How to Build a (Male) Centigor, Part One: The Bits Required

So, you want to build yourself some centigor?  Well, you've come to the right place.

While there are a lot of tutorials out there for building a Centigor, I've decided that, rather than simply showing you pictures of what I'm building, it might be beneficial for those of you out there who might be trying to do something similar yourselves to walk you through the steps I undertake in the process.

Let's start at the beginning with assembling the necessary bits.

Bitz Site Review: BitsandKits.co.uk

As nearly every one of my projects involves a lot of conversion work, I tend to buy a lot of bits.  A lot of bits.  As in, I spend more on bits than I'd care to think about and far more than I'm comfortable admitting to my wife.

Because of that, I tend to look for the best deals and the best dealers.

As lots of small businesses survive on word of mouth, if I find them, I'd like to share them with you.  It helps them by keeping them in business and it helps me by having them still in business (no, they don't pay me commission to talk about them or slide me free bits on the side or anything).

As most of my experiences with bits sites have been positive, most of my reviews will be positive.

This is not one of those reviews.

Rumors: New GW Paints revealed.

In case you missed it yesterday, Stahly's Tale of Painters posted images of the color swatches for GW's new line of paints that we'd talked about last week.

They'll be hitting store shelves on March 24th.

Complete*: The Pestigor Lord.

* - Complete except for his base, obviously. I want to try to do something ironic with it, with lots of flowers and such, but I don't have any on hand at the moment.

If you haven't picked one up yet to find out for yourself, let me just say that the new plastic Hero (Wizard/Sorceress/Champion/whatever) kits that Games Workshop is putting out are absolutely outstanding. I've picked up a couple now, and I'm impressed not only with the level of detail offered, but the ease at which they can be converted into other things.

For example, the Nurgle Lord.

You noticed this one ain't human, right?

More photos (and a lot of exposition about the good ol' days of Warhammer) after the jump ...

Rumors: Games Workshop's new paints.

Obligatory picture of what the new paints might look like that's already been everywhere.

Rumors have been swirling for a few weeks now -- the first I saw them was on Bell of Lost Souls, I believe -- that the reason for the disappearance of the painting and hobby articles from the Games Workshop website and the reason that hobby stores were having issues replenishing stocks of paint was that Games Workshop was getting ready to re-vamp their entire line of paints.

Now, the list of new paint colors has hit the internets.

Works in Progress: Centigors (Unit #1).

With the completion of the Beast King and the Celestial Dragon Monk, I began work on the conversion of my Centigor units. As with all of my units, the Centigor are going to be subject to some heavy conversion work and sculpting.

The difference between these units and the others, however, are that there only five figures in each of these units while some of my others -- the Temple Monk P'nthors (Ungors) and the Ti'Gors of the Golden Fang clan (Gors), most notably -- have as many as 40 figures per unit.

There are currently two units of five centigors in production, and three other units of five centigors. The first (pictured here) features a Standard Bearer (which the other centigor units won't have) and the requisite Ghorros Warhoof.

As always, comments and (constructive) criticisms are appreciated!

Complete: The Celestial Dragon Monk.

As I mentioned last week, this conversion has been completed for a few days now. This weekend, I finally found time to take some pictures of him to share with you all.

Take the jump for more ...

Complete: Shere Khan, the Beast King.

(* - Well, mostly complete.  The base won't be wrapped up until the rest of his unit is.)

Last week, I mentioned that I'd managed to complete the painting on both the Panda(ren Brewmaster) Battle Standard Bearer for the Mountain Temple half of my army and the Beast King, Shere Khan, for the Jungle Temple. This weekend, I finally found a few minutes between installing closet organizers and running family errands to snap a few photos.

First up: Shere Khan, the Beast King.

Take the jump for more ...

New from ForgeWorld: Skin Wolves and Arcane Frogs.

I'm not sure why the folks at ForgeWorld are so insistent on coming up with products that might sidetrack me from my plans of actually completing my Beast Kings army -- yes, all 6,000pts. of it -- sometime in the near future but, alas, their releases today are almost too fun to ignore.

First up, the Arcane Frogs. These figures will hold little game value, but they still look like they'd be a heckuva lot of fun to paint up.

The first appears to be the amphibian version of the Storms of Magic Chaos Sorcerer (complete with his broken staff and third eye), while the second presents a slightly more generic option so that any time your wizard had a bit of a sorcerous mishap, you could slap down a frog in his stead.

(Frankly, I'd be afraid that even carrying them around in my army box might jinx my spellcasters.)

The Skin Wolves are the models, though, that I find particularly tempting.

These lovelies represent "witch-curs’d and Chaos-tainted men and women afflicted with this gift from their unholy gods bear a mutation that does not show as a stigmata of the flesh, but instead lurks in the blood, a slumbering beast to be roused by dark sacrifice and unspeakable ritual."

You see, they're not just werewolves.  Oh, no.  When their curse takes over, the wolf literally erupts from within, shredding the flesh of the poor soul that formerly housed it.  That's where they get their names: from the gribbly bits of discarded husk that were their former selves that still dangle from their fur.  Then, when their curse is abated, they themselves fall to the ground, leaving their former human selves to fight their way out in much the same gruesome manner.

Why is this so tempting?

Well, alongside my beasts -- when I tire of painting tiger stripes or just get distracted by other things -- I'm slowly putting together small units of Slaanesh-y dedicated mortals and daemons from the bits I've accumulated but won't be using for other things.  They'll be northmen, obviously, with the new 40K Fenris Wolves running alongside them as hounds.  What better 'monstrous' unit might there be to fit amongst those humans and wolves than Chaos-based wolves that literally tear their human hosts apart from the inside out ... ?

Perhaps -- if the stars, finances and hobby pursuits align -- I shall reward myself with them when I get a bit further along with my main Beast Kings army.  We'll have to wait and see ...