Plessiez' Fantasy thread - Oathmark goblin wolfriders on 3d printed wolves

[plessiez]

Hello,

Perhaps its my advancing years but although very fond of the Warhammer Fantasy setting all my life I've been feeling a pull towards a more "serious", dark-age type or Lord of the Rings inspired fantasy lately. Seeing peoples' very nice looking Oathmark and LotR themed painted up on here has been a big contributing factor.

I then scored an incredibly good second hand deal on an unassembled Oathmark goblins and took the plunge - this is despite already having a quite sizeable GW goblin army already. When they arrived I had two initial reactions. Firstly, there are a lot of them, and secondly, these wolves are rubbish, and after that I put the whole lot away into the "mountain of opportunity".

Finally I settled on the fact that I would find and 3d print some new mounts. I was reluctant to do this at first as it feels a bit self-defeating to combine all the faff and effort of 3d printing with the cost of having actually payed for the figures, but this was offset by my ability to be a perfectionist and choose "the perfect warg".

My check-list for something to print was:

• Not too much like a real actual wolf
• Not too over the top (chains, spikes etc)
• A bit rangey and skinny looking in comparison to the super chunky Oathmark originals
• Had more than two poses as I have to be able to mount 36 goblins

I had a hard time finding anything that went by a "warg" that fit the bill but eventually settled on these "Dire Wolves" by Highlands Miniatures. These come in a set of 9 wolves. 3 are skeletal. 3 are zombies. The three that we'll be using as just regular living wolves.



I gave these a test print and expected to have to faff around resizing them as they'd be too wide, or too narrow for the mounts or have some sort of issue that was going to make it difficult but I was delighted that the rider fit perfectly on the very first print.



The only problem is that out of the three living wolves, one of them has an arm in its mouth. I think it looks great, and I'll probably use it for a hero and a couple of other times mixed in but I can't have a third of the wolves all carrying an arm around like they want to play 'fetch' so I bust my incredibly terrible Z-Brush skills and painstakingly and inefficiently removed the arm and resculpted a bit of the mouth.



Here are some more pics including the plastic goblin with his metal boss.





Now I just have to paint 36 of them

[has.been]

They look nice.
Good luck with the painting.

[Pattus Magnus]

Those look excellent! I am also in the middle of replacing the wolves provided in the Oathmark box, but I went with metal and plastic wolves. It’s a slow process, but worth it in the end, I think.

[Chimpfoot]

Fascinating
I’d thought the same thing about the oathmark wolves and seen these very same miniatures as replacements
Will be nice to see how they turn out 👍🏼👍🏼👍🏼

[Major_Gilbear]

It seems to be a recurring comment on the Goblin Wolves...

Couple of things that popped into my head reading this:

1) GW sell two different sets of plastic Wargs (just the beasts, no riders). I have no idea how much these 3D prints cost, but the GW figures could be a viable alternative?

2) If you're re-buying the wolves, you can recoup some of the cost by selling the spare Oathmark ones - I'm fairly sure I saw a request for some in the Bazaar section here on LAF.

[Daeothar]

Those are some very nice wolves, and your Z-brush skills surpass mine by streetlengths; the result of your tinkering looks very good indeed.

Am I correct in assuming that these are compatible with GW's Fenrisian Wolves? The fur texture looks like a very close approximation, as does the anatomy of the wolves. The only difference could be size, but that's what a slicer is for after all

[plessiez]

Thanks all, I've painted up a couple of test wolves and will post them later once they've got some varnish on them.

One thing I didn't mention in my checklist for wolf candidates was having lots of sculpted fur. This is something the Oathmark wolves really lack, they have big smooth areas with no texture which means more work to create texture yourself through painting. This can look great when done well but I wanted something that would take to contrast paints and drybrushing to knock them out in bulk.

@Major_Gilbear - the cost per wolf is pretty low as I'm printing them myself. It would be more if I was buying them printed on Etsy or similar. I think that GW wolves would still be a lot more expensive even than that.

@Daeothar - thanks. I think you're right about the Fenrisian wolves actually. I like those models but I discounted them immediately due to the cost, especially in Australia where I am. Visually though these are quite similar I think.

[Mr. White]

Your wolves look great! Fantastic upgrade.

I don’t have a 3D printer, so does anyone know if the oathmark wolf rider goblins fit on GWs Hobbit wargs?