Branching Out

Ah, the Marauder Treeman, so wonderfully chunky and so easy to paint that even a teenage Wood Elf commander could use it to bulk out his little army.

This used to be my treeman (used to be)
This used to be my childhood tree
This used to be the monster I ran forward
Whenever I was in need

Times change (I feel it in the water. I feel it in the earth. I smell it in the air, etc) and now these poor saps have been demoted to Treekin,

These are great sculpts (and by my standards, big sculpts) and lovely to paint (if I remember my original, very limited, palette):

• Heartwood: Chaos Black base, Skull White highlights
• Sapwood: Desert Yellow base, thinned Brown Ink wash
• Bark: Bestial Brown, Brown Ink wash (deeper into the recesses)
• Moss and lichen: Goblin Green base, Greek Ink wash
• Claws: Dark Angels Green,

Anyone else getting a Freddie Mercury vibe?

And, back in the 90s, what better way to round up a Woof Elf army list comprised of 5 cavalry, 10 archers and Skaw the Falconer - than with a second Treeman!

(yeah - so I don't think 4/5th Ed was a paragon of army balance either)

"Power gaming. Whaddya gonna do?"

I held back on this purchase initially (because, after all, they cost £10 each!) as I didn't like the hunched over look compared to the dynamic treeman. But with the fun I had painting the first, I quickly snapped this one up.

Not literally snapped, this model was built to last.
Ah, the days of PaperweightHammer

He was painted up in equally swift time, and I really like the different silhouettes when they rank up (thankfully, they do rank up - when they were lone monsters, I didn't have to worry about accommodating the neighbours).

I have one complaint about these models - there just aren't enough of them. That's fine if all you need are a couple of treeman to Tree Whack their way through the enemy, but once they're converted to Monstrous Infantry, I need at least three (and ideally twice as many).

Regrettably, this meant I had to fall back on my own ingenuity...

Rock on.

Yep, it's the second treeman model with the arms reversed and pointed upwards. The arms aren't built to be interchangeable, but fortunately they look tree-ish from any angle. Liberal amounts of greenstuff around the joints filled the considerable gaps, and wood is one of the easiest things to sculpt.

I didn't sculpt the pebble.
It's a pebble.

I can't remember if I positioned the arms to hold the rock, or if I added the rock because the position of the arms suggested he was holding something.

Either way, I like it. Stone-hewing is very Entish behaviour (c.f. Isengard). As a bonus, it mimics the pose of the classic Stone Troll, and as every good scholar of Tolkien knows...

"Trolls are only counterfeits, made by the Enemy in the Great Darkness, in mockery of Ents..."

So that's three treekin checked off the list, ready to embarrass themselves once again by staying rooted to the spot at the critical moment in a battle.

Hoom hoom, burárum, punk!