Night Goblins

Despite being totally into 40k back in the day, I still enjoyed seeing Citadel's fantasy figures in the 'Eavy Metal section of White Dwarf. Along with everything Chaos, I loved Night Goblins. They might be nasty little buggers, but there was a lot of character and humour to them. So you can probably guess what happened when I found these tiny terrors on Etsy.

Before we kick off with painting, a quick word on my involuntary absence from blogging and commenting on others' posts. In case you hadn't guessed, it was caused by work, which has not so much been kicking me in the arse over the past six or so weeks as slamming my nuts in the fridge door while also kicking me in the arse. 

We're down to three staff members now, so work has been a nightmare of tiredness and frustration including me having to work 13 days out of 14 and do two 12-hour shifts just to get stuff done. Not only that, we're having to close early four days out of the week because it's either that or do 14-hour shifts and that's not happening. 

My painting has been restricted to the early mornings because I'm too shagged out when I get home to even look at a mini, and the same goes for taking part in our little community as I can't even bear to attempt typing. I have given up sitting on the sofa when I get home as I just fall asleep, and spend my off-hours at the kitchen table. I will try to catch up with what others have been doing and get some comments up as soon as possible.

Anyway, onto the gobbos.

I admit, I got really lucky with these guys. After doing a few Etsy searches for night goblins and finding a lot more modern or realistic sculpts, I finally found what I was after: ones that look like the classic Citadel figures from ye olden days. But something puzzled me, so I sent the seller a message:

Hi! I was wondering about the set of Night Goblins you're selling: you say there's 14 spearmen, 11 with hand weapons and the command squad. Is that 28 or 29 miniatures for $28 and free shipping, or am I reading the description wrong?

An hour later he responded:

hey there, yes from what I can see its about 29 minis and 3 shields, but yes that is the current price, but I am going to raise it now that I notice it is that many minis. I would honor that price currently if you wanted it

Ten seconds later I messaged back:

Just put in my order. Thanks very much, can't wait to paint the little weirdos!

So for around a dollar each I got 28 models. The same set from the same seller is now priced at $42, so I think I did OK.

When it came to bases, I debated using the classic square ones or going with 25mm round ones. After counting all the square bases I own I found I only have 13, so it was a case of either ordering more from Amazon or just plugging away. I took the second option, got 28 round bases out of their bag, turned them all upside down on my painting mat and began supergluing pennies to their undersides to add some weight. With them all done, I sat at the table watching a tutorial on YouTube and began to feel light-headed and realised I'd been breathing glue fumes for five minutes. Oops.

After some much-needed fresh air, all the gobbos were taken to the garage and sprayed with black primer. That's about 90% of the painting done, so yay. My original plan, made five weeks ago when I started writing this post, was to just show the painting stages on one of the goblins. I even named him Sid. That plan went out of the window when work took over my life, and as I've now finished all of the little sods I'll just throw in photos of the completed gobbos in between describing the painting. 

There's a lot of tutorials on YouTube on how to paint goblin skin. Some go with using Waaagh Flesh as the basecoat, and some with Death World Forest. The only real difference is that using Waaagh Flesh means you can skip the shading stage, and with almost 30 of these little buggers to paint jumping a stage seemed like a good idea. Oh, and while looking up tutorials I discovered that Games Workshop has renamed night goblins Gloomspite Gitz, which just screams "we need a name that we can trademark". Yuck.

Anyway, that was a long way of saying that the skin was given a coat of Waaagh Flesh. Fun facts: I painted eight before realising that some have bare feet, and I got 17 done when I remembered their ears. What a time to be alive! Finally all the skin was done, and it was time for highlighting.

If I'd gone with Death World Forest, which would have been a mistake as I don't own it, I'd now be looking at shading every goblin with Biel-Tan Green and waiting for it to dry. I was able to leap straight to the highlighting stage, using Death Guard Green. I picked out the details easily enough without getting too much on the clothing, although the paint did that weird thing where it goes kind of gluey when thinned.

Highlighting was next, and I used Dawnstone to edge-highlight their robes. I've never been a massive fan of edge highlighting but it worked well on these chaps. After that it was a case of dotting a tiny amount of Wazdakka Red into their eye sockets and some Pallid Wych Flesh onto their teeth.

And now it's time for weapons and shields. Any wood was painted Mahogany Brown, highlighted with Balor Brown and then washed with Agrax Earthshade, and the metal bits are Iron Warriors, Leadbelcher and Nuln Oil. Their rope belts are painted with Burnt Umber and Flat Earth.

Despite the shield emblems being embossed I did manage to shag up several of them and had to touch them up a few times. The red eye symbol is Wazdakka Red over Khorne Red and the moons are Yriel Yellow over Averland Sunset. To break up the colours a bit more I added some Violet and Purple layers to one of the three shield designs.

The leader was the only one to get a second colour, in his case on his hood. I went for a basecoat of Barak-Nar Burgundy with Screamer Pink for the highlights. The horns are just Ivory over Bonewhite. The banner was surprisingly easy to paint, and it took a drybrush of Neutral and Ghost greys very well.

I absolutely could not face doing anything fancy for their bases, so I just covered them in sand and painted them to look like rock/stone.

So that's the first lot of night goblins done. Coming soon: fanatics, archers, some basic (very basic) cavern scenery and a moonshrine. I promise not to take another six weeks before posting again.