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I was glad that Kroot got new models, but I wasn't going to do a Kroot army, because it would be expensive AF.

Of course, then one of the FLGS has an overstock and they e-mail people on their mailing list if they want to buy stuff at a discount they literally cannot advertise for legal purposes.

I AM NOT MADE OF STONE. Kroot was one of those armies that younger, poorer me wanted but all the Forge World stuff needed to make it work wasn't practical. Though now that I think of it most of my Christmas projects are just bucket list armies younger, poorer me wanted.

So anyways, between some cheap discounted Kroot and a couple Kroot Hunting Party boxes - which are still available everywhere - I have something of a Kroot army on the go.



What we have here is:

2 Kroot War Shapers (one with bow, one with staff and prey hook)
2 Kroot Flesh Shapers
1 Kroot Trial Shaper (I'll use Dahyak Grekh as a second)
10 Kroot Hounds (Kroot Hounds are way too expensive and I couldn't source them below a 15% discount)
4 Krootox Riders (all with Repeater Cannons)
6 Krootox Rampagers
60 Kroot Carnivores (three squads of 20)
2 Kroot Lone-Spears (one with rifle, one with javelins)

That's 1205 points at the current Munitorum values, 1260 with Dahyak Grekh added on. Even with the discounts it was still more expensive than I would have liked, and I do have some old Kroot models I could assemble, but I'm keeping it to the recent stuff for the time being. Though I skipped on the Kroot Far-Stalkers for now in favor of just having big blocks of Kroot Carnivores, though having at least one unit of Infiltrators might be nice in the future. The goal on this one was 1000pts of Kroot, so this should do for now.

Paint scheme wise, it'll be pretty close to the stuff I did 2 years ago for Farsight Enclaves:



I think I'll go a bit brighter with some underpainting the red with white ink and I may go brighter on the crests. I can't go crazy because there's a good 87 models to paint (which is why I left a lot of the bags and grenades off the Carnivores) but having the models pop a bit more can't hurt.

We look forward to you completing this by.... since you mentioned Krootmas, Im assuming you plan to finish soon... is Christmas a good date? Or would you prefer we gave you to the end of the year?

In all seriousness, good luck. Fulfilling a GW dream is always a fun project.

 Lathe Biosas wrote:
We look forward to you completing this by.... since you mentioned Krootmas, Im assuming you plan to finish soon... is Christmas a good date? Or would you prefer we gave you to the end of the year?

In all seriousness, good luck. Fulfilling a GW dream is always a fun project.

I generally shoot to get done by the new year, but this year I can overshoot by a few days because of the way the factory's winter maintenance shut-down lined up. I save up my Lieu days and some vacations to get a big block of time off for this (seniority is nice).

Between the red skin and the orange grass, I really like the overall look to your kroot. Uou have...a lot of models to tackle. I'm looking forward to seeing your progress.

Man, I always loved kroot as well. I don't who are the space cowboys but I love my space indians! I have a box of them at home as well.

I love the darker skin and the orange scrubland. It gives the feeling of someone who has spent their time under the open sky and the hot sun. Looking forward to seeing more.

Lots of time at the airbrush booth today!

First, I primed the army with Badger's Stynylrez Black Primer, thinned a bit to flow better. It's just the best airbrush primer I've found.



Then, after letting the airbrush cool down, I added a zenithal with Liquitex White Ink to give the upcoming reds some pre-shading.



Even a quick and dirty zenithal can really make the texture of a mini stand out quite a bit.



By the way, I decided to use wine corks rather than the painting handles I normally use due to the sheer number of minis. I often use corks on 25-32mm bases, only once I hit 40mm or bigger do I really want a handle. But my blu-tac was getting kind of long in the tooth (and full of paint from previous use), so I bought some Gorilla Glue Mounting Putty, and so far none of the minis have fell off the corks, so I can heartily recommend the stuff.

But that's enough for one day, tomorrow I'll start tackling the red basecoat.

Question, John - the tufts you show in your example model are quite striking. Which range are they from?

 Dysartes wrote:
Question, John - the tufts you show in your example model are quite striking. Which range are they from?

Rival Crafts. https://www.rivalcrafts.co.uk/store/Fire-p320830949



After much struggle (Khorne Red Air seems to love clogging my airbrush no matter how much I thin it), basecoat is finished.



Next step is - oddly enough - texture paint. The reason for this step now is twofold - it will save me waiting on texture paint to dry after painting each individual unit - so I can go straight to varnish and flock/tuft the minute the varnish is dry.

The other reason is that's the way I did it when I first did my Farsight Enclaves stuff, which was part of a twitch community challenge to paint a Start Collecting box during a weekend. The rules of the challenge allowed basecoat and texture to be done before hand, so that's what I did, and honestly it worked well enough that I'll keep on doing it. It has the side benefit that I can clean up any texture paint errors on a basecoated, rather than completed, mini.

Nice one - thanks, John!

Always fun to see kroot getting some love! Hopefully they play fun as well. Nice progress so far!

Well, this took longer than I expected. After 45 minis I ran out of my Stirland Battlemire (this was expected). It was the end of the day anyways so I hit the FLGS the next day.

This is when I discover that Stirland Battlemire has been discontinued.

But fortunately Stirland Mud has not been discontinued, so I load it up with some extra grit (Medium Grey Ballast from Woodland Scenics - a bit chunkier than Battlemire but as close as I had) and carry on.



It's a pretty decent match (not that you can tell in the photo) and after drybrushing and basing flock/tuft it will be basically indistinguishable. I could have used AK Wet Ground with grit but the color is slightly off. I'm a bit bummed though because both my Farsight and Sisters armies used Stirland Battlemire, so mixing in grit works, but it's a bit of a pain in the butt, at this point I might as well start making my own texture paint out of Rhinox Hide and sand.

I wonder what else has been discontinued....

You are still doing a fantastic job though.

You'll have to give us your army list when you're done, I've been trying to push my buddy to drop his battlesuits and go all tau.

The first thing that struck me in that first photo was... That's a LOT of corks! Must've been quite a night collecting all those.

Did you find the blu-tac gave an adequate hold before it got too old/over-used? Or is the Gorilla Glue Mounting Putty now a must for you?

 Matt of Jasoom wrote:
The first thing that struck me in that first photo was... That's a LOT of corks! Must've been quite a night collecting all those.

Did you find the blu-tac gave an adequate hold before it got too old/over-used? Or is the Gorilla Glue Mounting Putty now a must for you?

I found blu-tac to be really temperature sensitive and didn't improve hold over time. Gorilla Glue stuff seems to be less temperature sensitive (holds about the same cold or warm) and improves adhesion over time - I just pulled some minis off and it was harder than removing blu-tac, though neither one leaves any residue. How well it stands to repeated use only time will tell.

The corks I just ordered a batch of 100 off Amazon. Stained corks probably wouldn't hold the putty nearly as well.

Anyways, that said, I've finished some minis!



Honestly my opinion of Kroot Hounds as minis has improved. The 'official' paint job makes them look over-muscled; the original Kroot Hounds were super lean and alien looking. While the new ones aren't nearly as lean as the old ones, they aren't nearly as bad looking given a darker paint job. I did have a problem with the varnish making them way too shiny (Vallejo Gloss Varnish) so I had to do a second coat with Vallejo Matte Varnish. They're still a bit shiny but that should die down over time. At least I didn't have to wait for texture paint to dry.

I started with the Khorne Red base and gave it a wash of Carroburg Crimson, followed by a drybrush of Wild Rider Red. From there it's all details, the crest is Reaper Orange Brown with a Feugan Orange wash. Most of the details are INSTAR Golden Brown (discontinued but I have lots). The orange spines is a change from the original Kroot scheme which had the Golden Brown spines.

Original Old Kroot Scheme:


If I go with orange spines across the board I'll probably have to switch to brown cloth, but I have a bunch of new browns from when I was trying to find a match for the old Citadel Vermin Brown, though keeping the orange cloth probably would not be overwhelming.

I am totally stealing your orange for my Ryza army.

 Lathe Biosas wrote:
I am totally stealing your orange for my Ryza army.

Careful that Feugan Orange is powerful stuff.

But Reaper Orange Brown is a fantastic base for any orange color. It's got decent opacity for an orange.

I'm making a digital camouflage look, and your orange is perfect....
Never used Reaper before.

These guys absolutely kicked my ass. I thought I could get a squad done in one day (I usually pull 5-6 hours of painting), but no, about 8-ish hours across two days (plus varnish drying time).



Now part of that was futzing with new paints, so the next group should go a bit smoother, but still. Straps were done in Reaper Rust Brown with a Reikland Flesh-shade wash, which aside from the spines being orange is the only real departure from the old version, though I did give the guns wooden stocks (Reaper Auburn Shadow with Agrax Earthshade).



Part of me misses when Kroot Hounds were part of Carnivore Squads (Krootox too!). I do think it's neat they included baby Kroot Hounds to mark your Long-Quills for easy ID (though I didn't give my Long-Quills carbines).

Also, completely unrelated, I finished some Battletech Hammerheads (they just needed varnishing and decals and basing). They're over here if you like Battletech https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/814987.page

Wow, excellent work! How many more Squads do you have left?

(I'm glad you mentioned the tiny kroot hound, I was wondering what they were for.)

 Lathe Biosas wrote:
Wow, excellent work! How many more Squads do you have left?

(I'm glad you mentioned the tiny kroot hound, I was wondering what they were for.)

60 Kroot Carnivores in total, so 50 to go. I may have been overly ambitious.

 John Prins wrote:

 Lathe Biosas wrote:
Wow, excellent work! How many more Squads do you have left?

(I'm glad you mentioned the tiny kroot hound, I was wondering what they were for.)

60 Kroot Carnivores in total, so 50 to go. I may have been overly ambitious.

Don't worry, as long as you give up on sleep... eating... and yeah... maybe listen to some upbeat music. You'll be done in no time... or insane.

The orange on the spines/quills looks really good. It helps the shoulder armour to really jump out more.

Some Krootox got done.



I really enjoyed painting these guys. It took about as long as a squad of Kroot Carnivores to paint, but it was much more fun, even with all the fiddly bangles on the Krootox's arms. It makes me look forward to painting the Krootox Rampagers, which have less fiddly crap. Even then I was mostly able to use Size 0 or higher brushes for most things and only really had to bust out the teeny brushes for stuff like the eyes.

The Kroot Holy Trinity:



Some variety in the Krootox sculpts would have been nice (basically you get head and weapon swaps), I really would have appreciated some optional arms without all the bangles, maybe getting the arm guards like the Rampagers.

The bangles came up great. The neutrality of the colour works well against the intense saturation of their skin tone.

The woven/beaded seat cushion on their backs looks like it took some work. Hats off for not just doing it all one colour.

 Matt of Jasoom wrote:
The bangles came up great. The neutrality of the colour works well against the intense saturation of their skin tone.

The woven/beaded seat cushion on their backs looks like it took some work. Hats off for not just doing it all one colour.

It's all smoke and mirrors. Almost every texture aside from skin (which is shaded and drybrushed) is done by putting down a color, shading the color, then building the color back up with the original color. The beaded cushion took almost no time at all, I only built the color back up around the edges. The bead texture is really deep so the shade drops way in there.

Second Kroot Carnivore squad complete.



Only not really, because it's part of the first squad, it doesn't even have a Long Quill model because I would most likely deploy them in 20's.

Still, that' 1/3 of the Carnivores, done, which is honestly less than I thought I'd have done by now, but they surprised me with how long they take to do with all the fiddly bits. But I guess 32 models painted from basecoat in one week isn't too shabby.



This is still only 270 points of Kroot, however.

The new Tau Auxiliary detachment would be perfect for these guys.

Krootox Rampagers



By mistake I grabbed two of the same mini (I have 6 total and there are 3 sculpts though you can do some weapon swaps for the riders) and didn't notice until I started doing the oranges, but it'll work out in the end. For all these guys are supposed to be younger Krootox they're really not much smaller, but I'm honestly impressed by the design, none of them have any base contact aside from one rear leg but it's pretty rock solid.

Well, Christmas obligations are slowing me down, but I got the 3rd squad of Carnivores done.

If I'm reading your initial list correctly, that puts you at the halfway mark for Carnivores, Krootox and Rampages, as well as having all your Hounds done?

Feels like good progress to me