Blog Tk'ya'pyk's Modeling Attempts (Scratchbashers Beware)

Very nice!

 

Ahem..........

BADGERS!!!


I started a Kharadron Overlords army, but... I have all these skaven parts lying around... also I was a fan of the Redwall books when I was younger, and I thought to myself, hey, do Skaven heads fit on duardin bodies??? ... well, yes, but they don't look like rats when you do that. They look like... BADGERS!!! So this is now the Badger Brigade! EULALIA!!!

 

Very neat idea. Can't wait to seem them painted!

 

Hah, to me they still look like rather podgy, thickset Skaven, but the idea is still a great one. Steampunk Potatoes! Up the Badger Brigade!

Did you know though that there is an actual way to convert badger warriors? Sally 4th make Badger Critter Conversion Kits containing heads and tails to badger-ify a model for a Redwall-esque miniatures game they have rules for called Albedo:
https://wargamesbuildings.co.uk/product/critter-conversion-kit-badger-bareheaded/

They're part of a range of heads and tails for other animals including otters, mice, rats and hares, that work very nicely for Redwall-themed conversions.

 

I like the idea, but notice that they are out of stock. In fact, it looks like a LOT of their conversion bits are out of stock...

 

I have noticed that too, but it's always worth dropping them an email on the contact address on their site and raising awareness of your interest

 

True, or I could keep using up the 40+ stormvermin I have parts for

 

Okay, story time.

I've noticed that a lot of people don't look favorably on the Dogs of War army from 5th/6th edition. I get it. They weren't that coherent of a force, they were kind of odd, played strangely, and had weird alliance rules and units.

But I look on them with a lot of nostalgia for several reasons.

I started playing WFB shortly before 5th edition came out. I tried Bretonnia, didn't do well. Tried the Lizardmen back in the day, did okay, but never had the money for a Slaan, so my army tended to get wiped out quickly because they were pretty much required back in 5th edition for anything larger than 500 points. Tried Beastmen. Did better with them. Tried Empire, Orcs and Goblins... you get the idea. At some point, I tried out (and owned armies for) almost every GW army for 5th WFB...

...and then the Dogs of War came out. Now, this was the mid 90s. I was in college at the time, didn't have a lot of extra money, and (did not know it at the time) had uncontrolled ADHD. I had immense amounts of trouble focusing on one army for very long. Would paint a unit here, a unit there, then change to a different army. That was before I saw my first Galloper Gun. That model just appealed to me. The sculpt was good, the styling appealed to my inner Renaissance Italy History Major self, and the stories behind the Dogs of War regiments of renown drew me in.

Yes, the Dogs of War were kind of an incoherent force. They were a mix of traditional pike-and-crossbow units, with duelists as skirmishers drawn from the street bravo youths found in the larger Italian cities, supported by whatever else popped up in the odd Regiments GW released. Halflings? Dwarf pirates? Disgraced Knights? Hobgoblin Wolf Riders? Treasure-saving Skinks riding horned velocioraptors? GIANTS?!? The Dogs of War had it all... and worked REALLY WELL with my undiagnosed ADHD, because when I got bored working on one unit, I could swap to another unit with a different paint scheme and aesthetic, and it WAS STILL THE SAME ARMY.

I wasn't diagnosed with ADHD until winter of 1999/2000 or so, and it made a lot of sense. It also explained my issues focusing on armies. When the get-you-by Ravening Hordes book for 6th edition came out, along with the supplements in White Dwarf, I was creating my own Dogs of War units out of whichever armies I wanted to. I turned old Greatsword Sculpts into Norse Marauder/Gallowglasses with greatsword and light armor, I had 6 units of Heavy Cavalry, 4 units of light cavalry (while I did have Al'Muktar's Desert Dogs, they did not do well on the tabletop - my generic units with Javelins, styled after the Jinettes of Spain did much better), big blocks of pikes converted from almost every army GW made, and so forth.

At one point, I had - and this is kind of terrifying - 20,000 points (yes, twenty THOUSAND) of Dogs of War units (while this feels like a lot, Golgfag's Ogres alone, just 10-ish minis, were almost 1000 points by themselves, and that was just one unit). I never ran the entire army at once. Probably just as well, since this was the era of metal minis, and the whole army probably weighed close to 200 pounds since a lot of it was converted metal sculpts.

I had a lot of memories running the army. Not a good win record - I think I won 3 games out of a hundred or so with them - but I enjoyed working on them. So yes, I look back on the Dogs of War with nostalgia. Can you blame me any?

One of the last games in 6th edition I played with them was against a local gamer who was trying out his Dark Elves for the second time. Pretty much a total victory for me, not entirely sure why, but he swore that the Dark Elves were unplayable, threw his army in the trash (yes, seriously), and stormed out. I took it as a challenge and began a Dark Elf army that had a much better track record. Most of my games with the Dark Elves ended in a draw...

But I still remember the Dogs of War fondly, in part because they kept me interested in the hobby and kept me from burning out during college by giving me something else to focus on.



I still have a few units from those armies. Ruglud's Armored Orcs here I picked up from ebay. ... I probably won't be making the unit bigger, this is more a nostalgia collection for my own happiness, not for tabletop use.

I don't have any photos, but I have a pile of Marienburg Mordheim minis that I was using as Duelists.

..and then there's these guys:



Tichi Huichi's Lizardman Raiders. I've got 15 of them if I include Inxi Huinxi (Lizardmen Special Character in 5th edition). I've been using them as proxies for Raptadon Riders...