Our thanks to Games Workshop for providing Goonhammer with the new Gitmob Army Set for review.
Those of us in the northern hemisphere are currently in the depths of winter, and you may have found yourself making room in your daily routine of work, hobby, and playing perfectly spherical Warhammer in the Facebook comments to desperately seek the revitalising glow of the sun. Over in the Mortal Realms the Gloomspite Gitz have traditionally been more fond of the moon than the sun, but now the Gitmob have burst onto the battlefield with the deafening thunder of chariot wheels, the searing flash of released Hyshian energies, and the pungent tang of Too Many Dogs.
With modern designs taking their initial cues from Warhammer Fantasy Battles’ non-Moonclan goblin units (especially Goblin Wolf Riders/Chariots, obviously), these new additions pick up on the design concepts laid down by 2019’s Underworlds warband and built on by 2023’s Snarlfang Riders. The army set contains two units of three Snarlpack Cavalry, a unit of two Sunsteala Wheelas, and the mighty Droggz da Sunchompa to lead them, and in this article we’re going to cover our thoughts on the kits and the building and painting process.
The box also includes a lovely limited-edition Gloomspite Gitz battletome, as well as accompanying warscroll cards, but we won’t be covering that here – for our initial thoughts on how the rules and points shape up, go check out our battletome review!
Sunsteala Wheelas
The chariots were first on the hobby desk, and let me tell you this kit was a delight to build. I am not a person that really enjoys the process of building, it’s usually very much a means to an end for me, but I found myself marveling at the way it all fits together and having a great time.
Unfortunately I was having such a great time putting them together that I forgot to take pictures of the sprues, sorry! The unit is two identical frames, each building an entire chariot, wolf team, and crew. Pleasingly, the kit features a lot of extra grots – on top of the driver, each sprue has six different crew models available, although (according to the instructions at least) they seem to be single-pose builds. That said, it looks like arms at least should swap fairly easily thanks to the way they slot into the grots’ tunic armholes, although I haven’t yet had a chance to test this theory. With a few weapon swaps and a lot of different ways of putting two to three grots into each Wheela, you should be able to ensure plenty of individuality in a chariot-heavy force.
The Wheelas themselves can be assembled to be riding flat or bouncing up onto one wheel in either direction, and a handy ball joint means that they can connect solidly to the pair of wolves towing the chariot in any of these orientations. Finishing the kit off, there’s a selection of accessories to add flavour, such as barrels (with or without a supply of arrows), braziers, and extra weapons. All of these pieces does mean that these models are cramped for space, and I highly recommend you build and paint in sub-assemblies to make your life easier. I went for the chariot itself, the wolves as a pair, and all of the crew and barrels individually. Then when I glued them together I found there wasn’t room to put the barrels anywhere without sacrificing a grot (unacceptable) so those and some other accessories are sat painted waiting for use on a future Gitmob project.
Droggz da Sunchompa
This model is absolutely oozing character, both from Droggz himself and from his long-serving mount Jaggedsnarl. Jaggedsnarl has in fact been serving (or leading?) the Gitmob for much longer than Droggz himself; new grots take up the name of Droggz and command of the Gitmob with startling regularity, usually when something bad has happened to the previous incarnation. Accordingly, Jaggedsnarl’s sculpt is covered in the scars and marks of previous combats, and he strikes an imperious pose atop his hero rock.
Not to be outdone, Droggz himself looks pretty fearsome too, with a choice of either a mighty helmet or a bare head with an eye patch. I chose the bare head because to me it really communicates the idea of a grot who has secured his leadership position through raw brutality rather than any particular cunning or aptitude for command. Also I imagine he might talk like Tom Hardy’s Kray twins from Legend, and that makes me laugh.
This model went together pretty easily, and there’s some really great splitting of pieces on the sprue; I really enjoyed the pair of paws attached to a piece of rock for some reason. I’d recommend leaving his shield off until after painting though – I didn’t to begin with, and it got in the way so much that I had to rip it off eventually.
Snarlpack Cavalry
The bigger brothers of the existing Snarlfang Riders, the Snarlpack each carry two gitz on their back. Mercifully, these riders can all be built as single pieces and kept as subassemblies, and they all have pretty positive engagement with the saddles via the bone footrests and some carefully concealed connection points.
Once they’re painted and together I can’t deny that these models look fantastic, but they really felt like a slog in the process, more so than the Sunsteala Wheelas despite being fewer sub-assemblies. If I had to guess why, I’d say it was because the wolves have so much leather on them – you’ve got armour panels, a huge saddle, tons of straps, and a headpiece. Nothing is particularly inaccessible, but there is just a lot of surface area to cover over a unit of three. And then you’ve got six whole grots to paint to crew them.
One thing I’m a bit disappointed by in this kit is the lack of options. Other than a leader variant there isn’t really much flexibility, in part because of the dynamic way that all of the spears and shields interweave without clashing. I discovered that I could swap arms between models pretty easily, and then immediately had to undo it because I had the foresight to check if the riders would still sit behind one another correctly. In my case, they wouldn’t. That said, looking at Games Workshop’s published photos of the unit they have definitely managed to swap some bits around for a bit of variety across the two units included in the army set.
Painting
I opted to stick pretty closely to the box art scheme for my army set, as I was really taken by how different the models looked to the existing Gloomspite Gitz range. I primed them with Pro-Acryl Black Brown primer, before a heavy zenithal of Pro-Acryl Red Grey and a drybrush of white to lighten them up. Base colours were then filled in with a variety of Contrast paints, Leadbelcher for the silver, and Sycorax Bronze for the bits of sunmetal and other decorative brass parts.
At this point I gave the models an all-over wash with a red-black mixed wash. I’ve done this before on other models, usually as a final step, but for these I decided that I wanted to retain a bit of the grimy nature (they are still Gitz, after all) but also give myself space to go a bit brighter with highlights. The Gitmob spend their days chasing the sun across the sky, not lingering in a dank cave!
I highlighted everything up, mostly with Pro-Acryl paints which I’m really enjoying using at the moment. Conscious that so much of the models were varying natural colours of wood, leather, and fur, I really tried to go bright on the grots’ skin tones and the red details. Bold Pyrrole Red is a terrifyingly intense paint. After highlights, I fillled in some freehand on the banners with Bold Titanium White, mixing in a bit of medium to slow the drying time a touch. I had to go back and forth between red and white quite a few times to get something I was happy with, but it’s looking good now.
For Droggz’ banner, Da Frazzlefangz, I started with the Sycorax Bronze base before glazing down with some of the more saturated Contrast paints: Imperial Fist, then Magmadroth Flame, then Baal Red. I wasn’t really happy with the saturation of the red at this point, so I glazed some Bold Pyrrole Red over the top, and stippled some of it over the transitions. I then edge highlighted with Canoptek Alloy, adding a few scratches at the same time.
Every model deserves a good base, and to get a more authentic desert vibe I knew I was going to revisit my old nemesis, weathering pigments. I textured the base with mixed patches of regular and crackle texture pastes, and once dry I painted over it all with Citadel’s Zamesi Desert. A wash of Agrax Earthshade added some definition, followed by drybrushes of Tallarn Sand and Dark Ivory. The models were varnished with a mix of matt and satin varnishes through the airbrush (I am trying to wean myself off of an obsession with very matt finishes), and a variety of desert-appropriate tufts from Gamers’ Grass and The Army Painter were added.
I couldn’t avoid the pigment any longer, so a yellow ochre weathering powder was applied to the base with one of Citadel’s synthetic drybrushes, a great workhorse brush in my opinion. I made sure to push the pigment around a lot, trying to break up clumps, get a dusty effect everywhere, and make sure there wasn’t too much loose powder left on the base. This was then “fixed” in place with some odorless thinner dripped on top of the bases – time will tell how well this holds up, but it seems like it’s holding well so far. Previously I’ve obsessed a bit too much with sticking the pigment down permanently, which normally involves making some kind of compromise on how dusty it looks, so I’m happy to take a lighter touch this time.
Overall I’m really happy with how these models came out, and I’m looking forward to adding to them in the future!
Final Thoughts
The Gitmob herald an exciting additional direction for the Gloomspite Gitz, and I hope we see more of them in the future. The engineering on these kits is really impressive, and I’m now looking forward to seeing whether that’s true for the Doom Diver Catapult and the character chariot models too. They were a joy to put together and paint up for the site, and I can’t wait to get them onto the battlefield together.
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