Swooper

Thank you for the kind words! The palette is going to explode a bit once the bright blue warpaint and autumn colours on the bases get added!

I'll be the first to admit I'm a slow painter, but the first batch of gors are steadily nearing completion. Thought I'd share a couple of quick WIP shots with you guys. Pretty much all that's left at this stage is doing the warpaint and bases, and any incidental tidying up. I made some slight alterations to the original colour scheme that I tested, nothing drastic, just small tweaks. Highlighted the skin up another tone with the Tuskgor Fur I picked up last week, added some oxide to the bronze, that kind of thing. I was inspired after watching this video last week - not to wet blend my base coats (maybe next time), but to try to add more colour into my shading. So I glazed some purple into the shadowed areas of the skin, and a little mossy green for the wood and bone. It didn't come out as strong as I hoped (especially the purple), so I used washes in the same colours to try to enhance the colours a little more. The purple is still kind of invisible on the dark brown base coat (should be more visible on Mournfang), but the green tones are really showing, and I love it: These were taken earlier tonight, right now I've got some Stirland Mud drying on the bases. I'm not sure how much time I'll have the next couple of days, but I'm going to do my best to get these finished by the end of the year. I'll be sure to get some better pictures when they're done! Any C&C is appreciated, it's not too late to make adjustments!

I noticed that the GUO reveal yesterday mentioned that Rotigus is sometimes mistakenly worshipped as a deity of life. That might be a small hint for a Nurgle vs Death conflict?

I've finished assembling and gapfilling the final 10 gors. Four of them got weapon swaps - two flails from the Marauders kit, an axe from the same source and another axe from the Darkoath Chieftain. I have a bunch of spiky maces from the Flagellants kit that I was going to use too, but it turns out they look too small and wimpy so I'll save them for something else. That concludes my building spree for now, and I can turn my attention towards painting, huzzah! I promise, these will be the last pictures of gray plastic in this thread for a while.

All of the gors, bestigors and ungor raiders as well as the two shamans have now been based. I also assembled and based the AoW beastlord, who looks suitably imposing next to his lesser kin: The cork is just for elevation and will be covered with Stirland Mud, while the bark will be kept bare and painted grey. Kind of regret gluing the ungor shaman directly to his base rather than adding some more elevation under him, I think it would look better. Should I try to cut him loose and do that? I salvaged some mushrooms (visible on one bestigor's and the ungor shaman's bases) and arrows (top left ungor on the second picture) from the old night goblin kit to spice up the bases even further. I don't have many of either though - the arrows should be enough for a large unit of ungor raiders, but I've already started making some mushrooms out of green stuff to be able to have enough to scatter throughout a whole army. I'm planning to add a few handmade mushrooms to these units while I assemble the last 10 gors, and then priming them all.

Finished assembling the bestigors last night. The bestigor kit has five different two-handed axes, meaning that with the command group I'd have to repeat two of them. I prefer my miniatures to be as varied as possible, and I had an idea for weapon swaps. See, the single handed axes from the minotaur kit are roughly the same size as the bestigors' two-handed axes, and I'm not going to give my minotaurs one handed weapons... the only problem is that the minotaur axes have round shafts while the bestigor ones have rectangular shafts (which seems impractical, but whatever). So, rather than swapping the entire axe heads, I just swapped the blades. Results: I think it came out pretty well, once painted these axes will look totally natural. The bestigor on the left here also has the champion's horns from the second gor kit, for variety (I like how interchangeable the two kits are, I might need to do more mix'n'match in the future). I plan to do some more weapon swaps on the second batch of gors (I ordered a bunch of different ones from a bits site recently, mostly Chaos Marauder weapons but also some others), but that will have to wait until after I've based all the stuff I've assembled so far. Cork, bark, branches and anything else I want on there before priming, then gluing the models down so they can stop doing their fainting goat impressions (poster putty really is terrible at sticking off-balance minis to their bases) and priming them. Can't wait to start actually painting!

That's probably just a countdown to the next teaser.

Small update. I received my shipment of basing materials today! Lots of different tufts, some flowers, birch pod leaves and bark to use as rocks. The original plan was to use floor tile fragments as rocks, but I didn't like how they came out when I shattered the tile. I also went out last weekend with some clippers to gather branches, because what's a forest base without fallen trees? The bestigors are nearly done, I expect to finish assembling them tonight. A couple of them will get some weapon swaps, more on that when they're ready!

Ungor shaman complete! It was actually harder to choose which head to use than doing the actual conversion. Very little green stuff needed, you can't even see it from this angle. I won't claim this idea as my own though, I saw someone else's very similar conversion over on the Herdstone forums, but The Great Photobucket Linkrot of '17 has swallowed the image. I've also gapfilled both gors and ungors (and stuck extra greenstuff around the edge of the bray shaman's base as @Uveron suggested. Next up... probably the bestigors!

Finished assembling the ungor raiders tonight, next up: Ungor shaman conversion! The plan for the conversion is fairly simple - fit an ungor's head to the goblin shaman's body, and put one of the horned skulls from the beastman kits on his staff instead of the dangly bits. Not sure which skull to use yet, which is why I haven't put one on top of the ungors' banner yet - whichever one I don't use for the shaman will go there. While simple, I think this is still the most complex conversion I've done so far - good practice for all the glorious things I have planned...

I think you might be on to something here. I don't want to vary it quite so much, but I think I'll definitely do different shades of brown. Even without mixing colours or using layer paint as base tones, I've got Mournfang Brown and Dryad Bark not being used for anything else in this scheme. The blue warpaint and autumn bases will tie them nicely together, I think. Not sure whether to mix within units or not, I'll have to think about that... As for progress, I've been fairly busy the past few days but at least I started assembling 10 ungor raiders today. I've also ordered a bunch of basing supplies from Serious Play, hoping to get them next week so I can really get the ball rolling!

Ok guys, let's talk colour schemes! The core thing I wanted to do, independent of colour scheme, was to give them a sort of labyrinth-patterned warpaint. That way I could give them a strong theme colour without looking odd (why would beastmen bother to dye all their cloth e.g. bright blue? Doesn't make sense to me, but bright blue warpaint fits much better). I initially had many, many ideas of colour combinations for their skin/fur and warpaint, but eventually narrowed it down to two main options: Brown skin with blue warpaint, or grey fur with purple warpaint. The choice would also affect how I'd do the bases, and the overall fluff and theme of the army. Brown skin, blue paint would mean they're from the Realm of Beasts, with autumn forest bases. Grey skin, purple warpaint would imply a Slaanesh-worshipping herd from the Realm of Shadows, which I'd give creepy dark forest kind of bases. I finished the colour tests for both of these options last night (couldn't get halfway decent photos then, so I couldn't post until now), and here are the results. Note that I just temporarily glued them to these old square slotta bases for ease of painting, they'll be on rounds like everyone else eventually. I originally intended to use Daemonette Hide/Warpfiend Grey as the warpaint colour on the grey one, but that didn't contrast with his skin at all so I switched to Naggaroth Night/Xereus Purple. The spiral on the shield came out okay. (The brown one doesn't have his shield because I messed it up by making the blue pattern on it too small, looked messy so I'll redo it later) At this point I've decided to go with the brown+blue version, though I'll gladly take any suggestions regarding specifics. Wanted to include the other one here to show you what else I was considering. The exact colours I used were: Skin: Rhinox Hide base, Doombull Brown highlights Fur: Skavenblight Dinge base, Stormvermin Fur drybrush Leather: XV-88 base, Balor Brown highlights Cloth: Rakarth Flesh base, Pallid Wych Flesh highlights Bone: Zandri Dust base, Ushabti Bone highlights Wood: Steel Legion Drab base, Baneblade Brown drybrush. Steel: Leadbelcher base, Runefang Steel highlights Bronze (just the nosering on this guy): Balthazar Gold, Sycorax Bronze highlights Agrax Earthshade all over wash in between base and highlights on every colour above Warpaint: Macragge Blue, Altdorf Guard Blue highlights, then Altdorf Guard+Lothern Blue highlights because it wasn't bright enough. Things I learned: I may need to experiment with a lighter shade of blue, maybe buy either Calgar Blue or Teclis Blue to use rather than blending Altdorf+Lothern every time. Plan the pattern of the warpaint beforehand. It ended up kind of wonky on parts because I didn't really plan ahead. Painting a freehand pattern on a tiny ungor body is HARD. Questions, comments, criticisms and suggestions all welcome. Food for thought: What does it tell you about a tribe of beastmen that they all have an intricate labyrinth pattern painted on their bodies? I'm curious what you think of that.

What a great start. I really like the look of those three, and am looking forward to seeing this project develop!

Thanks for all the positive replies, guys! It's really motivating to have people watching your progress with interest like this! I'll definitely do something to cover up the join, don't worry about that. I did the same kind of transplant on a Chaos Lord I painted up for fun this summer, there I used GS to fill the gap and then Armageddon Dust on top of it. Kinda think the GS wasn't strictly necessary, but if I have a lump of it lying around when gapfilling I'll probably stick it in there. Either way I'll probably use Stirland Mud to tie the shaman's base to the rest of my army, as well as tufts and everything else I have planned for basing - more on that soon! Oh, I definitely have ideas for an awesome herdstone... been gathering some bits to use for it (did you know the giant kit has an awesome vulture?), and information on where I can get the rest... I'm not going to spoil too much until I start working on it though, which won't be for a while! The two ungors have been primed and basecoated in two different colour schemes, let's see how far I get with shading, highlighting and detailing tonight. I'll post them here as soon as they're done!

The first ten gors, the bray shaman and two ungors (which will be used for colour scheme testing) have been built. I transplanted the shaman to a round base, the join will be covered up with texture paint or other basing materials. All except the shaman are only stuck to the base with poster putty for now, as I might want to stick some basing materials in between them and the bases. Some shield arms have also been only loosely attached, to be painted separately. I'll need to take some green stuff to them to fill up some gaps, but not tonight... I might try to get those two ungors primed tonight, actually, as I'm quite excited to start testing colour schemes.

An eerie stillness hung in the crisp autumn air, that made both men and beast feel uneasy. The proverbial calm before the storm, that feeling which had everyone unconsciously glancing towards the old forest, hoping that this time they wouldn't come. This year, they would surely get the harvests in. But like the other years, the silence was broken by the sounds that everyone feared. It started deep, deep within the primeval woods, but came closer quickly. The war drums were heard first, but they were soon joined by the bellowing sound of hornblowers. They were coming. --- Hello everyone! This thread will document my project to build and paint a Brayherd army, with some conversions in between as I see fit. I was recently abroad in a country that, unlike my own, has Games Workshop stores, so I used the opportunity and bought a whole bunch of models to start me off - see picture! That's 20 gors, 20 ungors, 10 bestigors, 3 bullgors, a ghorgon, 2 beastlords (the GW one, and the Avatars of War one), a great bray shaman and a goblin shaman which will be turned into an ungor shaman. Yikes. What have I gotten myself into...? A little about me and my hobby background: I started playing WHFB when I was twelve, back in 5th edition. I had roughly 2300p of orcs&goblins in various states of painting by the time I eventually fell out of it around age seventeen. Many years pass, and I slowly start getting the urge to paint again. I bought a model for one of my D&D characters (the GW dwarf runelord), but it sat unassembled in my drawer for months before I finally bit the bullet in August last year and got the paint and tools needed to start the hobby again. I was initially just planning to buy a few individual models to paint, but that plan obviously didn't last long. I had some friends who are into wargaming, and they got me into Battlefleet Gothic. Since I can't seem to do anything like this in moderation, I now have two half-painted fleets (Slaanesh and Tau, if you're curious - not all ships pictured). In between I've also been painting various AoS miniatures (mostly various flavours of Chaos, most recently the Silver Tower Tzeentch cult which I put the finishing touches on earlier tonight) and board game minis (Banner Saga Warbands - two varls, one human and all the dredge left in case you're familiar with it), but now I'm taking the plunge and building a proper army, and here we are. I'm still in this because I enjoy painting, so I'm not rushing to have an army I can play with or anything like that. I'll be taking my time to do this properly, and I'll hold myself to as high a standard as I can manage with every model, down to the last ungor. I also have great plans for basing, my most ambitious yet. More on that later. I've already started some assembly work on the great bray shaman and the first batch of gors, expect the first progress pictures of that here tomorrow!

How big should objective markers be? Is there any sort of consensus on that?

Finished basing and priming my gaunt summoner and familiars today, started laying down some base coats tonight. A lot of work still to be done, but I plan to have them done a week from now, which is kind of ambitious given my usual painting speed. Let's see how that goes...

"Undying" is a word I've heard used for elves, with the immortality/eternal youth thing and all.

The plate bikini is disappointing, but apart from that I kind of like her. Wonder if they'll eventually do new marauder models in this Darkoath aesthetic, that'd be cool.