Hobby Update: FoN Herd Mounted Druids

Last up for my new tournament units are some more Herd-related champions. I had rebased a trio of Herd Heroes to give myself some leadership options for the army. But building out my list ideas, the trio was leaving me a little shy of where I wanted to be, so I hobbied a little more, and up now are two mounted Druids for the Herd!

The counts-as mounted Druid, with some speedy assistants.

The first model is one of the older Wizkids Druids, rebased, and with more Wizkids animals (panthers?) to try and sell the speed. I am so-so on the execution of this. The Druid is on foot, and while the cats are quite agile-looking, they aren't really mount-sized? There's not much of a difference between 40mm and 50mm squares, so hopefully folks are ok with it from a gaming and wysiwyg perspective.

The old Unicorn from January 2024.

The other for a counts-as Druid on steed is a Unicorn, also from Wizkids. Back in 2023, I demo'ed a game for a guy interested in fielding the Forces of Nature, which I couldn't quite do at the time. Already running the Herd, a theme list at the time, grabbing a few units worth of various Elementals seemed like a good idea to have around, though I never quite got around to it. In January of 2024 however, I did but two unicorns and paint one up as a test model for the future army in the style of the Herd, the thinking being that I take my Herd style, extrapolate it up to the master list and then have a larger assorted and related collection.  

The new Unicorn, just rebased.

I was shocked to find that the Unicorn and Pegasus are no longer Forces of Nature options in 4E. The new edition really did a number on the army! I can only assume they are coming back at some point, but we'll get some use out of the old Unicorn here for now.

Honestly, I kind of want to find WC3 Keepers of the Grove for my ideal mounted Druids, to pay homage to an old hobby, but I just did not feel I had the time to seek those out, 3d print them somewhere and paint them up, so we're taking a shortcut here, and these are table-ready, but not amazing pieces. The painting and basing are all standard for me and my Herd, and not worth blabbering about. 

Playing my practice games, my list is very aggressive, and I realized that I really wanted a mounted Druid to keep pace as everything was generally moving at the double Round 1 and charging in Round 2. I played around with a Centaur Chieftain, but was not using him well, so eventually fell back on the second mounted Druid, the Unicorn, recently.

On the table, they seem like great Champions. I like my army's Command Orders (can't go wrong with heal and Strider!), so don't want to accidentally lose any precious Champions in combat, so we're going for two Druids and ... spells. Bane Chant is good for the Longhorns, and Heal is strong with the list as well. I'm struggling still with final spell selection and items, but my list is liking double Druids, so we'll try and facilitate that for the tournament!