4th Edition Night Goblin Fanatics (….for KoW?!?)

Four 4th Edition Night Goblin Fanatics.

These models are from Early 4th Edition Warhammer Fantasy Battle, when “Goblin Fanatics” got handed over to the Night Goblin faction (revived pretty much from earlier editions of Warhammer, and the early “C” Series models, but mostly forgotten in 3rd). As 4th Edition Models, released in 1992 they’re technically not “Oldhammer” by about a year for those who care about strict definitions. (Not me, but hey – I like the history.) Unlike the last batch of goblins from a few days ago, these were all painted in the last few weeks.

Four More 4th Edition Night Goblin Fanatics. Including a couple repair jobs!

Now the more astute amongst you will have noted that there are way too many Fanatics here to be sensible at all. As always, there’s a good reason for this. I had a bunch of my own back in the day (which got started but not finished) and my friend Jared had started a Night Goblin/Savage Orc army  of his own, though he never got (m)any of the models completed before losing interest and selling them off. I purchased many of the half-and-un-painted models off him, with the intent to repaint them myself one day – and ending up with way too many fanatics for a normal game of WHFB. For the most part, they’ve sat in a series of figure cases since then.

The first one of Jared’s models that I painted was actually the first model featured in this blog, in my first and second posts. A half-painted Savage Orc Boss, who I repainted in my own style. A damned shame I never got any better pictures of it before it went off to Auction. Anyway, between Jared’s goblins and my own, I ended up with quite a lot of Fanatics, who as I mentioned have done nothing since the mid-1990’s besides take up space in a case. Over the years, a couple of them had their fragile chains break, and so got repaired with brass rod. So it’s a ball on the end of a metal rod on the end of a chain. That’s still unsafe, so it’s ok!

Hopefully the last four 4th Edition Night Goblin Fanatics I’ll ever paint!

Since one of my aims this year aside from directed army painting for KoW is to clear off my desk and shelves of half-painted, unfinished and even slightly-started stuff, it wasn’t a huge stretch to extend that to the stack of figure cases that have the same in them. I mean, the reason I’m trying to finish the stuff on my desk is to avoid adding to the reams of unfinished stuff in cases, so this just follows the same ethos, albeit, slightly in reverse.

These Fanatics all followed the same general scheme shown with the newer plastics that I finished recently (who were cluttering up my desk) – and were also the direct inspiration for me to pull these out and paint them up. I quite like how they turned out in crazy loose formation (though I seem to have a bit of a contrast issue with these latest photos).

A horde of dangerously insane goblins swinging their big balls around!

Finally and as usual – the “unit shots”. Anyone familiar with KoW might be wondering how I intend to use these, as their Goblin army doesn’t really have any equivalents to much of the crazy-colourful stuff in the Warhammer list, including Fanatics. My initial thoughts were to use the profiles of Twilight Kin “Blade-Dancers” (Witch Elves) as they’ve got lots of attacks but are fragile, but the recent Ratkin (Skaven) list also gives the option of “The Blight”, which are kinda-sorta Plague Censer Bearers. Dunno for sure yet, but I’ll find an appropriate profile for them once the new rules and lists are ironed out and I’m able to start playing again. Until then I’ll just push on painting the semi-random crap on my desk and building “units” as I can.

Agadoo, Do, Do, Push pineapple, shake the tree…

Agadoo, Do, Do, push pineapple grind coffee…

To the left, to the right, jump up and down and to the knees…

Given that the unit is made up of psychotic goblins swinging their balls & chains around like mad Dervishes, I’ve felt free to face them in various directions rather than all front-on, also with the intent to make the unit look interesting from multiple angles.

Now this just leaves me with needing to figure out what to do with those new plastics and the Iron Claw Fanatics that I’ve painted…