This entry is focussing on Idrian Skirmishers; perhaps one
of the less favourite units available to the Protectorate.
They are a mercenary ally unit, but
considered faction when building a Menoth army.
When you first look at their abilities you will quickly notice that they
have an abundance of skills and an average stat line.
The UA further adds to this and presents even
more options and expertise.
As a result
this unit is quite expensive; 6-10 for the unit and 3 points for the UA, so 13
points for a full unit with officer attachment.
I won’t make this article a full tactica article, but rather
a taster of the Idrian unit. As noted
above they have a swathe of skills and abilities, I’ll include the UA’s in this
section too as generally speaking it is worth the three points if you’re
investing in a unit of Idrians. They’ve
got Advance Deployment and Pathfinder as well as CRA as standard,
so pretty useful from the off. They all
come armed with a Kopis melee weapon and a military rifle for ranged. They’re mediocre stats (MAT6 and RAT5) make
the P&S10 Kopis and POW11 military rifle fairly unremarkable, however given
that they have CRA a pair combining will make an effective RAT7 POW13 RNG 10”
gun, this is quite tasty. Obviously they
can combine further for greater accuracy and hitting power depending on the
target. I do feel that you pay a premium
for these abilities and at one point per model are probably about right – I think
they get compared to Errants (quite often) which are cheaper and better, but I’ll
just discuss the merits of just the Idrians in this article.
Defensively the Idrians are again mediocre, DEF13 and ARM12
means that they will likely die to a half decent attempt, they do however come
with Camouflage as standard adding a
further +2 to any defensive terrain bonuses, therefore behind a wall they are
DEF19 from shooting. Clearly that is
pretty darn good, but most enemy armies will have a method of dealing with
this, i.e. sprays, AoE’s or possibly units which ignore these benefits – Hunter for example.
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| Idrian Skirmisher Chieftain & Guide - Source |
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The UA, Chieftain and Guide, come in at a whopping three
points, but you do get quite a bit for that investment, CMA as a tactic meaning
that the Idrians can now mix it up in melee as well as shooting (mitigating the
mediocre MAT6/P&S10 against High DEF/ARM targets). The Chieftain also adds the Assault & Battery order, which will
get you quite a lot of attacks, or could be used as a pseudo Bushwack, so you shoot and then must run
or charge – disadvantage here is that you can’t CRA or CMA (though I’m not 100%
certain as I type this – it could be a real ball-buster if you can)! The Guide is perhaps the real icing on the
cake as he provides Prey and Go to Ground as a mini-feat. Prey
is fantastic as it raises the Idrians mediocre offensive stats to elite
trooper/solo standard and allows the Idrians to kick some ass; as they can
Advance Deploy it allows you to place your Idrians right opposite your intended
prey-nice! The mini-feat is useful as a
first turn run and go up to DEF19 from shooting (it grants cover), it also
defends against AoE’s as it makes the Idrians immune to blast damage for a
round – again less effective if the enemy can by-pass this defence.
At present I’ve been running them with Feora1, though a Defender’s Ward ‘caster would get much
more mileage out of them. Feora1 does
nothing much for the Idrian’s, but I picked them because they’re fairly self-sufficient
and capable of dealing with almost any threat.
They haven’t done anything particularly impressive, but have been fairly
solid never-the-less. One thing I have
found is that I’ve expected more of them on occasion and they haven’t delivered,
it might be just some bad dice rolling on my part, but I felt they let me down on
a few occasions. I think that most
serious players won’t take them as they cost a lot of points and don’t tend to
give that much back, as I touched on above other units are far cheaper and arguably
more effective so I doubt they will see much competitive play. On the flip side not many people know what
they do and therefore have that ‘Dark Horse’ aspect to them!
Idrian painting
I painted my Idrians as a block of twelve models, which took
ages, hence the gap in between blog entries.
As a mercenary ally unit they do not conform to standard Protectorate
models. They are almost polar opposites
with flesh aplenty, leather armour and lots of pouches/bling. They have a Red Indian look to them in the
artwork and skin tone would be important when painting these.
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| Completed Idrian unit |
Metals:
As the Idrians don’t wear plate or mail armour like the abundant
Exemplar or Flameguard units and are desert dwellers I tried to make them stand
apart, but still have some ties to the main army. I decided after spending a long time studying
the models that the metal would be mainly silver with very little gold and the
metal would be quite rustic, not polished steel blades that you’d expect in the
main Protectorate army. I used lots of
washes to achieve this effect, the old Citadel Flesh Wash as well as the OOP Citadel Washes such as Grippone Sepia. Metals were drybrushed first from Tin Bitz through to Chainmail, I opted not to layer paint the blades to maintain the
rustic look I sought.
Clothing:
The Idrian clothing had a lot of leather armour which were
various tan and brown shades washed with various old Citadel inks washes, some
had metal plates which were again weathered like the swords. The cloaks were painted to reflect the
camouflage aspect of the Idrian unit and had an earthy tone, these were layer
painted (adding Menoth White Highlight to the mix to tie the Idrians to the
existing Protectorate units). I further tied
the Idrians to my paint scheme by adding in purple sashes on models which had
them – this colour being unique to my personal Protectorate force –
alternatively I could have painted pure Menoth White.
Skin:
This was perhaps the most perplexing aspect of the paint
job, as noted above they’re like Native American Red Indians and had a
different tone to anything I’ve ever painted before. I did quite a bit of research on the internet
and didn’t really find anything I found useful.
I ended up basing the flesh with P3 Midlund
Flesh as I have done for many other miniatures, including the existing Protectorate
units. I differed my technique at this
point and mixed the old Citadel Flesh Ink
with the old Citadel Ogryn Flesh
wash, keeping the ink quite strong. I
added a tiny amount of medium and washed the entire flesh tone. As I predicted the increased ink content made
a dark wash and strongly tinted the Midlund
Flesh. After this I re-washed the
skin with pure Ogryn Flesh, I did
this to make the skin tone matte – inks tend to leave a shiny finish and this
dulled it back down. With the dark tone
complete I re-highlighted the flesh with the basecoat leaving the muscle
definition created by the wash. For the
highlighting proper I mixed increasing amounts of the old Citadel Bronzed Flesh colour along with medium
to the Midlund Flesh basecoat. I think this gave me a different skin tone to
the other Protectorate units, although it doesn’t really look how I envisaged
the end result. I contemplated making a
glaze to tint the finished flesh to a more Red Indian skin, maybe using Baal Red or possibly making my own glaze
with P3 Sanguine Base. I didn’t do the latter because the Idrians
looked suitably different and the flesh had come out quite nicely – glazing it
might have ended up being counter productive.
Below are a series of glamour shots of the completed unit:
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| Chieftain & Guide |
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| Chieftain & Guide |
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| Idrian troopers - front |
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| Idrian troopers - rear |
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| Idrian troopers - close-up |
Thanks for reading :-)
