Grot Rock Lobbers and Aelf Loremaster step up to the plate

My vacation started this week and before leaving for exotic Denmark (no plans to visit Yorick) I had some serious time to paint. I took part of this time to clean out my entire hobbyzone (King Augeas' stables had nothing on it). The rest was spent with the Silver Tower Tzaangor (mentioned here) and a lot of models and projects lounging around on the shelves. The first of these to be finished were an Aelf Loremaster and this battery of Goblin Grot Rock Lobbers.

Buying second hand models with missing pieces lowers the price, give you the chance to be creative and makes a dent in the old bits box.

My slowly expanding Grot Army has acces to three painted Spear Chukkas and three Doom Diver Catapults. All of them scrounged up from second hand lots. The only Artillery pieces missing where Rock Lobbers. I really wanted at least two just to give the completionist in me a thrill (a regular matched AoS game only allows you to field four pieces of artillery). I got my chance last year when somebody offered two Grot Rock Lobbers second hand at a low price because rather a lot of crew members (and some bits) where missing.

I love how the Grot in the back clutching his hand and howling, gels with the freshly placed stone on this Rock Lobber.

Now missing bits on a Grot catapult is no reason not to buy. The ramshackle nature of these things makes it easy to miss a missing part and otherwise it's possible to rebuild it from scratch bits lying around. As for the missing crew, I figured I could repurpose some unpainted Grots or Gretchin from the to-do shelf or bits box.

I accidentally snapped of the head oft he tool these two where holding, being a sadist I replaced it with the hammerhead of a Stormcast Liberator.

I spent a lot of time making the bases look cool. The small cobblestones are made from green stuff with a texture roller from Green Stuff World. I like these tools so much, I recently ordered a whole bunch of extra tools, more on that in another post (later). While filling the base I also decided to put the models on the base itself in stead of on their own bases. From a gaming perspective I think people put crew on separate bases because they tend not to base war machines. If the four hapless Grots ever get assaulted by anything, not being able to pile in will not be the biggest worry in the world. And I can easily keep track of dead crew with a wound marker. While basing the models with the war machines give me a chance to make them into small diorama's.

As I was painting these two I realized the bottom Grot was standing on a squig in stead of a stone, you've got to love these kind of details. 

I love the amount of character you find in grot faces. I worry occasionally that a (rumored) new line of Grots will not be quite as big in the characterful faces department as the ones of old. On the other hand, the Fungoid Cave-Shaman has his own thing going on and I just realized I really should get one soon...

Recasting will never be my strong suit. Perhaps that's a positive thing...

Eacht of these Grot Rock Lobber kits should come with its own stone. My second hand set had one stone between them. I put it in the (lets call it) basket of one of the Rock Lobbers. I used a quick mold to make some copies of it first. If anyone is ever going to accuse me of recasting, I guess I'll just show how well my casts of a stone turned out :). Still it looks better then the random rocks I wanted to add first.

I like the far off look this model on the front of the lobber has. I dislike the forgotten mold line right on top of his head...please move along, nothing to see here.

Most of the Grots that are not part of the Grot Rock Lobber kit are from a packet of Forge World Gretchin Crew. I picked the ones not holding spanners, drills or bombshells and they work rather nicely (I think). The one above this bit of text is a plastic Gretchin from the Warhammer 40K kit. I snapped of his spanner and just kept lobbing layers of plastic putty on until the rest of the item looked like a bit of wood. I then glued him on the Rock Lobber in the place where the side bit of wood is missing. Yes I'm quite satisfied with myself on that one ;)

Adding a Loremaster to my Highborn Aelf army might turn there danger rating from 'wet cardboard' all the way up to 'previously wet carboard'.

Another quick one-off is the Aelf Loremaster I picked up with the Warhammer Quest: Shadows over Hammerhal set. This model looks very crowded when you start out. Calmly picking out fields of color to work on and keeping at it helped give him his look. As an aside I did paint in the eyeball, but as I'm still unable to get pupils in right, I held of on painting these on him (took the coward's option here). I think I really should work on painting eyes in the second half of this year. Now to pick a range of models that have easily accessible eyes...