Fleshgors! Razorhounds!

 I needed some models to represent Razorgors in my list, and unfortunately the Pumba - er - Razorgor models are not only hilariously hideous, but also unavailable (at the time of this writing) from GW and expensive on Ebay. My guess is that they have been taken down for re-packaging for the upcoming Beastmen Arcane Journal release.

Luckily I had some Flesh Hounds laying around from an impulse Ebay buy (Wrath and Rapture Khorne half)! The sculpts are pretty nice and dynamic and look sufficiently wild and aggressive, so I think they'd be great stand-ins for Razorgors.

Front of the sprue

Back of the sprue

For my upcoming first game of TOW, I only need 2 Razorgor proxies for my list. Each model is 4 pieces; really nice and simple. I noticed on the first model that I was putting together that one of the frill/spikes was damaged:

The woes of eBay purchases sent in envelopes!

The break wasn't too bad, and I was able to use plastic cement weld the ends together...the result was a clean surgery:

Can't really tell where the seam was! A successful repair!

Of course, putting together models at night while tired, I tend to make mistakes...this is one of those situations where you need to put together a sub-assembly of 3 pieces together, where 2 side pieces sandwich around a 3rd piece. In this case it was the 2 halves of the head around the body with the tongue. I had cemented together the head halves first and was unable to position the head onto the body because of how the tongue was shaped:

Tricksy sub-assemblies! The 3 pieces needed to be glued at the same time! I hate it when this happens!

The head can't be positioned into place because there is a protrusion on the tongue that is too wide to fit through the back of the head.

I decided to sand down the protrusion on the tongue just enough....

...for it to fit! Woooo!

The Flesh Hounds (30x60mm) are on different base sizes than the Razorgors (50x75mm), so I just sticky tacked them to the bases for use in the game. They're not that big and there is ample room on the base, but good enough for a proxy:

Fleshgors assembled! Chaos hound for size comparision

Seams also filled with sprue goo (head seams pictured here)

The other Flesh Doggo, also with seams filled

Dragon Ogres Assembly

First of the Dragon Ogres, cut off the sprue, with contact points and mold lines cleaned up. The mold lines on this kit are pretty minimal, and the details are pretty crisp. Seeing the models in person really make a difference versus seeing the GW painted up versions. 

I was actually surprised by the scale of the body. From pictures I've always imagined these guys to be much bigger...their bodies are roughly the size of a Chaos Knight/Barded Steed. 

I'm opting for the great weapon option (rule of cool!), which is probably the typical setup for these guys. Also picking the helmeted head to complete the heavy armor look. I might do a little bit of modifications and add some spare horns to the helmet at some point.

Cut off the sprue and cleaned up, ready to be glued!

Dragon Ogres!

What's a Beastmen Brayherds army without Dragon Ogres? Honestly I remember being disappointed when these were revealed with the Beastmen wave of 7th/8th edition...but looking at them now, they don't look too bad. 

Regardless of the rules, I think I'll assemble these with Great Weapons cuz I think they look better! Tougher call on the helmets or non-helmets...we'll see...

 New package design to match the TOW rulebooks

Not too bad right? Big pieces, nothing appears too fiddly..

The reverse side

I have a couple more weeks before game day, and I work slow, lol. Stay tuned!

Spare Bestigors

I have this (probably) not good habit of scrolling through eBay to look for warhammer bits, and sometimes I end up purchasing things and forgetting that I did. I found that I had a bunch of spare Bestigor bodies and bits, which got me excited:

Looks like enough to build a unit...

10 bodies, command and regular bits, woo boy I thought I would be able to add a whole 'nother unit of besties! Since I already had 10 built from the Start Collecting kit from AoS, I thought to assemble them without the command group to bolster my existing unit.

Unfortunately I didn't take picks of the assembly process, but I do remember the snags when I was building these guys. I took a pick of the instructions from the Start Collecting box; you can see that you are supposed to preassemble the arms to the weapon first, then glue the sub-assembly to the bodies. However this ends up making atrocious gaps in the armpits and/or really tight fits. 

Good thing I kept the assembly instructions!

Another thing is that you probably want to glue the heads to the bodies first before the arm sub-assembly, to ensure that you still have room. The arms have to be at the right height and angle to give clearance to the heads/horns. I barely made this clearance:

Had to specifically use the narrow and more straight horns to fit onto the body here with how the arms were angled. If I glued the head to body first, I would have glued the arms in a lower angle...

I also decided to use plastic glue instead of super glue which I found out was more difficult to use for smaller pieces like wrists to hand contact points. The contact points would melt and deform if I pressed too hard and/or when the pieces slip...Note to self, use super glue for smaller models.

I had made some "sprue glue" with cut up sprue dunked into a bottle of old plastic glue to use to gap fill with. However it was hard to use on these man-sized models too, and ended up being a messy process. It was really goopy and viscous, make it hard to dap into gaps with any precision, but that might just be me having to perfect a recipe and add more plastic cement to dilute it. I still think sprue-glue is a good idea, but maybe for bigger and easier to reach gaps. Live and learn (I can't remember if I had just as much of a annoying time with the first batch of Bestigors...)

In the end, I only ended up with enough bits to build 6 additional Bestigors;  I didn't have enough arms to build more. I guess if I decide I need another unit I can build the command units for a total of 9. Back to scrolling eBay for bits, lol. I suppose just purchasing another box of 10 Bestigors might be more cost effective. We'll see when GW releases the Beastmen for Old World how they are boxed....

More besties!

Salvage Gors Pt. 2

The group of Gors were missing bits, mainly weapon arms. I wanted to keep consistent with them being from the old 6th ed era, so I wanted to find bits from the original kit. I mentioned in the last post, I was lucky to find some 6th ed Beastmen bits sellers on Ebay and snagged a group of weapon arms. I took some time to clean them up; I noticed that the older plastics were lighter in color and seemed somewhat more "waxy" and softer to scrape (who knows?).

I forgot that the older models were sculpted by hand and sometimes have muddier details. For example on the arm with the sword, the trim of the bracer is less defined, so I decided to scrape down the material to create a more obvious lip:

The edge of the trim of the bracer is not very defined

Did some scrapping to give the trim more of a noticeable lip

It's been a while, lets get these put together!

Most of the already assembled Gors had axes, so I decided to add more weapon types for variety

As I'm gluing these guys together, I realized there was a musician in the group, which required a left arm bit. Also, a couple shields had damaged contact points. Luckily I have more unassembled Gors (which I'll get into later) from the lot I got second hand off of my friend. I dipped into the remaining unassembled Gors and pilfered an arm and new shields:

Sonovah!

The left arm with single jingle jangle on the blade back (ironically on the right side of this image, lol)

New shields (Rear)

New Shields (Front); one with skull was a shield I never noticed before

This restoration was like a mini project unto themselves...took me a couple weeks of nibbling at the task: cleaning/scrubbing what paint residue I could remove, finding and ordering bits and cleaning those up, then having to find additional bits from my collection to fill more missing pieces, and finally assembling these guys:

All this work for these guys!

Another thing, these guys are a pain to rank! I should've dry fitted these guys first, but I have a tendency for perfectionism and wanted to not dwell too much. The weapon arms really need to be glued in a position where they are raised up high to clear the shield of the Gor next to them. I managed to tetris them together for this shot, but this issue might slow things down during games. Maybe when I have some time I'll revisit and do some clipping and re-gluing/re-positioning....though I don't look forward to that right now lol.

I remember my friend mentioning these guys are a pain and on the underside of bases of Gors that I didn't strip yet, you can see a number scheme of sorts that my friend went by to rank em up.....

I don't know how to decipher the numbering, but Novo had a system!

After it was all said and done, I thought about how much effort it took versus just getting a box of the current Gors (which were around 7th ed if I reckon); they would've been easier to just clip, cleanup, and glue, with all the parts needed (except the bases as the teased Beastmen Arcane Journal and old model re-release was teased about a month ago and stuff is largely unavailable at the moment). Dunno....I have a lot of these old Gor models (and Ungors) that I thought would be a waste not to rescue/salvage...old models for The Old World is fitting!

Salvage Gors Pt.1

I had bought off a bunch of old Beastmen for cheap off of a friend back when I started in the 6th ed days. He had already primed them with white primer and dressed the bases with rocks. For whatever reason (I think I remember him saying cuz of the temperature) the primer left a texture on the models that gave them a mossy/fuzzy look (which he dug and kept them that way):

Fuzzy Gor 

 I had intended to strip the paint and rebase them; I had some scale model paint stripper from another friend that didn't want it anymore and dunked a gang of Gors into it. Due to life/shifting attention span, I forgot about them....for a decade plus! 

 Amazingly, I found the container in a closet when the urge to hobby stuck me years later and to repurpose them for AoS, I took them out and found that they were still solid and intact. The details on the models still looked the same as the non-stripped ones! The primer layer had sloughed off like sheets of skin and ended as dregs at the bottom of the container as well as the rocks. I had destroyed the bases with the intention to re-base them on rounds for AoS (I had briefly played some Beasts of Chaos in their AoS incarnation). 

 Unfortunately I lost interest in the hobby/AoS and set them side for another number of years. I think the last time I played AoS was pre-pandemic times. Now with The Old World and being bit with the hobby bug again, I'm here trying to give them another lease on life (and going back onto squares)! 

There was still some primer residue stuck in nooks and crannies, fur, etc.: 

The remains of the textured primer 

 Took about an hour of scrubbing with "Master's Brush Cleaner" (which works great!). Not perfect, but close to all bare plastic once more. I think these are going to be as clean as it's going to get:

Emerging from the longest bath ever 

Luck would have it, I was able to find 6th ed Gor weapon arm bits on Ebay, so I'm waiting on those to come in. Also GW no longer selles square slotta bases...but fortunately, in true Ghettohammer fashion, I bought a bag of 25mm slotta bases to use as proxy way back LOL!

Base Off!

Took a little bit of elbow grease, finesse in clipping and shaving the bases, some drops of blood (from stabbing myself with said Exacto lol), and some curses to the Chaos Gods, but I managed to get the round bases off of AoS Beastmen!

Ready for rebasing!

Some of the Bestigors popped off their bases clean, with a good firm yank! Note for when I rebase these guys - a little dab will do indeed.

Most of the others required some more care. The Bestigors were easier to work with, since they are relatively beefier than the Ungor models and more tolerance to pulling and pressure. The Ungors have skinnier ankles, and the pressure I was applying caused some material to fatigue. I had to use an Exacto to shave the remaining base under their feet. 

A couple Ungors' limbs also need to be reglued, but fortunately they were clean breaks. I guess now I know I used super glue and not plastic glue when I assembled these back then.

Overall the gang is intact!