Creating Middle Earth SBG Crebain out of AoS Miniatures

 

For my Isengard army that I'm currently building, I'm going to be including some Crebain- flocks of crows which Saruman uses as his spies. The first point of call would of course be the official models made by Games Workshop. However, the official models are Forge World- and a little on the pricey side...

£27.50 for 2 Crebain flocks...

I looked at reviews, which do suggest these are good models- but as I needed 3, I didn't feel I could justify £55 for 2 packs- especially as the rest of the army didn't cost much more than this... 

I therefore had a look for some alternatives to make Crebain with- although there weren't a massive amount of crow models out there. I found some individual crow miniatures, but would have had to completely construct a base for them. This was perhaps a bit too much effort for what aren't something that I want to become a time sink. In the end, I circled back to Games Workshop, for some other miniatures they make for Age of Sigmar. The Beasts of Chaos have an Endless Spell which takes the form of a flock of crows- and conveniently come with 40mm bases too. They're slightly larger than the official Crebain miniatures- but this is a world with enormous eagles in... so I wasn't hugely worried by the robust crows I would end up with.

They turned out quite well, and for £25, they're not exactly cheap, but they're still under half the price of 2 Crebain packs from Forge World. As a bonus, I also got the other Endless Spells- something I can either use, or sell to make the Crebain even cheaper.

The only issue with the models is they're a bit too Warhammer-y. The fact that each flock is standing on a skeleton doesn't quite fit with the Lord of the Rings aesthetic in my opinion- so I decided to make a quick change.

I took inspiration from the official miniatures- and decided to create some rocks and small tree branches to cover the skeletons. This was nice and easy- for the rocks, a little bit of milliput did the job. I'm by no means a good sculptor, but rocks are fairly easy to get something reasonable quite quickly- a few jagged edges, some flatter areas and the job is done quite quickly. For the branches, I used a few bit I had lying around in my bits box- mostly from bits of Ent I had left over (Treebeard's extra hand for example).

After the Milliput cured, I primed in black, and painted them up.

For the Rocks- I started with Eshin Grey, and then drybrushed on top with Dawnstone and then a drybrush of Rakarth Flesh.

The branches were a base of Zandri Dust, and then a wash of Athonian Camoshade.

Finally, for the crows themselves- I drybrushed straight on top of the black primer- Eshin Grey, followed by a further drybrush of Dawnstone.

The bases were Stirland Battlemire and then a drybrush of Karak Stone, to keep them fitting with the rest of the Isengard army. With that, they were done- nice and straightforward.

I'm happy with the result- I think that they'd fit in well with the look of the Crebain that Forge World and the rest of the Middle Earth range. I'll be getting them on the gaming table next month- I'm hoping that they'll offer up plenty of mobility to the army, something which the Orcs will need to stand a chance in scenarios.