Hobby Update: Lower Abyssals with Shields

Up now is a second horde of Lower Abyssals, this time with shields!

The horde, stretching the limits of my little light box.

I avoided Lower Abyssals for a long time. I stared the Abyssals back in 2018 (first units here), porting over a lot of Warhammer Fantasy stuff iwnto Kings of War, as well as odds and ends from other ranges for characters and such. I didn't even play a game with the army until 2022, when I was getting out of Covid isolations and started playing games with Trevor of Data and Dice. Gaming fueled hobbying, but preferred Flamebearers, but eventually the first regiment of proper Lower Abyssals was done up in September of 2022 (link here), taking smashy weapons. I wanted to do up additional units of Lower Abyssals, but I wanted uniformity to the units - not the mess of tridents and whips and stuff that came with the kit. I wanted Lower Abyssals with swords and shields, but didn't like the shields in the kit, and needed more swords too. The kit only comes with one of the big axes per sprue, so I needed more boxes, and the one regiment was all I was going to get to without additional purchases.

I tried a lot of what I would call MMU play, and while I wanted additional units just to check them off, I needed bits, and lacked the motivation to buy more boxes and hobby up any hordes, until inspiration struck over the summer after the doubles tournament, where my partner was also running Abyssals, but in a way very different to my approach. Motivated, I bought the last box I needed, and got to work, finishing the second regiment of smashy Abyssals in July, 2024 (link here).

I now had enough bodies and weapon bits for the second horde (plus some additional bodies), but I still needed shields that I liked. Fortunately, I finally found some in the Oathmark Skeleton box, so I started on this horde with swords and shields over the summer.

A regiment's worth.

Hobby-wise, we've already covered the gist of these. The minis are Mantic, all using the left handed broken swords from the kit, and shields from the Oathmark Skeleton box. The bases are the same rocks and lava which is a base of Deathclaw Brown for the edges, layered up with more and more vibrant yellows. The minis got some old Pink Horror skin, and then a variety of metallics. The only notable change to the paints here was using a darker Warplock Bronze on the shields. The horns and bone bits were Ushabti Bone with a brown wash, and then since I didn't overdo it with the wash, I actually tried highlights on the bone, running some Screaming Skull along the edges of the boney bits. 

My hobbying is usually pretty rough and basic; I do what I can, and get everything to about the same level of goodness. I don't attempt techniques like this often, but I do like how these turned out. One advantage of my "good enough for now" approach to painting, is that I can go back and do touchups later, as my skills improve. I might (slowly) touchup the rest of the Flamebearers and Lower Abyssals down the road. We shall see.

The other regiment.

Crunch-wise, the Clash 2025 refresh for the Forces of the Abyss brought some big changes to the Lower Abyssals. Essentially, their unit entry got rolled up with the weaker Abyssal Ghouls, and so while they got a points discount, they are now hitting on a 5+ in Melee.

My gut says this is a pretty crippling nerf to the smashy option but a boon to the shielded option, as they are primarily around to just hold the line, and the price decrease will be welcome and worthwhile, but especially with the new Nagarri units around, we could be surprised at which horde is actually more effective overall. Testing is needed! I’m looking forward to getting both of the hordes on the table sometime to compare and contrast.