Wave After Wave Of My Own Men: Hobgoblin Archers And Genestealers

The 7th Edition Warhammer starter set

Battle for Skull Pass was the Warhammer Fantasy 7th Edition starter set.  As is common with most such starter sets it had enough dice, rules and figures to get started with a small game for two, in this case a small Dwarf army takes on a small Night Goblin contingent.

The fact that this set contains Dwarfs and hooded Night Goblins has made it very popular with the Chaos Dwarf fanbase, such as it is.  Chaos-Dwarfs.com, the hang out for people who play an army that hasn't had a proper miniatures release since John Major was in power, has quite a few guides to how to put this boxed set to good use.

Some of the fancier conversions are more work than I can face, but if you're interested, there's some smart videos on turning the Night Goblins therein into Hobgoblins with some model surgery and green stuff.  Similar guides cover using the Dwarfs.

A conversion beyond my limited skill!

 I mention all this because I got about thirty plastic Night Goblins cheap on eBay many moons ago with the intention of using them as Hobgoblin proxies.  They have Goblinoid appearance, robes and bows - good enough, right?  It's the only practical way to make a unit of them, certainly, since I need at least twenty Hobgoblins for a unit but buying old metal figures in that bulk is impractical. (If onlty Forge World made them so everything in their army list had an official model... but alas, they're too busy making Yet Another Power Armour Figure #9312 these days.)

One of the Night Goblin plastic sprues from the current boxed set.

The actual models I got seem partly from Skull Pass, partly from a recent multi-part Night Goblin plastic kit.  There's a few different poses of archer, some mono-pose from Skull Pass and the others components from the kit.

Anyway, I've slapped on my now standard Hobgoblin colours onto the first 10.  This set includes 9 plastic Goblins and also a real metal Hobgoblin Musician.  Mechrite Red, Goblin Green, Snakebite Leather.... ach, you all know the drill by now.  Still to do some tidying and washing.

My "Hobgoblins" so far

Last weekend was a bit of a write off due to cat-sitting for a friend and Sister Superior and I's anniversary, so progress hasn't been too fast right now - hence few painting updates.  Nothing on the agenda this weekend though so I'm going to press on with these guys this weekend.  Once this unit is finished, I'm hoping I can talk Charles into a small game of WFB and finally try out the Beards on the table.  That way I can justify to Sister Superior all the bloody time and money that have gone into these, including multiple presents from her!

Oh, speaking of Sister Superior... I had a painting buddy while doing these Noblins.  She's interested in painting up the Genestealers from Space Hulk, and she and I perused some pictures of Tyranid paint schemes to get some inspiration for her.

The classic "dark purple body, light purple head" Genestealers didn't do anything for her but the current GW Tyranid Warrior box art of "purple carapace, white body" did.  So I undercoated her an old Genestealer figure I had lying around and let her do some experimenting....

Sister Superior wields her brush.

Sister Superior goes a lot slower than me, but is far neater, as you will see from her one much more fully formed figure next to my ten slapdash ones!

The body is Vallejo Off-White, the carapace Army Painter Alien Purple.  The carapace was washed with Army Painter Black and then highlighted up with some drybrushing and spot highlighting using Vallejo Pink.  The claws are Blood Red, though on the one closest to camera she did a really cool highlighting from black to dark red to red to orange.

The bulk of the body was given a wash of Army Painter Soft Tone, which combined with the wash/drybrushing on the carapace did most of the work of bringing the figure together.  The wash in particular worked really well, I think - you don't necesarilly want this figure to be Brilliant White but more a sort of dirty bone colour.

The ridged recesses were washed seperately to give them a pinky/reddish colouration like muscle.  Sister Superior was less happy with the effect here, but it's still pretty good considering how rarely she paints.  Might need a glaze of red or pink to change the colour more to her liking.

Hopefully more painting updates from one, if not both, of us soon!