Hey, I’m Drew: serial bit adder, highjacker of formats, and purveyor of a new army.
Why Kroot?
I had been working on my previous army (Craftworld Aeldari) for around two years. It was my first ever army and I had scorned the plastic-y advances of all other factions to concentrate on it, leaving me feeling pretty burnt out: A change seemed like exactly the thing I needed. It was roughly about this time, like the meet-cutes (meat-kroots?) of old, that the kroot expansion to the Tau was announced.
Whilst not a Tau collector, I had previously read Xenology and Liber Xenologis, so I was aware of Kroot. The minor xeno races rolling around in 40k have always seemed incredibly cool to me, and I loved the idea of seeing more of them in the tabletop game. The kill team ‘Into Darkness’ box had long since come out at this point, so I had a general feel for the miniatures which were gorgeous, and the subsequent expanded range seemed just as good with their dynamic posing and oodles of character. The horde playstyle GW was going for, and overall gribbliness, felt completely different to my knife ears, and I was deeply charmed.
How did you paint them?
I wanted something different to the paint scheme on my previous army: both in colour palette and technique. My Iybraesil army used a much more ‘traditional’ approach (for want of a better term), utilising layered colours, lining in the shade and a metric (because the Aeldari would never measure in Imperial) ton of edge highlighting. The colours were in quite a vibrant palette of teal, white and red, with the intent of making everything look clean and sharp.
For my next project, I wanted something more slapdash, textured, and with an earthier, organic vibe. I had been interested in trying out contrast and the underpainting method (aka slapchop, for my fellow heathens), but had heard the results weren’t effective for every army.
The kroot range has a lot of texture in it (quills, belts, rags, random war gubbins), so I thought they would really benefit from that initial dry brush to highlight those differences in depth, and thus they would carry the Contrast paint well. I got a box of the Kinband Farstalkers to test on, and set to work.
I primed everything with Citadel Chaos Black spray, and gave them all a good drybrush with Administratum Grey. I then went back over with Ulthuan Grey, taking care to hit the broader body parts, but ignoring any nooks and crannies. I then did a final dry brush in White Scar, hitting only the highest parts of the models.
For the cloth and leather, I basically bought all the brown contrasts and a couple of the primary colours, to see which would work best as a spot colour. I settled on green (specifically Dark Angels Green) as it evoked a very deep forest, ranger-y feel that I liked and used to inform the basing decisions going forward.
From top to bottom: Plague Bearer Flesh, Garaghak's Sewer, Gutrippa, Creed Camo and Aggaros Dunes.
It also helped to inject some tonal variation into the army, making them seem a little more rag-tag, but still cohesive as it all falls within the same palette. For the quills I used Wyldwood with a final drybrush in Mournfang Brown on the tips for a bit of visual interest.
The metal is as lazy as you can get: Leadbelcher, Nuln Oil Gloss and a second dry brush with Leadbelcher for the high points.
Then there's the body paint. I hate the tidy up stage. (Hate. Hate hate. Double hate. Loathe entirely.) Always have. And the idea of tidying contrast felt like the absolute death of joy. The body paint started as a way for me to side step that by just covering any mistakes in war paint, but ended up being one of my favourite bits of the paint job. It gave me the opportunity to practice some freehand with very simple shapes and lines that didn’t need to be perfect, which felt like a real safety net. I went with Jokaero Orange and Vallejo Off-White to contrast with the rest of the scheme. The two colours and differences in markings allow me to denote ranks and roles, but also provide even more variation.
Basing could probably be its own separate post as there were a fair number of steps. The TL:DR is that with the mini scheme being so simple, I wanted to contrast with quite a busy, more layered base scheme.
In general, bases should compliment or contrast the mini: this is firmly the former. I chose a lush forest floor for a theme that kept to the colours of the minis themselves. By keeping the colour schemes so similar, it helps to reinforce the idea of the kroot being stealthy, stalking hunters who blend with their surroundings. The height of the minis also stopped them from being overwhelmed by the busier basing scheme (although that was a happy bonus, rather than anything intentional).
And how do you find them?
I love them: my beautiful bawdy birdies. Armed with a (terrible) kiwi accent when talking to my fellow players, the army has taken on a personality all its own that is a joy to play with.
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| Fetch! |
The rules (as they currently stand in 10th ed) really encourage you to get close, and dogpile one unit at a time until they are dead (Dave). Hunter’s Instinct rewards you for continuing to chip away at units, adding a +1 to hit rolls against units below starting strength, and an additional +1 to the wound roll once that gets below half. With the ability to take your bog standard carnivores in units of 20, that becomes an increasingly achievable prospect through sheer weight of fire, particularly as the number of shots doubles at 12” or less.
The Skirmish Fighters rules gives them a little staying power with an invulnerable save of 5+ for ranged, and 6+ for melee, without making them feel overly tough (these are overgrown birds, after all). I particularly like the Join the Hunt stratagem as, more than just a way to replenish lost units, it creates the idea of the battle field just being littered with lurking kroot that you simply can’t see (for now).
The downsides are that they have no heavy fire power of their own, so anything hardier than basic infantry becomes a challenge. And whilst kroot do benefit from a slightly longer base move than the average 40k infantry, the lack of transport can become a problem when considering things like board control. For me, they are a great army, full of personality, that were obviously never designed to be played on their own.
How do you intend to overcome the gameplay limitations of using such a slim selection of a wider army?
I’m gonna steal from the rest of the Tau army! I’ve always been a big fan of the Tau vehicles and suits, and a couple of tanks should help fill the shortfall in the kroot heavy fire power.
I’ve currently got the means to create a hammerhead, a devilfish and a pair of piranhas. The latter double up as a spotter unit for the former, but also come with their own anti tank weaponry in the form of fusion guns. Leaning into scout vehicles also feels in keeping with this forest hunter bit that seems to have come about. My aim is to paint the vehicles in a Tau scheme (gee wiz, I wonder if we have any in the group?), but then cover them in the same body paint markings as the rest of the army to indicate the very legal and honest change in ownership.
My second plan is bugs. I love the Vespid design and immediately jumped on them when the kill team box emerged. The movement range should give me some flexibility, whilst also helping to deal with the heavy infantry gap in the army output. I have ordered some of the TurboDork colour shift paint and I’m planning to do the carapace in a beetle green, with the orange and white body markings on top.
This is still a pretty bijou force, a little under 500 points at the time of writing, but I’m having a lot of fun krooting aboot with them and I’m looking forward to not only expanding my unit roster, but also the lore around how they fit into our little narrative world.
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