Wednesday 12 May 2021

Stargrave Bestiary: Bileworms and Horat

As part of my ongoing prep for future Stargrave games, I've been looking at models needed to fill in the bestiary slots for Encounters. Some of the bestiary options will be filled from my existing collection (bounty hunters, repair bots and drones for example), where as others will be new paint jobs on figures I've been planning on getting round to (like the Warbot / Rogue Trader robot from last week). Some creatures necessitate some brand new models, so I've started looking around to see what might fit.




Pictured above are my interpretations of Stargrave bileworms and a horat.


Bileworms are described as "featureless worms" which "can grow over twenty feet long and as thick as a grown-man's leg". They also spit a sticky, acidic, and toxic bile. This pair of Reaper Bones giant leeches seemed perfect, being roughly as described and also pretty cheap!



In retrospect, I wish I'd painted them as a little more sci-fi (perhaps blue or purple), but I do like the naturalistic colour scheme which was based on actual leeches. The painting was almost exclusively done with washes over a GW Rakarth Flesh base coat.


On to the horat, which is described as "gigantic woolly rhinoceroses." I didn't really want a woolly rhino, so settled on the burrowing horror (also Reaper bones), which ticked the key criteria of matching the key words in the animal's traits (large, strong, horns - if you count the big fin as a horn!).



Like the bileworms, my horat got a basecoat of orange and then some washes and drybrushing. I realise I should have taken a scale photo, but it is a large beastie measuring just over 100mm nose to tail.


So that's another couple of bestiary entries ticked off, and more importantly, some more alien beasties for my crews to tackle!


18 comments:

  1. oh love the horat, the orange/black pattern is very nice.

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    1. Thanks! I wanted something striking and simple. A lot of animal colouration seems to make the head/face contrast against the body, so I went with something in that vein.

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  2. Very cool beasties. I really like the horat paint job... it has that sinister alien look to it. Also love that you chose that model, because land sharks are some of my favorite models, and seeing how cool this one is painted up I think I need to add one to my collection.

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    1. It really is a great model - nice menacing look and lovely well defined details.

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  3. Very nice indeed! I like the shading on the worms in particular.

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    1. Thanks Toby. I did enjoy washing those worms - there's brown, green, yellow, orange and red on them!

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  4. I am a little bit surprised you're not just filling all the beastie options with variations of Grox.

    Nice work on the newcomers! I think your horat scheme would work a treat just transplanted onto a D&D Rust Monster.

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    1. Pygmy grox. Bile grox. Robogrox. This idea has mileage ;)

      Cheers Curis!

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  5. Those Reaper Bones minis are so affordable and there are some very fun sculpts in their extensive range to boot.

    I think though that your Horat might get confused and try to join your power armoured trooper team with that lovely orange/black scheme! :)

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    1. I absolutely agree, the affordability is fantastic for this kind of model.

      You're right about the orange, I do tend to use it a lot :D :D

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  6. Pretty nice! Well spotted minis, I like your way to make them fit into your own world and painting style. Lovely!

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    1. Thanks Suber! Mixing and matching figures that I like is one of my favourite things about the hobby.

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  7. I'll have to keep my eye out for that burrowing horror!

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  8. I've just ordered quite a pile of reaper to fill some gaps. Including those very bileworms.

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    1. For generic beasties and troopers, you can't really beat Reaper I reckon!

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  9. This is excellent work! Lovely stuff axiom.

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