Hobby Update: More Herd Tribal Spears

While kitbashing and hobbying up all of the Centaurs in the spring, I eventually got distracted by the Faun sprues and succumbed to hobbying up a new unit to explore that sprue more. The Herd have received well over 2,000 points of stuff since May, but I am not quite done with additions for them. Up now are some more Tribal Spears for the Herd!

Huzzah! A wild third horde appears!

These are the Faun minis from RDG. Their Centaur and Faun kits are meant to be interchangeable, so much so that each box comes with a few extra sprues of the other! You can read more about that in the Centaur Hunters post, but overall, buying the boxes in bulk isn’t a bad way to jump-start a Herd army. Weapon and shield selection are a little rough though, as the Faun sprues are split into Male and Female sprues, which are slightly different, both in terms of the selection, as well as the arm sculpts. Spears are the most numerous weapon type included, but only in the Faun kits. While pilfering some for the Centaur Striders, I started assembling a new horde as well.

From above. They are slim miniatures, but can still fill out a base ok.

Hobbying-wise, nothing too crazy is going on. My formulae for the Herd has gotten dialed in over the last year or so! For newcomers, the Blue is a MSP Glacier Blue, with a Citadel Drakenhof Nightshade shade paint, and that’s the only standout color. Everything else is pretty generic for the wood and metals and stuff.

The first regiment.

I’ve been using hordes of Tribal Spears as the go-to starting unit for my lists for the last few months. You have to buy TC now, but doing so gives them a lot of versatility on the battlefield, and I have been liking them a lot. This will be my third Horde, and I think that is probably excessive? My recent approach to the Herd has been to try and add more and more units for more staying power though, so we’ll see. Maybe three hordes (one for each table third?) could be viable.

The second regiment.

There is an argument to be made for me to have changed gears and assembled these are a basic Warrior unit for greater variety – but for 15 points more the Spears seem like a much better buy. Phalanx gives them more survivability, and the extra attacks offer a little more punch when they go on the offense or charge in to support other units. With my general aversion to magic items, I can’t imagine getting to the end of a list and wanting or needing to scale these back to save a few points. 

If the Warriors could get 2-handers and some CS (in addition to buying the TC of course!, I think my approach to the Tribal units would change, but weapon-swapping isn’t an option for that unit currently, so here we are. 

The unit was hobbied up in early June and July, lost momentarily with the Great Stampede, and then reattached at the end of the month. Three 200+ point hordes is probably too much, but we’ll try to get the entire trio on the table sometime for some side-by-side testing soon!