Dave at one of the Mantic Open Days. No, he’s not actually rich..

So, like any wargamer, I jumped at the chance to start a new army – without thinking. If I’m honest, the favourite army that I always default to is goblins. I can’t get enough of the diminutive creatures. For this project, they were a ‘no-go’ area because of sheer numbers. We were planning to stick to a schedule of 500 points a month and for goblins this is a lot. In fact, in a 2000 point army of them you’d be fielding easily 200 models. It was utterly crazy, stupid and reckless. It was also the weekend. Laughing maniacally as I did it, I totalled up the goblins I had collected from the first Kings of War Kickstarter and left un-built in the box. I wrote up a 500 point list of 50 models – not too bad.

My army, as it stands, is based around a couple of core blocks of infantry. Goblin infantry is woefully unskilled and cowardly, but they are cheap enough to outnumber just about anything else. Plus, in my head, unless I’m doing 40 models a month, I’m doing it wrong. I went for a regiment of Spitters, who would be damaging the foe from the safety of range,  and a regiment of Sharpsticks, who will be taking the brunt of the enemy charges. I don’t expect them to win combats, but to pin enemies down and act defensively. The rest of the units were either flanking or support. A Flaggit would provide my infantry with much-needed inspiring (and has an awesome model), whilst a couple of troops of mounted Sniffs would lure the enemy in and add further ranged support. I spent my last points on a Mincer, mainly because I just love the idea of the spinnny-blade-death-machine. It will have a similar role to the Sharpsticks of pinning enemies down to be flanked by others.

In this picture, the spearmen are finished, whilst the spitters are ‘gaming ready’

I knew that I had to have a method of realistically painting hordes of green skins quickly if I was to have any hope of completion. I’ve gone for a simplified scheme to my normal attempts of painting goblins – I’ve made many in the past. I couldn’t afford to lavish detail and highlights on each model, so I decided upon a ‘gaming ready’ standard as a target and focussed on that. It took a whole Sunday to paint up the Sharpsticks regiment to this standard and another day to paint the Spitters. I used a production line approach – painting a rank at a time. Since then, I’ve been going back over the models and adding highlights to my hearts content, as the joy of painting these models are what drew me to them in the first place. I’ve run out of brown spray at the time of writing, so I’ll need to get some more before I can start the Mincer and Sniffs.

Going forward, we have some games played, which’ll be a new experience in many ways for me – playing the new edition of the rules and finally being able to field my goblin army. I’m also scribbling plans for the next batch of models, possibly involving a troll horde. Of course, there’s also the new war machine set from the Kickstarter to look forward to.

This…is going to be fun!

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