Not Brother Lloyd’s Kroot Army – It’s Mine

Progress has been made on painting the Heart of Ghur up as the planet Pech or be it at a slower pace than expected. Is that not always the case we have the grand plans of how quickly a project will be but the reality for most of us is painting is a slow process. Not just physical application of paint on plastic but the trial and error, the thought process, the research that goes into it.

For some gifted people I am sure they can sit down and start painting knowing right away what colours to use how to apply them. The rest of us have to work at it trying to find the spark to start or the trial error to get the look we want. Somethings work as expected and other times not quite but  you accept the result.

Take the trees for example the ends painted in bright pink in my head to replicate the Japanese cherry blossom but without the petals you would not think that. Still the contrast between the brown tree and pink buds works well to break the colours up if nothing else.

The green wash over the base of the tree worked better than expected to add age to the tree to give it a moss effect perhaps.

These are “test” models before I paint the rest of the kits. I find it useful to do 1 or 2 models in a scheme fully before I launch into any batch style painting.

The colours used here are a mixture of contrast and traditional paints. I dont get hung up on using certain paints or thinking one is better than the other. I used the paint as much as my ability which is limited allows for. Each of us has a personal perference which makes the hobby so interesting.

Well I have a bit of work ahead of me before we return to the story. I have bought some more Kroot models so maybe we will take a look at them next time.

Home World of Pech

Pech is a primitive Arboreal world with few lasting structures and only bare minimum manufacturing capabilities. The native Kroot live high among the tree tops in hives made of regurgitated wood. Areas devoid of the expansive planetary forests are covered in harsh tundra.

The jagga tree, an evergreen tree native to this planet, blankets most of the largest continent where the fauna are also plentiful.

Animal life of Pech consists almost entirely of Kroot and their cousin species including the peaceful, lumbering grazers called krootox, the savage kroot hound, and what may be the original kroot genus, the kroothawk.

Board -Heart of Ghur
I could not find a lot of detail on the home planet of the Kroot Pech. However an arboreal world suggest a lot of trees and green fauna so that is a starting point. Sadly trees are not something I have a lot of but I did pick up the Heart of Ghur set recently. While the Heart Ghur is suppose to be set in a swamp I think I can make it work in a forest with some additional elements.

The Heart of Ghur is a quite amazing set when it comes to the terrian. The 18 bits of plastic terrian have a bamboo construction in bridges and platforms. It does feel more jungle than swamp setting. Applying the right paint scheme it could pass for a forest moon of Endor if we ingore the trees have no leaves and branches that end in hooks. The style is complete with large skulls of hunted animals by the trees no less but let assume these have been hunted by the mighty Kroot warriors. I think it will do for the home world of Pech for now
I have built and sprayed all the terrian white so far.

The plan is to keep the colours very light so starting with a warm bright primer should help. To start I always like to do a test model so i will paint one of the small terrian items frist before we tackle the bigger items.

Music Plays

Record Scratch

Yep, That’s Me Shaper Lloyd on the space hulk Gallowdark You’re Probably Wondering how I got into this mess right ?

Well we need to go back to the start. EGG. Okay maybe not the very start lets go back to my home world Perch but fast forward to the start of the problems.

Oh right Perch erm we are going to need to a board and some terrain then to start with.

Narrative Build Project
This project is rather more than a straight forward buy models, build models and paint models I want to try a different approach a narrative build as I call it. As we have a narrative game in which you tell a story through the battlefield this is aiming to tell a story through the build process. That of humble Kroot Shaper and the events he goes through. I dont have a plan or an end goal no story written down just ideas and concepts, a direction of travel.

The purpose is to use this as a driving force to complete hobby projects building and painting models, playing games to give me focus and purpose in the hobby which I often lack. You will have to excuse me if at times the progress is slow and the story will take time to progress if a lot of painting is required. However I will provide updates on the h0bby progress at least.

Which brings me to the first topic the world of Perch. That will be the starting location of this adventure and the first hobby task to build a board for the world of Perch. So the next update we will look at the planet of Perch, perhaps a look at some terrain we can use and a review of sorts.

The Kroot evolved from avian creatures on their homeworld of Pech, a xenos species of savage humanoids.

Kroot are tall (a good half-metre taller than most Humans), their avian ancestry giving them a bird-like beak and long quills protruding from their heads like hair.

Smaller quills, possibly the evolutionary remnants of feathers, can be found scattered over their bodies.

A unique feature of the Kroot is that they evolve by selecting genetic traits of their defeated foes to absorb by eating them. Due to this, the many Kroot warbands across the galaxy often look radically different.

The Kroot offer themselves as mercenaries and sell their services to anyone willing to pay them. They travel the galaxy taking limited contracts from both major and minor intelligent starfaring species and are regularly employed by the T’au.

But no longer the “Not Brother Lloyds Kroot” warband have bigger aims than just merenaries to the Tau they want to carve out their own path in universe starting righ now.