A Warhammer Bestiary: Hobgoblin

I am really pleased with the way my hobgoblin has turned out. After a period of not being able to paint I felt that my technique were slipping slightly and I wasn't entirely happy with what I was producing. This hobgoblin makes me feel like I have returned to form. 

Hobgoblins are another one of those lost races that I have been painting and writing about recently. Though they survived the great cull of 4th Edition, their background saw some revision and the hobgoblins were aligned with the chaos dwarfs, who  ended up with an armylist all of their own after WFB3! 

In Third Edition Warhammer, the hobgoblins were heavily based on the Mongol empire with lots of jokes based on that premise. Instead of Mongol, it was Mourngul and they were lead by the Hobgobla Khan. Indeed, this Khan is said to rule the largest empire in the Warhammer World, ranging from the edge of the Old World across the steppes to far Cathay. If you read my post about half-orcs, you will know a thing or two about goblinoids and hair. As you will have no doubt spotted, this hobgoblin sports a rather fetching hairdo, signifying that he is indeed a half-hobgoblin! 

With this in mind I set about thinking about how to paint him. The figure shown here is the commander of the hobgoblin rocket team. A cracking set of models. Now, probing the background a little more, I found out that these crews were recruited from vassal tribes that dwell nearby the Cathay boarder. With this in mind, and with the hair on the model, I'd imagined that this unfortunate was the product of another one of those forced breeding sessions with human captives.

I had a pot of paint from the Creature Paint Set called Hobgoblin Orange and had always thought that the creatures were orange in colour. Flicking through the WFB3 rulebook I was disappointed to find that the Bestiary suggests that they should be painted in a similar way to other goblinoids. In the end, I opted for an orange skin tone to reflect the creature's human origins because, well, I can. I seriously doubt any of my readers are going to take the haughty tone with me and tell me that I have painted my miniatures wrong. And I suspect that I am far from the first to do this with my hobgoblins...

There was nothing particularly new about my painting with this model. Skin tone aside, I used tried and tested colours for the armour, equipment and hair and I feel it all melded quite well together. The whip was the only problem and in the end I used an almost off white to finish and create some contrast to the bronze armour. 

Additionally, if you have a spare rocket launcher and stand (illustrated below) please do get in touch with me as I would love to finish off this little group of models. I have all the crew but no actual rocket to fire and I would really appreciate the chance to use them in a game at some point! 

Thanks!

Orlygg