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I'm partial to pointing hands myself, i think that gives a leaderly air more than giant hats or guns.

(everything here so far is amazing by the way)

Before Photobucket implodes, here is the old write-up I did when I converted the two Forgeworld great knarlocs into mounted versions:

The rules for the Forgeworld Great Knarlocs are quite beneficial to a Kroot mercenary army, which otherwise lacks noticeably powerful units. Great Knarlocs have multiple wounds at a high toughness, fleet of foot, and rending all for a reasonable points cost. I knew that to build a competitive Kroot army, I had to use Great Knarlocs. The goaded Great Knarloc, unfortunately, suffers from poorly written rules and is an awkward unit to use. The mounted Great Knarloc, however, is a fantastic unit. Providing the Kroot with ranged weaponry that only a Krootox can match, I decided I had to have the maximum number of mounted Great Knarlocs allowed- 3. The problem is, Forgeworld only makes one version of the model, and I did not want 3 identical copies of it as a single unit.

So, I decided to convert the two Great Knarloc models into mounted variants. My goal was to adequately copy the Forgeworld mounted Great Knarloc so the unit looked coherent together.

I first used greenstuff to model the harness from which the Kroot riders and bolt thrower weapon would then be mounted to. I rolled very thin strips of putty and then smashed them into place along the body of the model. Using a putty tool, I pushed inward the edges of all the straps so that they would be linear and belt-like.



I then modeled some small details onto the straps. When two straps come together, I added either two staples or a nail that connected the straps. I also made a buckle for the rear strap to match the Forgeworld model. These details were added with the putty tool, and were kept simple. The bolt thrower harness was copied from the Forgeworld model, with four nailheads in the corners of the fabric.



After painting the straps, I could tell that the model was coming along quite nicely. I began to work on the riders next. The most difficult part of the riders was bending the legs into appropriate positions for the Knarloc, and it was a trial and error situation. The riders were painted separately and then added onto the Knarloc afterwards.



The bolt thrower was made from the Dark Elf Repeater Thrower. I can’t remember exactly how I constructed it, but it was quite simple and all the pieces seemed to fit together exactly how I wanted them after some cutting here and there. I replaced the arrow head on the visible bolt with a Kroot round to match the Forgeworld model. The hand crank was added to the right side to match the Forgeworld model.



After painting the riders and bolt thrower separately, it was a simple task of gluing them onto the Knarloc and varnishing the model as one piece. It came out better than I had expected, and is nearly indistinguishable from the actual Forgeworld model. I will probably use the plastic High Elf bolt thrower for the third model, and this will give a great sense of how the Kroot scavenge the battlefield for their weapons and why none of the three bolt throwers will be identical.






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And the mounted great knarlocs all completed.

I got around to completing my fifth and (for now) final shaper equipped with an eviscerator.



I've liked the look of the Seraphon bone jaws on Kroot models, so have kept them for squad leaders. Now that I have five shapers, I can finally run a Shaper Council from the old Kroot Mercenaries army list if it ever makes a return. I have changed some of my painting up with the more recent models (different drybrushing, different fabric and warpaint colors), but they blend in well with models that are over 15 years old now.



For 8th edition, I've found that my favorite way of using standard Kroot infantry is as a footslogging Wych unit, led by a Hekatrix with an agoniser (eviscerator counts-as). Now without transports, foot Wyches do not last long, so the lists I've had some success with include a small unit of 2 Khymerae to go with each Wych unit (Khymerae represented by Kroot Hounds) and by using Ynnari rules. The majority of my army is then fun Character units, so there is nothing else to shoot at except these basic units. If the 2 Khymerae die, I get a Soulburst, either on the Wyches or a nearby Character. If they are ignored, then they charge in first and either die to Overwatch or tie up the enemy unit to prevent them from firing at my more elite units. On the table, the standard setup of the two units (Wyches and Khymerae) looks very much like a Kroot war party.



And now I have a complete 5 Troops choices and 5 Fast Attack choices that don't cost too many points and allow me to fill out larger detachments for extra Command Points. They don't win games, but they let the good stuff do the work.

Props on finishing up your Shaper Council. It may not mean much currently in the game but that's gotta be a milestone for every Kroot player (the handful of them)

I continue to love your Kroot minis, and am impressed with where you've taken them on the 48k battlefield. Your scheme with the Ynnari Wych + Khimera core is cool - keeps the points down, gives the Kroot war party bite where it feels like they should have it (preternatural combat prowess), and the soulburst mechanic could be pushed in some interesting shamanic ways.

Do the Great Knarlocs feature in that army? Wraithlords / wraithknights come to mind, but maybe you're just allying in actual Great Knarlocs (assuming FW has rules for them)!

- Salvage

I use the Great Knarlocs as melee Wraithlords. Without the heavy weapons, the points cost is reasonable to throw them in and charge them forward with the rest of the army. I've always envisioned the Kroot being a mashup of infantry and beasts charging through heavy terrain:




As far as I am aware, there are no current rules for them but they are expected, as per the Forgeworld FAQ:

Q: There are no datasheets for Firestorms, Great Knarloc,
Knarloc Riders, Mega-dreads, Battlefortresses or Grot Bomb
Launchers – are there datasheets I should use for these models?
A: Datasheets for these models will be published on the
Forge World and Warhammer Community websites.

KROOOTS!!!!!!, Ahem I love your work keep it up lad.

Cheers.

I put down the green stuff and glue for a week and painted up the first spined hound that was available as a limited release from Zealot Miniatures. This is such a nice model, and was a joy to paint up. I probably put him on a base that is too big so I may need to either replace the base or add some more items to it, but I didn't want to simply blend these hounds in with the GW models as they are worthy of a more prominent place in the army display. These were released as sets of three and limited to 250 sets, and I was lucky enough to snag several sets but I'm sure after painting a few of them I'll move onto a different idea. Still, it's nice to know I have the models available for future use.

Shame they're a limited run; I'd love to have some of those to work on. :(

Three spined hounds finished:



I also painted up the first counts-as Dark Reaper. I'm kinda torn on this one. I'm so used to drybrushing skin that when I actually have to paint armor it never comes out the same, so none of my Tau-armored Kroot have the exact same color. It's not noticeable on a table, but I know. It's also a little too much Tau, especially when looking at it from the front. I'm not sure what to add to make it less clean, perhaps some battle damage and a bayonet-type blade? I tried painting warpaint onto Tau armor before but didn't like the result. This may just be one of those models that I really enjoyed converting but couldn't figure out the paint job.

This is outstanding! Way to keep the kroot alive. Did the war skiff get finished at some point? I didn't see it reading through.

No plans to start on vehicles yet, I've been more inclined to make infantry and beasts. Next up is a jetbike-type character that I'm planning to magnetize so it could be a warrior, seer, or hunter.



The flying base will be the citadel tree and I'm going to try out the new bendable vines on it. The jetbike will be a terradon suitably converted with Kroot details. If all goes well the rider torsos will be interchangeable to make different types of characters.

I have started to put together the jetbike character. For the flying base, I wrapped around the vines and clipped branches from the top to allow the terradon mount to fit. I also added a couple magnets so that the character can be removed from the mount itself and the tree for ease in painting and transportation.



The mount itself mainly uses the terradon rider bits but I did do a head swap with an extra spined hound head. Since the skinks stand on top of the terradon there really wasn't much room for a saddle along its back so instead I've just draped the legs over the neck- not the best result visually but it lends itself to the rider engaging into combat more than just sitting back for a nice Sunday flight. I wanted to be able to swap out the torso so that I can use different character types. The first one I've built up is going to be a psyker, likely a farseer, so I went with the older looking Kroot head that came with the Kroot on Big Ape third party model. He has a feathered collar from the Skink Starpriest and a Sylvaneth Branchwych staff, as well as a little spell power from a Slaanesh chariot.





Once assembled together, I worked on the pose to make it look like he's swooping down to engage an infantry-sized enemy. I think it's coming together well in terms of the size of the character and the size of the tree, one doesn't really outshine the other. I think I will go over the cracks with greenstuff as well as add some Kroot bits along the back of the terradon, possibly some leg straps for the rider to make him look a bit more secured on his mount rather than balancing off the shoulders.

Last month Wargame Exclusive released the Greater Good Wild Hunter.



What a ridiculous model, I ordered two. Mainly I was interested to see how the pieces were assembled and whether I could try casting some extra bits for more conversion work. The models arrived yesterday, and while I've never ordered anything from Wargame Exclusive I must say how impressed I am with the quality. The model was separated into many pieces, which was great as I was most interested in duplicating the head and the bow. The model size is also equivalent to that of the GW Kroot models, a head swap looks great and so does the bow. One of the great things about Kroot hands is they are symmetrical with no thumb so the bow arm will work as either a left or a right hand for some variety if I were to make a unit of archers.

Heh, I did the same thing ordering a few of the WGE Kroot to see how they’d work out. One got to stay as-is, sans the space-boobs WGE seems to love, and the other became my Vulturekin Shaper. I’m also converting one into a Cadre Fireblade for a friend. If these guys weren’t so cost prohibitive I’d love to see someone (you) do a whole unit of archers. Upside: WGE is supposedly doing more of these not-Kroot models.

I went into a building frenzy and started to put together the first war skiff transport, which will count as a raider, as well as a unit of scourges. The war skiff uses a battle wagon floor, with devilfish engines and a pirahna hull.



To help strengthen my anti-vehicle choices, the scourges have been equipped with haywire blasters, which are actually the bolt weapons from the stormcast castigators. The squad leader gets the cool Tau-style bow that comes with the wargames exclusive kroot sculpt. The entire unit has had head swaps to test out some alternate sculpts I came across that have much larger eyes.

MORE KROOOOOT

The skiff is particularly brilliant, great start

Glad to see this project is still alive. Your conversion work is very effective -- evocative, characterful, and masterfully resourceful. Thanks for sharing!

Full speed ahead on a counts-as Drukhari army for Adepticon 2021. The scourges are complete, as is the first raider.




The next project will be to build a unit of counts-as wyches rather than using standard Kroot carnivore models. Using the Corvus Cabal set, the first model came out pretty well.

Those all look amazing, very excited to see this army in the future!

Great stuff in here Cool project and some lovely building. Particularly like the raider skiff.

Great work. Loving all the counts-as choices for this army.

The first three models built from the Corvus Cabal kit are finished:




It was actually quite easy to clip off the human feet and replace them with Kroot feet, and stick a Kroot torso on top of the waist with minor green stuff work. The real challenge was trying to keep the feathered collars and backs that the cabal models had, which was the main reason I wanted to use the kit. I ended up keeping the arms from the cabal kit and just replacing the hands, but each collar had to be fitted onto a Kroot torso by shaving away from the torso until I was happy with the result. I kept all the cabal weapons because I actually liked the look and feel like it fits well.

Oaka,

Interesting idea and nice execution so far.

Cheers,

CB

That's a brilliant idea and the minis look great, conversion- and paintjob-wise! They have a little Predator feel to them.

Was hoping this was an update and not thread necro.
Great to see you back adding to the kroot, there’s truly some amazing models here!

Really smart conversion and great execution / paint. Always happy to see more of your Kroot

Damn, this project is weird and wild!! Amazing ideas roiling here -- and impressive craftsmanship. I will be following this avidly...

I have definitely been working on more models, just not posting until full units are done. I did want to share the WIP of this guy, though. He's currently the leading candidate for a counts-as Grotesque. I do have five other versions that are awaiting bits from overseas to arrive before they are finished, so eventually I will have six variants to choose from and hopefully finally decide on what I want to do for a full unit. Models are being made from a Krootox, Raptoryx, Flesh Hound, Sylvaneth, Wulfen, and this guy, an Orruk.

Great work, as a fellow Kroot Shaper I find your stuff a great inspiration. I always thought the Kroot plastic kit was one of the most versatile and easy to convert that GW has ever made, and you just prove that even more! Well done!

How come I never saw this thread?!? This is gorgeous work, absolutely stunning! It never ceases to amaze me how much creativity is within the Kroot-Community. You should check out Instagram there are a few hardcore Kroot-Enthusiasts as well! Have you seen the whole SiegeofPech stuff?