AdamH’s Goblins Rank & File #3 – Eight legged freaks

Short month for me March.

I took the learnings from my first month of painting the little spiders and scaled it up to the next level (size-wise at least). Nothing crazy here really, not too much to talk about; I simply used the same techniques as on the spider swarms but against the spider rider mounts, the riders themselves were painted the same way as the rest of the army to date. No conversions or anything either, pretty basic month tbh:

This month I managed to paint the following:

UNIT	EXTRAS	#	TOTAL
REGIMENTS
Forest Goblin Spider Riders (9)	Standard (9) Musician (9) Shields (1)	10	118
Forest Goblin Spider Riders (9)	Standard (9) Musician (9) Shields (1) Spears (1)	10	128
TOTAL		246

I feel like I should write more but honestly I can’t think of what to say?

Looking forward to next month though, that should be a bit more interesting for me to paint, and for you to look at. I am going for my leader month and since it is goblins there isn’t just one. I think I have about 15 of the buggers! 

AdamH’s Goblins Rank & File #2 – The green tide grows

Well it turns out that these little guys are actually quite quick to paint, somehow I was able to pretty much equal my January output. With this month’s entry I have certainly broken the back of the army as my total painted is over 80 models now!

Like last month I started with the planned 15 models in the new unit, and then added the other ten I had prepared since I had the time. This time the unit I painted are armed with simple hand weapons and shields:

Nothing too crazy here, standard models, no conversions, only more of the 3d printed shields.

Next up was some more bow and arrow Forest Goblins, another ten in total including a musician:

Finally I worked on a small unit of Wolf Riders. Technically not a Forest Goblin unit, although I did use Forest Goblin archer models on plastic wolves so they thematically fit with the rest of the army. The reason for taking this unit is simply to enable me access to some Common Goblin special units which I have also converted to fit the theme and will hopefully feature next month. Anyway here are my wolves:

This was also the first time I have ever painted these classic plastic wolf models, I tried to go for a natural tone to contrast with the bright spiders:

This month I managed to paint the following:

UNIT	EXTRAS	#	TOTAL
REGIMENTS
Forest Goblins (2.5)	Standard (2.5) Musician (2.5) Shields (.5))	25	80
Forest Goblins (2.5)	Musician (2.5) Short Bows (.5)	10	32.5
Goblin Wolf Riders (9)	Musician (9) Short Bows (1)	5	59
TOTAL		171.5

Oh, something I forgot to mention earlier but I am making each unit have it's own distinct colour scheme. So the feathers and tunics etc. will all be shared colours. This also carries over to an attached archer unit and some sort of mounted unit. So this month you can see all of the feathers in these three units are red and yellow, last month they were blue and purple. I thought this would be a nice way of having variation in the army but also some unity between units.

Anyway, next month is spider time, slightly bigger ones this time!

AdamH’s Goblins Rank & File #1 – Getting a good start

I took full advantage of the time off at the start of the year to get as much done in my first month as possible. I have some travel planned for Feb, plus it being a bit shorter means I probably won’t get as much done as in Jan so I really wanted to put in a good show for that first month.

I started with the unit of spear wielding Forest Goblin troops. As mentioned in my intro I have a couple of extra ranks of most units so when I was done with the 15 I had earmarked as the core amount for the unit I carried on painting another ten for a total of 25. I haven’t decided what I am doing with the banners yet so they will likely remain with bare poles until the end of the challenge where I will do them altogether:

There were a couple of things I had to do with this unit I thought worth highlighting. The models I got hold of for this army didn’t have enough of the original shields to cover everything, and rather than spending hundreds on Ebay trying to track them down I just decided to 3d print them so the whole army would be consistent.

Also I didn’t have enough spear armed Goblins, but had extra sword armed ones, and a couple of extra Standard Bearers, so I converted them to be holding spears, heresy? Probably:

Next up I turned my attention to a smaller unit, some bow and arrow Forest Goblins, ten in total including a musician:

Finally I wanted to test out my paint schemes for the Spider Riders but not on those models, so thought I would quickly do the Spider Swarms to see if my plans would work. I think they look decent so I will give them a try with their bigger cousins in a couple of months' time. Keen to hear what people think about my rainbow of legs:

This month I managed to paint the following:

Forest Goblins x25 (Spears, Shields, Standard, Musician) - 92.5 points

Forest Goblins x10 (Bows, Musician) - 32.5 points

Spider Swarms x5 - 500 points

TOTAL - 625

Goblins are shockingly cheap?! Thankfully the points of the army are going to be massively bumped by the extra units like the swarms.

One month down, 40 models painted and my sanity mostly still intact. 

AdamH’s OWAC VIII Intro Post – Green rats? What is going on here?

If you have been following the OWAC for a while now you will know that I like Skaven. I like the look of big hordes of models together and the play style of throwing loads of disposable bodies in waves at your enemy until they are overwhelmed with sheer numbers. 

However, for a painting challenge it is a lot of effort to get through so many models. A small, elite army would be a much better idea right?

Anyway I am doing a goblin only army this year.

Specifically I am doing a Forest Goblin army, full of wonderful, characterful (i.e. goofy) Kev Adam’s sculpts. As well as some of my all time other favorites from the 5th edition lines (Trolls, Marauder Giant etc.), I honestly can’t wait to paint these figures! Let’s take a look at what I am planning then:

Here are the characters for the army, Goblin characters are so cheap so there are plenty of them (and I have more I can add if I make good progress).

The rank and file Gobbos, unlike my Skaven (in which all of my clanrats are mixed together) I am separating them into defined units armed with each weapon type.

Some of them are even riding spiders! These are the top of my list of “goofy” sculpts, I still like them but I am a little unsure how well they will paint up in my style. I guess we will see :).

Finally, as mentioned above these are some of my favorite models from this time period. I was so happy when the recent Orcs and Goblins Made to Order rolled around and they became available again since it meant I didn’t have to spend hundreds to pick them up second hand on fleebay. I also have another six trolls which I will try to get done but again these are outside of the initial scope of the challenge just in case they take longer to paint than I expect.

Finally just to mention why the models are not on bases (and have had tabs removed), this is because I am trying something new with the bases. I will be using resin bases with 3d printed forest plants. Due to the complexity of the bases it would be hard to paint the models while attached so I have them all separate and will attach after painting.

For this year’s challenge I am targeting the following list:

UNIT	EXTRAS	#	TOTAL
CHARACTERS
Forest Goblin Warlord (50)		2	100
Forest Goblin Battle Standard (56)		2	130
Forest Goblin Big Boss (33)	Gigantic Spider (50)	1	83
Forest Goblin Big Boss (33)	Giant Spider (4)	2	74
Forest Goblin Shaman (28)		2	56
Forest Goblin Shaman Champion (83)	Giant Spider (4)	2	174
Forest Goblin Master Shaman (159)	Gigantic Spider (50)	1	209
REGIMENTS
Forest Goblins (2.5)	Standard (2.5) Musician (2.5) Shields (.5)	15	50
Forest Goblins (2.5)	Standard (2.5) Musician (2.5) Shields (.5) DHW (1)	15	65
Forest Goblins (2.5)	Standard (2.5) Musician (2.5) Shields (.5) Spears (.5)	15	57.5
Forest Goblins (2.5)	Musician (2.5) Short Bows (.5)	10	32.5
Forest Goblins (2.5)	Musician (2.5) Short Bows (.5)	10	32.5
Forest Goblin Spider Riders (9)	Standard (9) Musician (9) Shields (1) Bows (1)	5	63
Forest Goblin Spider Riders (9)	Standard (9) Musician (9) Shields (1) Bows (1) Spears (1)	5	68
River Trolls (65)		3	195
Spider Swarms (100)		4	400
Giant (200)		1	200
TOTAL			1989.5

I appreciate that the above list isn’t technically “legal”, for example having two of both the Warlord and Battle Standards. This is because I want flexibility with the army so have both mounted and unmounted versions of a lot of the characters.

As always I have a few surprises planned, as well as some stretch models if I get through things quicker than expected (for example I actually have nine Trolls all prepped, as well as an extra rank or two for most units). So fingers crossed I can get through them at a good pace.

Finally here is my test model/tribute to give you an idea of the scheme I will be going for:

Anyway, looking forward to putting together something different this year and at the end of it having a new army that plays very different to my Skaven… well, is a different colour at least.