Gobbos

So having painted up everything I owned, by completing my shaman, yesterday I picked up my battalion and began putting them together.

Mord

My choices were Orc Boyz (infantry), Orc Boar Boyz (heavy cavalry), Forest Goblin Spider Riders (fast cavalry) and Goblin Boyz (infantry).

While I love fast cav, and spider riders in particular, they're going to need a little conversion work to make them look less static, so I opted for my Goblin Boyz.

Goblin archers

I gave them short bows - Gobbos have a WS of only 2, but a BS of 3. While ranks of Gobbo spearmen look cool, they're not much cop, unless you're using the unit as a meat shield to deliver characters into combat. As that's not my style, I wanted a unit that would look good, and would make sense, character wise.

Gobbos are sneaky gitz, so short bows it was. A musician is a must, to reform to maximise shooting / combat, and they're so cheap I gave them a standard too. I also opted to give them shields (1/2 a point each!). I put a boss model in there, but truth be told I'm likely not to bother with a boss.

They were tricky as hell to get to rank up, but they look awesome.

There were also loads of bitz left over, which got me to thinking...I mentioned before, that I'm not a fan of the wolves that come with the Goblin Wolfriders. And honestly, can you blame me?

Wolf Riders are awesome: these wolves are not.

GW did recently release some outstanding wolf models, for 40K, in the form of the Space Wolves' Fenrisian Wolves.

Fenrisian Wolves from GW: raaaawr!

Baz mentioned he'd seen them converted to carry Gobbos, but the cost of converting Wolf Riders onto those is prohibitive, if I need to buy boxes of wolf-riders, throw away (or try to resell on ebay) the rubbish wolves and buy the cool Fenrisian Wolves. If, on the other hand, I had the bits for wolf-riders left over...

So I checked my sprues. I have tons of Goblin heads left over, as well as some bow arms, lots of spear arms, command arms and shield arms. I have shields. I have heads. I have cavalry legs - this is looking promising... I have everything I need. Except torsos. Dammit! No torsos.

Luckily, I found a bits seller on ebay, and for just over a tenner, I've got 20 goblin torsos winging their way to me. They'll still be expensive wolf-riders, but not nearly as expensive, or as wasteful. But I won't be converting those until next month at the earliest. This month's budget is well and truly spent!