Hobby Update: Great Chieftain with the Horn

 Up now is a new hero for the Herd, a Great Chieftain with the Horn of Migration!

In profile. I might try to highlight the horn at some point.

I’ve enjoyed trying to learn the Herd, but they remain a very tricky army to play. One of the hurdles for the army has been my sources of Inspiration. In some of the more recent games, I was a little flummoxed by my rather uniform Speed 6 and inability to advantageously start fights against other similarly-speeded units. I had this conversion idea kicking around for many months, so I decided to hobby him up, and then pop outside on a calm but chilly November day to prime him.

The conversion was done in conjunction with the recent Flaxhoof miniature, though done several weeks after I had already finished up the centaur. The centaur had an RGD Centaur for the horse part, and the upper body of a Warhammer Gor for the human part, meaning I still had the lower Gor body to work with. I had bought a bunch of Warhammer Forsaken bits as 8th Edition and the End Time occurred, and had some leftover torsos. I sanded down the armor so it looked less mutated, and then shoved some green stuff into the gaps, to make it easier to glue on other bits. I used a Bestigor head, Gor arm, and a Marauder Horsemen musician arm for the horn. A few other bits added here and there, and we’re all set.

Another profile.

The posing was certainly difficult though! The torso cut with the leg positioning and the horn all proved more extreme than I had thought, so I added some sprue bits to the base so the hoof could connect at and angle and the figure could be more vertical. The priming was white (out of everything else, apparently), but got the usual coloring, including the Marid Blue. 

On the table, the normal Chieftain looks a bit underwhelming. He seems based off of the Kingdoms of Men General on foot, a hero that doesn’t see much play. For 10 extra points, he gets an extra Speed, TC1, and Pathfinder though, which isn’t bad. The issue is that’s he’s a melee individual hero, and at 12/14, if you send him in with the wrong multi-charge, he could be speed-bumped as your opponent countercharges and then overruns into your fighting unit. Melee individuals are risky!

From the front.

The unique Horn increases his cost, but somewhat mitigates that risk, nudging him into more of a supporting roll with both the Dread and Wild Charge Auras. He can still fight, but doesn’t need to, if you are worried about reprisals. The latter should help my Speed 6 stuff start fights just a little better once stuff like the Centaur Striders are gone, and Dread should help me break units. The only bummer is that the Guardian Brutes, my typical hammers, have Brutal, so it may behoove me to put the Chieftain with other units. We’ll see how it all shakes out. 

After running a number of unwieldy lists that over-invested into aspects of the Herd to really test those things out, I’m ready to reorient and try some more balanced and thoughtful approaches to the army. The Chieftain here, along with Flaxhoof should provide some neat avenues of play, and I look forward to testing them out soon!