Hobby Update: Herd Centaur Bray Hunters

I have fallen so far behind on my hobby posts that I had some games sneak in with some brand new units before I could showcase or discuss them in detail. That’s quite unusual for me, so we’ll try to catch up a bit now with some Centaur Bray Hunters for the Herd!

All the units.

The minis are Centaurs from RGD Games, which seems like a neat little company. They designed their Fauns and Centaurs sprues to be interchangeable. So much so, that if you buy a box of one, there are several bonus sprues of the other to encourage some customizability. I don’t think I have seen this level of kitbash encouragement before, nor do you often get free, unadvertised, extra sprues in a box, so this is definitely worth mentioning! There is a lot of value here and the extras might save you a few purchases if you are building up a new army.

The regiment.

I scored a ridiculously huge ebay lot of RGD stuff back in March, and have been slowly hobbying on the Centaurs since.

Despite being designed to be interchangeable, the kits are not without issue. To rattle things off quickly… There are male/female sculpts included, but the arms are not interchangeable, so you need to be aware of what you are using, and use the right corresponding arm, otherwise you won’t get a good fit. The kits have shields in several designs, but are usually just one per sprue type, so are hard to amass. My two biggest complaints though are that the female heads are a nightmare to connect to the neck since the female heads have no notch (the male heads do), and that bows are only found on the Faun sprue, with a measly 1 bow per sprue. Despite my gripes, these still seem like good kits for anyone wanting to cheaply jumpstart a Herd army… just as long as you don’t want much shooting!

All this to say that hobbying-wise, the units are RGD Centaurs, kitbashed with their Faun sprues in order to get the needed bows. The paint scheme is my usual, with MSP Glacier Blue (or close equivalent) for the skin, as the only unique color, as the other colors are mundane, with any dark brown for leather, etc. 

Two troops, with some complementary edges to be run as a good looking regiment.

I have been drawn to these kind of versatile harassing units before, with both the Kingdoms of Men Mounted Scouts and the Herd Scorchwings making a lot of appearances in the early games for their respective armies. This kind of unit has been very hard to use well, but I have gotten some good insights in the recent games (Battle 068 and 069) using the Bray Hunters. 

The Scorchwings have been hard to use because I’ve prioritized using their shooting and just trying to keep them alive, since they are so expensive. Their rub here was that while they are versatile, their stats are skewed towards melee, so hanging back wasn’t a good use for them. Then, while they are paying for Fly and Me3, they still only have TC1, so while they are technically geared towards melee, they still aren’t particularly good at it. 

The Mounted Scout from the Kingdoms of Men have had the opposite problem, where I saw Melee 4+ and Ranged 5+ and had often done work to get them in flanking positions, only to have them charge in and effectually nothing happen. They don’t have any real benefits to damage in either melee or ranged combat, which makes them space holders on the battlefield. It pays to have even a little rules or stats benefit to nudge you in some direction for using them. I think to run this kind of unit in the Kingdoms of Men, I need to invest in the Blackpowder Weapons for the Scouts, and instead of trying to charge in with them, try to keep them back in more of a supporting role, like the Halflings did against me recently in Battle 065.

The Hunters are somewhat splitting the middle. Their stats are middling, but they have TC. They are noticeably cheaper than the Scorchwings, but a step up from the Mounted Scouts, which should be expected. They seemed to do ok, landing a damage or two before charging in, and with me wanting to explore more units, they seem like they could be fun for me! 

The final two troops, also with some complementary edges.

The Herd have dominated my hobbying time over the last few months, with a sprawling 1,000+ points of various Centaur units slowing working its way across my desk. Stalling out, in May I started foolishly adding in new, smaller projects, such as the Abyssal Ghouls, to help keep me motivated out by working with new paints or different units… but this just created an overwhelming sprawl of seemingly unending hobby projects. I put everything away in mid-June, deep cleaned my hobby spot, and am bringing things back one at a time to finish them off while preserving my sanity. More to come! And hopefully soon!