Hobby Update: Herd Centaur Chiefs

Up now is another Herd side-project, undertaken in the midst of doing up a ton of Centaurs for various units. Hitting the table soon are some new Centaur Chiefs!

The new trio.

The first mini is Nolzur / WizKids. I picked him up months ago at a FLGS. He was big and imposing and I figured he would make a good Flaxhoof... but after hobbying him up, I discovered that the legendary pick doesn't actually have a bow, or even the option to take one! He also lacks the horns of the rest of my Herd units, which is an aesthetic bummer. I finished him, so he's around, but I don't think he'll hit the table often.

The Nolzur mini is the odd one out.

Finishing up the Nolzur mini actually bummed me out, since I had so much hobby stuff going on and he felt like wasted effort in the end. I have two other Centaur Chiefs already, but those are Reaper Miniatures and don't quite fit my current army aesthetic either. After finishing the Nolzur mini up, I remembered that I still had some sprues of  the RGD Centaurs around, and figured I could easily squeeze out two more minis as I was wrapping up all of these other projects... This wasn't exactly true, but I did get them done.

Two RGD Centaur Chiefs. 

Since these are RGD Centaurs, they match very well with my new units. The ebay bundle had a weird head (I want to say is some kind of masked Dark Elf), which looked cool, so I added it in here. In retrospect it doesn't have horns either though, so maybe we'll replace the head at some point. Whatever. More things can be considered "done" and moved off my desk, which is the important thing right now, and these two fit better with the army, so I am happy with their look.

These weren't finished at the time, so I actually brought an old Chief to my recent league games (Battle 068 and 069). I expected a little more, honestly. Centaurs (Striders in particular) have some odd stats which makes them hard to evaluate, and their heroes are no different.

The KOM General on Horse is pretty comparable. The General gets an extra attack, extra Nerve, a bump to Def5, and a boost to Very Inspiring. For 10 points cheaper, the Centaur is worse in all those ways, but can boast CS2 and Pathfinder. 

The Centaur Chief is small and speedy and pretty cheap at 110 points. Unlike the recent Chieftain on Chariot, the Centaur Chiefs do have Pathfinder and CS2, so he should play nicely with the rest of the list, contributing a damage (maybe 2!) against most things when multi-charging.

At Defense 4, he's not great at taking hits, and with only 4 attacks, he's not much up a damage dealer either. With so few attacks, neither of his upgrades (Duelist via the Hunting Cat, or the 18" Shortbow) feels very appealing. Even against a generic Def 4 Spellcaster (let's say, a Necromancer at 10/12 Nerve), duelist isn't going to be enough to reliably get in break them on the charge; it'll very likely take a few combats. Similarly, non-Piercing bow-fire has generally been disappointing. Combining the two is also probably not going to be super effective either, as Individuals are harder to hit at range, so any damage you do on approach is still going to be very minimal. Even if you get a round or two of shooting off, it will still likely take a few combats to best even that hypothetical Necromancer. I think stock is generally going to be the way to run these. (Bows could be ok, but only if you are running a lot of other shooting and going for a weight-of-fire kind of approach.)

I don't think the Chief is an easy go-to option like I was hoping for. However, they could be nice just to have around to inspire speedier units, such as other Centaurs though. Having hobbied up a lot of Centaur units recently, I am sure we'll be seeing more of the various Centaur units and their new Chiefs very soon!