The Banner of the Beast - A Beastman BSB WIP

For those of you who follow my blog, you'll know that I've a tiny yearning for all things beastly. My girlfriend even says my obsession with small woodland creatures is unnatural and a little bit creepy.

If you are a regular reader (I know you exist I've got over 100 views this week!) then you'll know I like battle standard bearers. Well I've put a bit of thought into a beastman one, wracked my mind really, and I've come up with something I find quite satisfactory.

 When I'm making models like this, I want a model which is not "stock". I want a figure who is individual to me, and my armies. Games Workshop don't produce a specific BSB for beastmen (they don't actually produce that many for all races really). They did however produce a limited edition, battleforce only figure (why do they do that? So annoying!) which goes for about £50 on ebay. Maelstrom Banebeasts make a few gorgeous BSB suitable figures, but I wanted to try and make a GW bit based one for when I inevitably play at warhammer world (they have a "GW model only" policy which applies to all games, not just tournaments). Most people I've seen use a bestigor or metal hero with the minotaur standard. The minotaur standard is ideal for a wargor BSB, its huge and an excellent focal point. However, a trick I've used before is turning a banner sideways to totally alter its appearance. Where you once had a free hanging banner, you now have a windswept flag attached to the length of the pole. A visually striking model who appears to be marching through the elements hefting a massive big pole with a flag. Patriotic!

The base of the model was a chaos warrior who I had cut down and stuck gor bits to. Originally I wanted to represent a bestigor in mordheim before the new plastics (so we're talking 2008ish here), but he never saw use with a sword and board. It was also a time consuming conversion and an entire unit would have been an utter nightmare to make. I instead pulled his arms off to make way for a gor banner arm and a left gor arm which I originally converted to hold a beefier weapon, but decided with so much going on on the model he could just have a regular unmodified cleaver.

The banner and model needed some green stuff love, with fur sculpted here and there to cover gaps and joints. Also, because of the weight distribution and the banners weight I needed to put some metal ballast in the base. It still had a slight list and prone to fall forward so I took it off the base and glues it a bit further back. The left should still needs some work doing to it to fur it up.

Painting wise I'm stumped what to scrawl on it. My daemon BSB was a blank canvas I could go nuts on, being able to pay a little bit of homage to the eye of terror. What do beastmen draw on their flags? Stickbeastmen throwing spears at razorgor? Beastly visages? A chaos star in dung? If you have any suggestions, please - fire away! The army book has very little inspiration for me, bad times.

Now...the serious bit. If you want to analyse my model deeply, you can point out several things which are not factually correct. The main one (apart from a goat/human hybrid walking on hind legs with a giant flag) is that there are horns/teeth in the flag, which would probably weigh the end of the flag and prevent it flapping in the breeze.

I've prepared several responses to this criticism:

1) The horns/teeth are hollow.

2) It's a magic flag.

3) It's a magical wind.

4) The tiger paws are sewn to the flag itself.

5) A bray shamen did it.

So, normal service will resume soon. For those of you who are interested, my daemons yet again got utterly hammered by Rob's mortar-up-the-wazoo empire this weekend. Steadfast and stubborn are becoming increasingly annoying, so I think I might crack out some dirty leadership modifying Masque fun!