Hobby Update: Herd Forest Wardens and Greater Earth Elementals

Forest Wardens caught my eye a while back, but the draw was not strong enough to have me do anything about it at the time. That changes as of now, and here are two new Forest Wardens, as well as two Greater Earth Elementals, all for the Herd and all ready for the table!

The Shambling gang.

I made a lot of recent additions to the Herd, and added this group in near end of my push, as I thought something new to paint to help motivate me to finish it all up. In reality, I just continued to overwhelm myself, and slow down my progress on everything. I ultimately needed to pack everything up, pack up the paints, deep clean my space, and then bring things back one-by-one to finish up. 

Wardens.

The Warden minis are Myconid Sovereigns from WizKids / Nolzur. They don't have a direct link on the website to this blister, so you'll need to search for it yourself. The manufacturer continues to be a decent way to pick up characters and such for relatively cheap. No modifications were made, and the minis just got very basic woody paint jobs.

I am still learning the Herd and Inspiring sources are still definitely a weak point in my lists. Generally speaking, the Herd doesn’t have particularly good Defense, Nerve, or Inspiring sources, and very little is Very Inspiring in the roster. I think I need to run more sources than usual, which is why these originally caught my eye. I want my Inspiring sources to be doing other things, and these seem like little Swiss army knives. 

Crunch-wise, the Wardens are intriguing. I wouldn’t expect much from them in combat, but with their stats they can probably contribute a damage against most things, maybe two damage if the dice are with me. The aren’t that quick, but are nimble and can Scout, so should be able to help out many units. They have a Unit Strength, and should be great for picking up Loot or playing in scenarios. And they should be able to hold magic items like the Trickster’s Wand especially well. And at 90 points, they are still cheap enough to be sacrificed as chaff if needed. Lastly, they are spellcasters, but only know a small Surge and can’t pick up any additional spells. 

Spellcasting and Surge are what prevented me from exploring these earlier. I want my sources of Inspiring to be doing other things, and while Surge is something, I wasn't really all that impressed with my Forest Shamblers, and wasn't interested in pursuing the Warden if I wasn't making use of all of his abilities.

The Greater Earth Elementals!

Which brings us to the other unit here: Greater Earth Elementals! Over the Pandemic, once we stopped wiping down groceries and such, I started ordering things online. I picked up some Runewars boxes for cheap, and although I eventually regained some sense and sold off the starter boxes, I kept some of the singleton boxes and have used them for some Abyssal Horsemen and some Revenant Wyrms. They are still good minis if you can find them, especially their larger models. 

I had been keeping 4 Runewars Golems around because I loved the models, and figured I'd use them as Earth Elementals at some point. Even putting them on a large infantry horde base though, the four of them were crowding things out. I figured two could be used here, and I'd keep the other two on hand for some eventual future project.

Hobby-wise, these were primed black, and hit with some dark gray overbrushing, then gray into light gray into white drybrushing. I was going to try some speed paints and slapchop on them before I remembered that they are just rocks. Oops. A wash of dirty paint water and Agrax Earthshade muted everything nicely, and they got some metals and stuff for color, and some simple horns to link them to the Herd. Something was missing as I finished these up though. Searching online, some painters had put bright colors in the cracks, like an animating energy. Ideally, this would have been an earlier step, but I ended the paintjob with it, using a diluted Army Painter "Toxic Mist" to get a teal color into the nooks and crannies. These are looking good, and we're calling them done!

We've seen GEEs across the table a few times in recent memory, as fielded by the stalwart Imperial Dwarfs in Battle 059 and in Battle 067. Chatting after those games got me thinking about these as options for the Herd. I wasn't too enthused about the elemental units, as I didn't think their ponderous pace would mix well with the generally speedy Herd. It's a little contradictory, but I think there might be promise for the Greater Elementals though? The Herd relies a lot on Thunderous Charge, but doesn't have much Crushing Strength. I am going to struggle against high defense armies, and we've seen that a bit already. I think the GEE can help anchor my own line, and provide some nice CS3 against those tougher lists. I am not good with Shambling units, and feel like monsters might be a good place to start learning some tips. We'll see what they can do when they hit the gaming table!