Hobby Update: Abyssal Despoiler Champions

Up now are some new Despoiler Champions for the Forces of the Abyss!

Despoiler Champions come from the ranks of the Molochs, and are both a potential upgrade for the unit on the monstrous infantry, as well as a square-based hero unit themselves. With the army revamp in late 2024, the separate Champions gained Inspiring, and so became much more attractive to me. I wanted to pick up some new models, so that I could run some multiples, as I tend to do. I had one “counts-as” model before, which I will rebase and repurpose at some point.

The trio of Despoiler Champs.

My Molochs were sourced long ago, and are Trollkin Champions, and so I decided to continue on, using similar models for my new heroes. Exploring the same line of miniatures, I found some Trollkin Axers on ebay for cheap, and pounced as a little treat to myself early this summer, though it took quite a while to sit down and paint them up fully, and even longer to sit down and write up a hobby post for them.

The minis were all second-hand. One plastic one was painted; one plastic one was assembled but not primed; and one metal one was primed, but scraped up and in pieces. I opted to just retouch the painted one, then then prime and paint up the other two.

The heavy metal guy.

Hobbying wasn’t too intense, and was knocked out over a few evening sessions in early August. The skin is again Army Painter’s Wicked Pink, the basic equivalent for Citadel’s Pink Horror, which has been used before across my Abyssals collection, but everything else was pretty generic for metals and cloth and such. Nothing really worth diving into for techniques or colors, though I do like the more steely spikes on the bronze bits.

One of the plastic champs. 

I took 50mm bases, primed them, and then pasted them. The metal mini had nubs in the feet which I didn’t want to cut or wrestle with, so his base got built up with some cork board, and a thin coating of PVA glue to make the cork stronger. Everything was primed again in black, then hit with dark grey and light grey drybrushing, as well as the lava pool colors. The pools are getting better over time. I’m not quite wet blending anything, but am doing layers here, with an orange around the outskirts into more vibrant yellows. Adding a drop of white into the final layer does sell the glow more, and I think I will want to add that to the rest of the army at some point.

The second plastic Champ. 

The unit itself is intriguing, but a little peculiar. The Moloch units are Def4 and have great Nerve, but the Champions here have pretty terrible Nerve but Def5. At 12/14 for Nerve, they seem a bit fragile, though do still have the hallmarks of the Abyssals with Fury and Regeneration. It just seems odd that they are not 14/16, or even 13/15 like the new Apostate, as the Moloch and new Berserker units have identical Nerve, but perhaps there is a lore reason I am missing when it comes to the heroes. The low Nerve is concerning though, and so while I will try all three at some point, I think we'll need to dial it back to 1-2 for more serious lists.

On the table, I think I want them interspersed among my line to provide Inspiring, as well as a little extra punch in combats. I think these and the Abyssal Guards of any kind would go well together, but list ideas are still swirling around and not quite there yet . Hopefully we’ll see these on the table soon!