Realm of Chaos – Herdstone part I

In context of my beastmen warband I have mentioned Paul Sawyer's participation in The Tale of Four Gamers, with his chaos beastmen army. And one of the things that really caught my eye in that series, was the herdstone he build for his army (covered in the White Dwarf #221 and #222).

Of course, Dave Taylors beastmen fort is an inspiring build as well (covered in White Dwarf #223), but a bit large for the overall warband size project I'm following. I thought about building a herdstone from scratch myself. But as Games Workshop currently offers a Beasts of Chaos Herdstone as part of the Age of Sigmar terrain range at a reasonable price, I took a closer look on that one.

The kit costs 31 EUR RRP and is quite tall, so it stands out but is not to large for a skirmish. It is spread across two sprues and it being plastic is light and easy enough, for the further purpose I have in mind. Impressively organic and well placed in the sprue, so the undercut problematic of plastic injection moulds is cunningly handled.

As you can see in the close up, this is not a Warhammer piece anymore, but clearly Age of Sigmar. The beastmen collected their spoils of war, among them weapon and armour pieces from the Stormcasts or Kharadron Overlords.

But that wouldn't fit the middlehammer vibe, so they had to go. I used clippers and cutter to take of these bits. Some of these, for example the breastplate of the Stormcasts is generic enough, that it could be a simple chaos warrior plate or something similar.

Just taking off these wouldn't be enough, so I wanted to add further bits from that era. I gathered a few pieces from my bit box, as heads and shields. I added some battle damage to these, as well as drilled the heads open to make them look like empty helmets. Especially the shields came in handy to cover up some of the other bits that are anachronistic.

It is going to be interesting to paint. I don't really think that the rock / stone surface itself will be difficult, but it has been a while that I painted flames or glowing runes.

To reach all the pieces I didn't glue and assemble the model completely, but the first step will be a black primer and dark grey dry brush. Pictures coming soon.