Guardian Brutes - WIP

So having decided on an Ancient Greek-themed Herd Army with a stylised Minotaur head symbol it was pretty obvious that I was going to need to have a decent-sized Minotaur unit as a centre-piece to the army. Here's an introduction to that unit as a work progresses on them.

In Kings of War, Minotaurs are represented by the Guardian Brutes entry:

 (image from http://kow2.easyarmy.com/)

Lots of attacks, that hit pretty hard on the charge and a solid defence.
I'd decided a Horde would be the best option here for a centre-piece unit and so I'd need to find some miniatures worthy of this stat-line.

There are a large number of Minotaur miniatures out there in the market place, from GW's massive, steroid pumped, gym-monkeys (not to my taste), to the more realistically proportioned, but still beef-caked offerings from Mierce Miniatures.
Rather than run through all the various options that are out there, I'll simply piggy-back on the hard work of others and direct anyone interested in the different Minotaur options to the sterling work done by the 9th Age crew: http://www.the-ninth-age.com/lexicon/index.php?entry/1352-miniatures-minotaurs/

However, having sent you all off on a wild-goose chase (wild-bull chase??) I should probably point out that I've not actually used any of the Minotaurs in that list for my own unit!
A lot of them felt too feral and were too covered in rags and scraps for the cream of the Mykretenae Herd. Those at the upper reaches of the heirarchy of the Brutocracy would need to be equipped in a more fitting manner...

So having searched around for something more in line with my Ancient Greek them I came across the following option as part of the D&D minatures pre-paint line.
The D&D Miniatures—Savage Encounters: Savage Minotaur

 

(image from http://paizo.com/products/btpy8bfk?DD-Miniatures-Savage-Encounters-Savage-Minotaur)

For a pre-paint the scuplting quality isn't too bad. The style and armour had a much more classical feel to it that I felt could be enhanced with a new paint job. Finally, with both arms being free of the body it would be much easier to convert as required.
After further though and perusal of the miniature, the pose itself with the body twisted around toward the left arm leant itself very nicely towards that hoplite feel I thought. I just needed to find appropriate weaponry and shields and I thought I could make a half-decent job of this unit.

Weaponry was pretty easy to do. As with my Tribal Longhorns I wanted swords to be primarily the order of the day. Therefore I raided, borrowed and traded for a few Warhammer Ogre Kingdoms arms and swords holding hands.

 

 (image from: http://stores.ebay.ca/Bits-World/Ogre-Kingdoms-/_i.html?_fsub=4014589014)

Removing the open right hand of the Savage Minotaur and replacing with a sword was easy enough, but with a couple of the miniatures I've replaced the whole arm, just to give a bit more variety to the unit.

Shields were another matter however. These guys needed hoplite shields and the ones from the Victrix kit were simply way too small. They looked like bucklers, not Defence 5+ battering rams!
After considering trying to get something like some buttons at the right size, I was clearly running out of ideas. But then the obvious finally struck me.
Look to a different scale...
And sure enough the good people at Irregular Miniatures (http://www.irregularminiatures.co.uk/54mmRanges/54mmAncients.htm) not only did a range of 54mm Greek Hoplites, but you could also buy the hoplite shields separately!
I duly ordered a bunch up and much to my delight they fitted perfectly.

So with 6 D&D Savage Minotaurs and a bunch of swords, shields I was ready to go.
However, given that I was basically using the same miniature half a dozen times in the same unit, I also decided to do a few head swaps which will hopefully break this up a bit. I like uniform in my units, but these are supposed to be Guardian Brutes not clones.

But without further ado, here are the first 2 out of 6 Guardian Brutes pretty much done and dusted.

Guardian Brute 1 

Guardian Brute 1 also shows off the shield design that will appear on all of the Brutes hoplons. they come from the Forgeworld Minotaurs Space Marine transfer sheet that I picked up some years ago for this project.

(image from http://miniset.net/sets/gw-99510101125)

 Guardian Brutes 1 & 2

Guardian Brute 2 (on the left above) also has a head swap. This head was taken from the Zenit Miniatures Uro figure with new horns added (a miniature that might well make an appearance elsewhere in this army... ;) )

 

Obviously they are only tacked in place at the moment. I'm waiting to get them all painted up before gluing any to the bases yet. This will itself be an endless joy due to plastic models with quite small hooves for feet and heavy metal shields for maximum top-heaviness...
 My plan is to have 5 Brutes across the front, with slightly overlapping shields to give that hoplite phalanx look. The sixth model will be a Standard Bearer who will then stand behind this shield wall

So, there we have it. The start of the Guardian Brutes of the Brutocracy.
More to follow!

Tribal Longhorns: Troops Beta & Gamma

There's been a rather long hiatus in terms of progress with the Brutocracy. I shall freely admit to having had my head turned by other armies (Forces of Nature and Twilight Kin to name but two). However despite this negligible progress on the Herd front, I have made the rather rash decision to take the Brutocracy to my first ever KoW tournament (Tides of War in Bristol).
This gives me a mere 3 and a half weeks now to get the rest of the army painted up...

Thankfully however, I have made some headway in this regard and plan to continue to update this blog with my progress over the next few weeks of frantic painting as I complete units.

First up are the other two troops of Tribal Longhorns.

Nothing much to say about these guys in terms of miniature, modelling and paint colour choices that I haven't already covered in the previous post about the Alpha Troop.
(GW Gor miniatures with Maxmini heads)

First up is Beta Troop.

On setting this unit up for the pics I noticed  the longhorn on the very left had lost his sword (good job it wasn't his shield he'd lost. That would be unforgivable for a hoplite!) Hence the hasty, unpainted replacement. The presence of such a shocking piece of grey plastic has thankfully now been rectified.

 And also completed now is Gamma Troop.

Gamma Troop is currently only 7 strong compared with Alpha and Beta Troops and this was initially down to the models that I had available. There is space to add another Longhorn in the rear right of the unit, next to the one with the raised shield and I have rustled up a couple of spare miniatures. At some point Gamma Troop will get an additional reinforcement (FNG ;) ).

Also you can see that Gamma Troop includes the banner bearer for the Longhorns and that initially I was going to paint the banners a deep red, to match the main spot colour of the rest of the army.

However I am now contemplating whether to try something a bit different for my banners and paint them up in the style of Ancient Greek black figure pottery. 

Something akin to this:

(image taken from https://www.ancient.eu/Black_Figure_Pottery/)

I have a dim and distant memory of somebody using this technique for the banners of their converted Amazon army (possible a Warhammer Wood Elf one?) but can no longer find the link for it.

Banners like this, however, would be a significant step up for my limited artistic skills and would very much be a long term plan. Right now I just need to get the army painted up! :p

More updates should follow soon as stuff hits the painting tables!