Games Workshop was kind enough to provide us with these models for review.
Hitting the wastes this week – and bolstering Ash Waste gangs with a wrecking ball of a close-combat monster – is the Ash Waste Nomads Herder with Arthromite Duneskuttler. A cool bug herder and his big bug friend. I really like these two, with some unique flavor compared to the Ash Waste plastics and a new kind of bug to go with the Dustback Helamites.
Detail
When I got these two I had yet to assemble – let alone paint – any of the Ash Waste range. I pulled out some sprues and assembled a trio of regular Ash Waste gangers for a comparison. The Herder blends in nicely with the rest of the range, though they do stand half a head taller than the plastics. If intentional, it’s a nice differentiation that they are physically tougher than the rest to deal with their charge. Their mesh armor is chainmail and it peeks out from under their cloaks. I really like the addition of the jingle bells on their hat. Another nice detail is the bug mandible strapped to the staff. These two were lovely casts, needing nearly no clean up of slips or seams. I think I found some mold lines on the Herder’s staff, but besides that, nearly perfect.
Assembly
Each mini is built from ten parts. As mentioned, the herder has very minimal clean up besides the shims on the two canisters. See the legs of the Duneskuttler? Each one is made of two parts and each leg part has… hairs? And there’s a shim through every one that you have to carve off. It’s tedious process and you end up carving detail into those hairs to clean them up. I know they added them so that detail would actually cast up and not be lost, but I did not enjoy this part of the process.
Once you’ve cleaned up the legs, you need to assemble them. Eight parts and four contact patches. The upper legs connect in ball and socket joints which do have shaped pins inside, so there’s some pretty good guidance there, while the lower legs just fit in to the uppers. I glued the two parts of each leg together first and tried to match their alignment to the picture on the clamshell. I then glued each leg to the body which I had assembled first. I glued them on and tried to get all four as close as I could where they needed to be and, did ok…. one leg was off, so I added some chunks of slate from an old Citadel Basing Kit under it. The base itself is the same size as the Goliath Mauler, but it feels bigger under the bug, as it doesn’t fill the base as much.
Painting
As I had yet to paint any Ash Waste gangers, I went into this without a scheme figured out. I ended up chatting with a fellow Goonhammer-human about schemes, waffling between a super bright, non-natural scheme or something very naturalist and fitting of the environment. I wanted to keep it quick and low effort, but not completely relying on the the Contrast range for colors.
As always, I started with my usual base coat of Army painter Leather Brown spray with a zenithal coat of Army Painter Skeleton Bone.
After that, it got a heavy drybrush of white. I want to show this just to illustrate how much this changes the base coat and gets it ready for Contrast.
I chose the naturalistic path, with XV-88 as the main color. I thinned it with Contrast medium and more-or-less ended up making my own custom Contrast with it. This went all over the Herder’s overlook and the Duneskuttler’s underbelly and legs. The base coat under this helped to create a nice range of tones.
Focusing on the Herder, next steps were to figure out the rest of the materials. For their under-layer, I chose an old Citadel paint, Vermin Brown. This was repotted nearly a decade ago and is much thinner than it originally was, so it almost acted like a Contrast. This allowed me to go back paint in the shadows to strengthen the color. I painted all the straps with Snakebite Leather and the boots and gauntlets with Cygor Brown. The hard, metallic bits were base coated with Flash Gitz yellow, highlighted with white and then glazed with thinned Iyanden Yellow Contrast. Rubber hoses got a layer of Black Legion Contrast.
Picking back up with the Duneskuttler, after the layer of XV-88, it received another drybrush of white before and all-over wash of Army Soft Tone and Contrast Medium. The claws and horns were based with the old Foundation Iyanden Yellow and were highlighted up to white. The straps got a layer of Snakebite Leather and the metals painted with Army Painter Plate Metal and washed with Nuln Oil.
Finishing up the Herder, just like the Duneskuttler, the metals were done with Army Painter Plate Metal, but this time, glazed with some Vermin Brown before a wash of Nuln Oil. I highlighted the Cygor Brown areas with a mix of Cygor and white. The finishing touch was to add a stylized lightning bolt pattern across the cloak and sky mantle in Mournfang Brown. I found that it needed something to break up the large area and figured they’d want a rudimentary for of camouflage to help disguise themselves in the Wastes.
To the metal canisters, I added some chipping with a small piece of foam, using Dryad Bark for the base color and then some stippling on top with Army painter Plate Metal. I painted the lenses (my my, are they small….) black and highlighted them up to Coat d’Arms Wizard Blue to white. The horns of the sky mantle were painted in the same method as the horns/claws on the Duneskuttler.
The Rules
The Arthromite Herder is a hanger-on, who’s main job is to buff he Duneskuttler; by healing it, removing lasting injuries on a 3+, or training it – gaining D3 XP in the post-battle sequence. Otherwise, the Herder is just a guy. A T3, one wound guy… but he comes with the Born to the Wastes skill which allows him to ignore all battlefield conditions. The Duneskuttler – as fellow Necromunday writer Dan points out in the 40kBadcast 123 (at the 1:21:45 minute mark) – is a faster Ogryn, with more attacks. A faster Ogryn that also comes with the Fearsome and Nerves of Steel skills. On top of this, it can scale walls with no movement penalty and it’s Hard to Kill. This allows the controlling player to roll twice on lasting injuries and take one of the results. Terrifying. We here at Necromunday heartily recommend picking this up if you are a Nomads player.
Final Thoughts, Parting Shots, and What Have You
For me personally, painting this up was great way to figure out a paint scheme for both my Ash Waste gangers and the big bug friends. Would I recommend you do the same? Probably not…. but regardless of my backwards painting method, these two are great models and super cool additions to the gang and adds a close combat element that it’s been lacking.
Thanks for reading, outlanders! If you have any questions for us, want to suggest a future article, or just want to show us pictures of your kickass gangs, drop us a line over at Necromunday@Goonhammer.com.
