even some green stuff, as needed. You can mix-and-match the torsos and legs, but with so few body choices overall (2 each), I tried to add in more hand/weapon swaps and even a few shields to break up the silhouettes more. The shields are the oddest bit, and are spares from the Frostgrave Demons sprues, which I have previously used for my Oathbreakers. It's a decent kit, and bought in bulk, would be great for Abyssal Guards. (A warning though, that you will need multiple boxes, since a sprue doesn't have enough shields or weapons to make a uniform unit with the bodies included.)

For painting, I primed in black, and then did an ivory / off-white dry brush to pick out the details. I was thinking of giving them more human skin, but opted for my normal reddish pink (Citadel's Pink Horror). The ragged clothes got what felt like a heavy “wash” of Gravelord Grey Speed Paint, and then an overbrush with a dark gray. Nice and quick.

The rear.

Being lazy, but somewhat experienced, I opted not to snip off the stands. Snipping them off takes a lot of work plus then a lot of clean up work for the feet, and I really wanted these as a quicker project. So, I pasted the stands, primed the mini, and painted everything up, with the ground getting a black base and a dark gray overbrush. The minis were then glued down, and paste was put around the stands. Once this dried, it was then painted with the same black and dark grey. At this point, the minis were painted and the ground pretty uniform in color, so the light gray drybrush was done near the the end, to help disguise the stands and unify the look. The paste was pretty thin, so the stands are not as cleverly camouflaged as I'd like, but that's the drawback of using stands. Still, the unit looks ok and this was done very quickly over a weekend, so hey, mission accomplished.

The side.

Crunch-wise, these don’t seem terrible? Their stats caught my eye about a month ago. They are cheaper than Lower Abyssals and have a (slightly) better Nerve, though do slip to a Melee 5+. They lack Regeneration too, but at just 90 points per regiment they give you a Def4 unit and an unlock, which can be helpful. As an objective holder or sacrificial blocker, this unit isn't looking too bad! And cheap unlocking hordes can take up a lot of space too, if hordes are your thing.

I should also take the time here to shoutout Data and Dice, who recently highlighted these as one of the more cost-effective units for the Abyssals. We arrived at the unit separately, so this sounds like something to explore in more detail. His site also has a slew of new posts and a formatting overhaul, so definitely check them out if it has been a week or more since your last visit.

With my “more is better” approach to hobbying and testing, I would have liked to have hobbied up another regiment right here right now, but unfortunately, I only picked up the one box, and even with some leftovers, I don't quite have the minis to make a second unit happen right now. Expanding the Ghouls here will need to be yet another future project for the army. Overall, this was a fun little project and a great palette cleanser, finished up over Memorial Day weekend, so I am a few weeks behind in my hobbying posts. I'll try to get my numerous Herd projects across the finish line and posted soon!