The Great Stampede of 2024

While packing up for the July league games, I had a mishap, and a beloved box of Herd went end-over end. You see, I put my armies in plastic boxes, and stack my boxes shelves for storage. There are a maximum of 3 boxes to a shelf, but getting into the lower ones still means I do need to take stuff off and set it to the side. I did so, and set it down on a small square table, with the ends sticking out, since it was just a dinky end table living in the garage for now. I don't have many metal models, but some happened to be in one of the ends. They weren't heavy enough to give me any concerns immediately, but were heavy enough to flip the darn thing thirty seconds later while I was pulling units from a different box.

The box was full of units, so this is about half the damage.

A few thousand points of units were barreled over by my old metal Stampede units and one of my metal Guardian Brute hordes. Among the casualties were the Avatar of the Father, and a brand new 3rd horde of Tribal Spears that I hadn't even started writing about yet. There were a lot of broken units:

• Tree Herder (Broken Weapon)
• Avatar of the Father (head and wings)
• Minotaur Chariots x2 (most of the models)
• Lycan Horde x3 (numerous breaks)
• Guardian Brutes (Broken weapons)
• Harpies (Broken ankles)
• Moonfang (broken snout)
• Druid (Wizkids and safe)
• Lycan Alpha (Wizkids and safe)
• Flying Beast of Nature (Wizkids and safe)
• Beast of Nature // Brutox (multiple breaks)
• Longhorn Troops x2 (multiple breaks, most knocked off of the bases)
• Tribal Spears 3rd Horde (a few breaks, all but one knocked off their bases)

Faced with some surprise projects, I didn't know what the best approach would be here. I quickly opted for some “reverse triage.” I started sorting all the broken bits, and then set about fixing the easiest things first. If you find yourself in a similar situation, I would recommend this approach as a way to quickly get back on your feet and not feel overwhelmed.

The easiest stuff, all fixed up.

Moonfang landed on and broke his snout, in addition to getting popped off his base. Despite being resin, it was thankfully a very clean break. The Harpies got ravaged, with one popping off cleanly but the other two breaking at the ankles for their leaping poses. The Avatar of the Father was knocked off his base, with the wings popping off as well as his head. Fortunately, all of these breaks were clean, and after some dry fitting to confirm, everything here was glued back together the night of the accident. The metal Guardian Brutes lost two of their big axes, and these were re-glued that night too.

All but one fell in the catastrophe! 

I hadn't gotten to even starting to write their Update post yet, but I had finished up a new Spear Horde of RGD Fauns about a day prior. The calamity had broken them all off of their base, save for one horn blower. One head had popped off, one one lost a shield, but otherwise, they apparently luckily popped off like bowling pins, and were just scattered throughout the storage box. I touched up the bases with some white paint to hide the previous glue connections, and then re-glued everything down the following day. I’ll hopefully get to their Update post soon.

The new and third horde. More to come for these soon.

I believe my old Stampede units were the cause of the crash. I used a number of models for these units, in an attempt to have a bunch of creatures. Three of the minis were large metal models, making the units quite heavy. Unused, had been absent-mindedly stuck in a corner of the bin. I guess I’ll need to remember to put metal models in the middle of my storage bins from now on. And / or just keep a tidier storage space! Anyways, the metal models had stands, and survived, attached to the bases. The rest of the minis just had hooves, and were just glued down. Since the Stampede is a legendary pick now, I decided to pry off one of the metal models, and slim everything down to just one unit. At the end of this, we have 10 spare Chaos Warhounds / Gur Panthers, which I guess are going back into storage, as I don’t need more chaff currently. A little extra snow and the unit was rehabilitated a few days after the accident. 

Old units condensed into one, with a lot of spare Gur Panthers now...

One of my Tree Herders was also in the box, and as-predicted, the very long sword bit broke, in addition to a few thorn bits and being knocked off the base. A few thorn bits got lost, but I liked the asymmetrical look better, and I decided to just replace the sword bit. 

A more compact monster. 

I only have some scraps of foam insulation these days, having turn the rest into hills, but found one that looked vaguely hammer-shaped. I covered the foam with some PVA glue to harden it, then attached a small nut where I wanted the hammer to join with the handle. There was a slight nub from the sword breakage, so I figured that a tiny bit of green stuff in the hole of the nut should smush to make a good connection. To hide the nut, more green stuff was noodled out and wrapped around, creating a bit of a Thor “Stormbreaker” vibe. The layer of glue protected the foam from melting, so once all the green stuff dried, this new weapon was primed, painted and then glued on. 

Some rather bright Longhorns.

The damage continues though, and included a regiment’s worth of Longhorns. I had used super glue on them, and there were a number of breaks among the models. Those were all easily fixed, but I decided to do up new bases for these units, as everything had yellowed to an unsightly degree. I am led to believe super glue was the culprit of the yellowing? When doing these up, I tried super-gluing all of the minis and tufts on while the snow effect was still setting, pushing things into the blob to aim for a more natural look and feel . I also don’t think I used much paint back then. I believe the super glue interacted with the baking soda, to form the yellowness. So here, I did up new bases, then added the snow effect, and then once that had tried, added the minis back on. I let the bases dry for a while, so these were hobbied up about a week after the accident.

The last of the damaged units were three beefy hordes of Lycans. They also had a number of breakages on the minis, and a lot of yellowing on the bases. I wanted to do up new bases for them, and maybe reorganize the models into different units for some more flexibility. But I lack enough new large Infantry bases to really get that going. I am not using the Lycans regularly in my lists, so I gathered these up, and we’ll save repairing those for a future project. 

This was an unwelcome mess, but I lucked out, and was able to repair most of the damage within a week or so. I’m down a Stampede / Minotaur Chariot regiment, but I can live with that and like the new streamlined unit. We’ll touchup the Lycans in the future, but for now, we’ll get back to hobbying up some new fun stuff!