Painting Competition: All Kroot All the Time

So the results of the last painting competition are in.  Yorrik's Kaptin Badrukk took first place, & my Greater Knarloc came in second. A really crisp Trazyn the Infinite mini rounded out third place. (Thanks to the early arrival of the twins I never ended up completing, or even priming, my Ahriman mini. The store owner let me submit the Greater Knarloc instead.)

Now that that's over, time to prepare for the next one.

My FLGS owner is a Kroot fanatic. I'm not sure why, but he loves the quasi-avian alien mercenaries. He likes them so much that I bought him a Games Day Angkor Prok mini for his grand re-opening years ago.

He's been waiting for a new Tau Codex for years in hopes of a Kroot HQ, just so he could field an all-kroot army (other than the Forge World one that is).Now that there are rumors of an April Tau release that might just come to pass.

Anyhoo, given his predisposition for the xenos he decided that the newest painting competition would use them as a unifying theme. the entry fee for the store's painting competition is to buy a mini (usually the one you paint, but it's negotiable). This time, you just have to buy *anything* and he gives you an unpainted kroot mini. He gives you the option of taking one that's already built & primed, or just taking bits.

Painting kroot is pretty easy. I can knock out a pretty good one in under 2 hours.

I'm a glutton for punishment though, so there's no way I'm just going to submit an unmodified mini. Instead I'm converting myself a grizzled mercenary who's bargained with a Dark Eldar Haemonculus for a pair of wings. I have a diorama in mind too, so this thing will be kinda elaborate.

Here's what I've blu-tacked together so far:

You can see I've carved away a bit of his back to add some DA Scourge bits. I was going to attempt a chest swap, but it turns out those evil space-elves have tiny bodies. Instead I'll be attempting to GS some armor.

The next big thing will be to fashion a pair of arms that will be swinging it's hunting rifle as a melee weapon. That'll be a task in & of itself, but I hope to have the GSing done by Friday. The deadline at the moment is April 6th, so I hope I'm giving myself enough time.

More when I get a bit further along.

~Muninn