Koyote

My thoughts, exactly. Spider jockeys, or in the vernacular of the forest goblins, spider runts. 🙂

After a couple of close losses with my Masters of the Underearth forest goblins in scenarios that include objective markers, I've come to the conclusion that my footslogging warband would benefit from some mobility. One idea is to add a small unit of mounted Hearthguard. Since it's a warband of forest goblins, the obvious choice of models is Games Workshops' Forest Goblin Spider Riders kit. Even before purchasing the kit, I had concerns that the scale of the riders was a bit too small in comparison to my Shieldwolf goblins, but I didn't realize how small the riders were until the kit arrived in the mail. My first thought was to convert the kneeling Shieldwolf goblins, but after some test fittings and more thought on the matter, I decided against it. The GW spider riders are some really fun models, so it would be a shame not to use them. Also, after assembling a model and putting it beside an infantry model, I realized that the difference in scale doesn't look too bad. I may end up using a bit of greenstuff to do some subtle enlarging of the models features, such as its arms, cranium, and ears. The most obvious modification that I will make to the models (as pictured above) is spreading out the spiders' legs. Games Workshop designed these models to be used in units of closely ranked models, as such, the spiders' legs are bunched together to fit nicely on a rectangular base. The 'bunching up' of the spiders' legs is a practical solution for the particular problem faced by GW's model designers, but in my opinion, it takes away some of the characteristic creepiness of all those long legs spread out in every direction. I use a hobby knife to separate the two inner legs on each side from the two outer legs. By bending the plastic and doing a bit of pinning, I was able to reposition the legs so that they are spread out some, yet still fit on a 40 mm round base.

My tiki-mask goblin minis have arrived. Spellcrow advertises that it's miniatures as 28mm or "ideal for use with 28 mm scale models". Based upon my previous experience with Spellcrow's minis (I own a couple dozen of them), their models are on the larger end of the 28mm heroic scaled model spectrum. So, when I ordered these goblins, my concern was that they would be a tad bit too large. It turns out the opposite is true. This particular goblin mini is quite a bit smaller and skinnier than my Shieldwolf forest goblins. The model's proportions are comparable to Games Workshop's Ogre Kingdom's gnoblar minis. Thanks to the size of the mask, the difference in scale isn't too obvious when you look at the front of the model. The difference becomes most noticeable when you look at the rear of the model. Rather than convert these diminutive goblins into drummers, I'm going to stick with the forest goblin models that I previously converted for my Destruction Teams. Fear not, the Tiki-masked, frog wielding goblins are too cool not to incorporate into my forest goblin warband, so I will find a use for them. One idea is to use them as counts-as Shapeshifters for a forest goblin Lords of the Wild warband. I have a friend who has as dwarven Masters of the Underearth warband, so when I play against him, I intend to use my forest goblins as a LotW warband. In my desert nomads LotW warband, I use assassins as counts-as Shapeshifters. I can do something similar with my forest goblins. Instead of assassins, my counts-as Shapeshifters will be fanatics who, by licking the skin of poisonous tree frogs, enter into a nigh unstoppable frenzy when battle is joined. These fanatics are recruited into the Cult of the Frog Lickers as adolescents (who are generally too young and dumb to know better). Sadly, because the cult's activities involve two very dangerous pastimes, imbibing poisonous hallucinogens and frenzied hand-to-hand combat, few of the cult's warriors ever make it to adulthood.

I built a Static War Machine for my Masters of the Underearth forest goblins. I used bits from the Arachnarok Spider kit that I purchased on eBay to make the catapult and Shieldwolf Miniatures' for its crew. When mounted on the Arachnarok Spider, the catapult isn't fitted onto a raised structure, so I used different parts of the kit (a raised howdah assembly) and a good deal of pinning and greenstuff to assemble this particular build. It still needs some touch up and a little more GS work, but it's in good enough shape for play testing. Based upon its rules, I don't believe that the Static War Machine is a very good option, but like the Destruction Teams, this catapult is an excuse to build and paint fun models.

I don't have many virtues, and of those I do possess, patience certainly isn't one of them... 🙂 I couldn't wait for my frog sacrificing goblins to arrive from Poland, so I made my own from the Shieldwolf forest goblin kit. The masks are shields from the kit with eye holes drilled through them. The trees are limbs from the Citadel Woods kit. The spiders come from GW's Arachnarok Spider kit. The Orc skull comes from the GW Orc Warriors Regiment box set (circa 1999).

Great idea!

The Sacred Ground terrain for the the Masters of the Underearth is an Underground Network. It is represented by two pieces of terrain (each max size 6" x 6"). Units belonging to the MotU player can use move between the two pieces of terrain, regardless of their distance from one another, by activating a unit for a Maneuver within 2" of one of the Network's two terrain pieces. In keeping with my warband's theme, I want my Underground Network terrain to look like natural formations. I could make my own using insulation board and putty, but I have too much on my hobby plate already. I bought 2 aquarium caves (see below) on eBay for $8 each plus free shipping. They check all the boxes, plus the price is hard to beat. I’ll mount the caves on styrene bases, add forest/jungle foliage to match my goblins’ bases, and call it good.

LOL. What can I say? It's my favorite part of the hobby. I like your Dia de Los Muertos Napoleonic idea. I'd start by sourcing models of plastic Spanish troops from the era, and replace their heads and hands with skeleton parts. I'd use tiny balls of greenstuff to give them eyeballs like the characters in Coco. Some off them would be holding their heads aloft or under their arms like in comical ways -once again, another Coco reference. Many of the models would have to be cavorting about, lots of cavorting. Many, of them would need greenstuff Mariachi mustaches. What would really distinguish them from mere undead Napolenics would be how you paint them. Their faces would need to have colorful designs and patterns painted on them. Perhaps the choice of colors could be tied to the colors used by a particular regiment at the time or the Spanish flag. Perhaps the colors could be used to distinguish the different units. I'd also ask you to consider making the guerilla fighters as opposed to line infantry. Arguably, the Spanish's most well known contribution to the Napoleonic period was their guerrilla fighters who fought against the French occupiers. Supposedly, it was from these fighters that we got the term guerrilla warfare, 'guerrilla' being Spanish for 'little war'. Making them guerrilla fighters would let me use more rustic looking models and irregulars, which would help make the theme more fun. So many possibilities.

Here's an idea that I have been toying around with (pardon the pun). From a perspective of creating a strong, competitive list, it isn't particularly good, but from a hobby aspect, it's quite fun. I want to add a couple of Destruction Teams to my Forest Goblin Masters of the Underearth warband. As with my counts-as crossbows, my technologically challenged goblin theme presents certain obstacles to creating proper models for the role; however, thanks to the foresight of author of AoM, the solution was quite simple. In the description of Destruction Teams, the AoM rulebook describes their implements of destruction as "dangerous but light weapons such as small cannon, projectile throwers, and terrifying magical war-drums." Reaper Miniatures' Bones collection includes a set called the Goblin Honor Guard. This set is cheap and includes an impressively sized war drum being lugged about by a little greenskin lackey. If I keep the lackey, I'll replace its head with a gnoblar's head to give it the properly pointed features shared by my other forest goblin models. Even a goblin knows that you can't entrust a terrifying magical war-drum to just any knucklehead. It must be played by a shaman, or at the very least, a goblin wearing a suitably impressive mask. To fill this role, I'll use Spellcrow Miniatures' Goblin with Frog. Neither a stone dagger or frog make a particularly good drum mallet, so both will need to be replaced large bone clubs from the plastic forest goblin kit. The daggers and frogs are great bits, so they will go into my bitz box.

Yes, they do have that alien-feel to them. The shape of some of the leaves is very similar to the iconography used by the Genestealer cults.

The Barbed Bracken comes in two basic shapes: 1) a multi-stemmed, multi-leafed cluster that looks like an entire fern plant, and 2) a single-stemmed, multi-leafed cluster that looks like a young plant or a single branch of an older plant. The former are too big for models on 25mm bases and the latter, by itself, looks like a sad, Charlie Brown Christmas Tree fern. However, by drilling a hole in the base I can insert 2 or 3 of the 'branches' and the result looks like a complete, albeit small, fern. The overall plan is to texture the bases with fine sand/ballast, and after painting, add Army Painter woodland grass tufts to the mix of ferns, mushrooms, stumps, and (of course) skulls. Below you see the giant spider removed from the base so you can get a better look at my work on the base. The little critter on the Sorcerer's base is an old, GW squig familiar from the early 1990s.

I finished most of the greenstuff-work on my forest goblins, just in time for my first game with them tomorrow. Below you can see my work on the unit of gobbos armed with blowguns (counts-as crossbows), Each model's right arm comes from GW's Skink kit. Skink arms are much skinnier than goblin arms, so I used greenstuff to bulk-up the Skink arms. Skinks have only three fingers, so my original plan was to add a fourth finger to the hands holding the blowguns, but instead, I'll name this unit the Three-Finger Clan and call it good. The champions and musicians of Bashas and Slashas clans also needed some greenstuff-work. Now that I've finished assembly and gs-work, it's time to get to work on the bases. For a while now I've had my eye on Citadel's Barbed Bracken kit, but until now, I've not had a project that called for this kind of foliage. I'll use the bracken either in addition to or in lieu of the grass clumps that I normally add to my bases. For the larger models, like my giant spider and troggoths, I've purchased some resin stumps from Green Stuff World.

For as long as anyone in The Tribe can remember, there has been a fierce rivalry, bordering on hatred, between the Bashas and the Slashas clans. The primary point of contention is what's the best way to kill prey (there is no word for "foe" or "enemy" in the language of the Tribe -anything that must be killed, for any reason, is "prey"). The Bashas contend that the best way to bring down prey is to bash it with a blunt weapon, like a club or mallet. Conversely, the Slashas contend that the cutting blade is the only way to go. With the exception of the drum and horn and the extra bits I hung from each banner, all of these bits are from the Forest Goblin kit. In a few instances, I used greestuff wedges in the models' armpits to reposition the arms. My next step will be to revisit all the goblin infantry models and use greenstuff to fill in gaps and re-sculpt the blowgun models' right biceps. Bashas Slashas

Ba-dum-ch...

These are the last two Peacekeepers. Sergeant Escobar (Warden) and Max (Outrider) 'Don't call me Maxine. My name is Max!'

I've assembled another unit of gobbos. This will be a unit of 10 Warriors armed with heavy weapons. With the exception of the meat shank that I attached to the banner (which is from GW's 40K Kroot kit), all of these models are 'out of the box'. I used small greenstuff wedges to reposition some of the arms, and a hobby knife and glue to straighten many of the model's left wrists, which are bent slightly to accept a shield. The resin model is the Master Butcher mini from the Kickstarter. He'll be the unit leader, which like the standard and musician has no in-game effect in SAGA: Age of Magic, but I'm an old-time WFB player, and old habits die hard. Plus, adding these types of models to a unit gives one an opportunity and the inspiration to personalize a unit. Here, the presence of the Butcher in the unit gave me the idea to add the meat shank to the standard (the "Butcher's Banner"). And now it's not just another mob of generic greenskins, it's the 'Butcher's Boys'.

I finally got around to finishing this post-apoc fisherman model. I used in our Springtime in the Wasteland campaign as part of my fishermen themed Settlers warband. It's another model from Lead Adventure's From the Contaminated Seas model line. In our campaign he was armed with a speargun and net. I had two models armed this way, not because either weapons was especially effective, but because I wanted to use particular models and these weapons most closely matched what they models were carrying. The boat hook symbolizes the spear portion of the speargun, but how did I get from life ring to net, you ask? Simple. Seventies cartoons. In Go Away Ghost Ship, Scooby-Doo and the gang use some old tires to capture Redbeard's "ghost" crew. They could have just as easily used life rings, and in my opinion, since it was a nautically themed episode, visually, life rings would have been the better choice. 😉

I was just teasing them for nerding-out over guns. 🙂

Okay you two, get a room. Freaks! 😉

I have no immediate plans for the TNT Vendo Bot model, but it's such a fun model I had to buy it. It's a bit to large for the 25mm Micro Arts Studio Highway base that I normally use for my post-apoc minis, so I ordered some 32mm Highway bases. While I wait for the new bases to arrive, I started work on two Peacekeepr minis that showed up with my Vendo Bot as freebies (huge thanks Joey M). The Peacekeeper models are both from TNT's (relatively) new Peacekeepers Pack 2 set. The model on the left is wearing chap-like leg coverings like those worn by Officer Smith. The chap's detail isn't great because of a defect in the casting, so I carved away the straps and used greenstuff to sculpt simple trousers. I also removed the commando style sheathed knife on the model's left shoulder. It got in the way of the head and made that part of the model too busy. Sometimes simple is better. The model has a very dynamic, striding pose that just exudes attitude. The head that comes with this model doesn't do the rest of the model justice, so I replaced it with a resin head from the Forgeworld Necromunda Escher Head Upgrade set. It's difficult to make out in the photo, but she has a cigarette sticking out of the side of her mouth. Now the mini looks like a total bad ass. The model is armed with a scoped rifle, so she will serve as an Peacekeepr Outrider. The second model is great as-is, so my only addition was a small plastic canteen.

Two more Peacekeepers, ready for the display case. Tortuga (Linebreaker) and Nancy (K-9)

The decision not to attend the Adepticon tournaments this year really took the wind out of my sails with regards to painting my Moors. Nevertheless, in between other projects I managed to finish my first unit.

My first tabletop army was fully painted 2nd Edition WFB Orc and Goblin army. Over time, a small contingent of forest goblins made its way into this army, likely somewhere around 4th Edition. That army, and all but two of its models, are now long gone, but I still have a soft spot in my heart for the Greenskins, and in particular, for the Forest Goblins, so in February of 2019 when I saw Shieldwolf Miniatures' Forest Goblin Kickstarter, I knew I had to have a box. My initial plan was to buy a single box and use the minis for a Forest Goblin Mordheim Warband, but once SAGA: Age of Magic was released, I realized that I could do bigger and better things with the diminutive greenskin savages. The obvious choice of factions for AoM greenskins is the Horde, but I already have a painted, AoM Horde army (my Celts). I may use the Forest Goblins as a Horde warband, using GW's enormous Arachnarok spider model as The War Monster legendary unit, but I want to use them primarily as a Masters of the Underearth warband. Unlike many of their goblin cousins, Forest Goblins aren't subterranean dwellers, so to satisfy my need to create a backstory for each of my warbands, I need to connect forest dwelling greenskins to the troglodytic labyrinths of the under-earth. Clearly, the Forest Goblins particular style of primitive dress and stone weapons was inspired, at least in part, by Mesoamerican cultures (e.g. Mayans, Toltecs, Aztecs, etc.). When I was in Belize, I went cave river-tubing into a massive limestone cavern. Our guide told us that the ancient Mayans believed that these caves and others like them were entrances to the underworld where they could commune with their gods and beseech them for good harvests and rain. So, by pulling together the strands of GW fantasy fiction and Mayan history, I've decided that this particular tribe of Forest Goblins dwells within a massive limestone cavern in the heart of a tropical forest. They do spend a good deal of time in the forests, hunting, raiding, and getting up no-good, but the limestone caves serve as their village-fortress and sanctuary. Below is what I've assembled so far. I still have a lot of models to assemble before I can test-play the warband, but since I'm simultaneous working on my Desert Nomads and Undead, I'm in no rush. The trolls are GW's Fellwater Troggoths. I've incorporated these models into the warband because they are some of my favorite GW models, and I wan to experiment using them as a Mutant Aberration legendary unit. The giant spider is a 3D printed resin model that I purchased from a seller on Etsy. It's called a Dread Spider. It and its rider will be a Warlord on a beast. Except for the blowguns, the rest of the models and bits are from the Shieldwolf Forest Goblin Kickstarter. The off-white resin models are stretch goal extras from the Kickstarter. The Masters of the Undearth battleboard has this great ability called Experimental Techniques. It's a shooting ability that causes any modified roll of 6 to count as 2 hits instead of 1. Crossbows add 1 to the result of a shooting attack die roll, so crossbows make this ability even better. Understandably, the Shieldwolf Forest Goblin sprues do not include crossbows, so I needed a counts-as alternative that goes with my Mesoamerican goblin theme. I chose blowpipes and poisoned darts. I sourced the blowguns from some GW plastic Skinks that I bought on eBay. The Skink arms are a bit skinny and have only 3 fingers instead of 4, but this should be easy enough to fix with some greenstuff. The Masters of the Underearth's lieutenant is called an Alchemist. The Alchemist has a multi-shot ranged attack that has the potential of inflicting an additional fatigue on its targets. The goblin firing the three arrows (Legolas style) will be my Alchemist, Instead of tossing chemicals or explosives at his enemies, he uses a bow and a fast acting poisons that causes a quick, horrific death that demoralizes his foes.

It wouldn't be a Peacekeepers warband without at least one Line Breaker. And since I don't want Sid to be lonely, I'm going to add another K-9 as well. The Line Breaker is a TNT (World's End Publishing) mini, with a female head made by Statuesque Miniatures, and some GS work to complete the gender reassignment. The K-9 is also a TNT mini.

Someone on the TNT Facebook page really enjoyed my scenario. 😄