The new GW Swamp Orruks and Hobgrots might work for you, big and have more of a Tolkien look than traditional GW Orks and gobbos. You would need to kitbash sci-fi elements but the Hobgrots atleast have grenades already.
Depending on how bestial you want to go you might consider Frostgrave Demons and Gnolls for some part of your project. Cost effective kitbashing potential.
@Grumpy Gnome
I was thinking about using the Gnolls as a base for another race that I didn't mention in the other post which are wolf like aliens. Although they are not as wolf like in looks as would be desirable, gnolls are close enough for 28mm miniatures.
I ordered some stargrave stuff recently, which should be somewhere in France by now, so I might get the gnolls later down the road to mix with the crew and trooper parts that I should have spare after assembling those boxes. The alien heads in the stargrave boxes might actually prove useful for some of the conversions of my own aliens, although I will only know for sure when I have the sprues in hand.
@GreenScorpion & @Grumpy Gnome
+1 with what GG said.
Greenie just check the whole range of Beyond the Gates of Antares:
I do not recommend BtGoA's Virai faction to depict those "Bugs" of yours since they are more construct than real biological forms of life, you can take a look at Askar Protectors, a Mantis-like insectoid race but acting as Mercenaries:https://us.warlordgames.com/collections/beyond-the-gates-of-antares/aliens/
You have just to expect WGA is going to release models more in tune with the insectoid vibe you are looking for -according to last week preview;... BUT Kryomeks could be the solution for some particular models: https://www.shop.scotiagrendel.com/index.php?main_page=index&cPath=217_218_3_113_119&sort=20a&page=1
Same for another brand still under Scotia Grendel flag: Koralon from Urban War: https://www.shop.scotiagrendel.com/index.php?main_page=index&cPath=217_218_60_77
and check the new side-partner website for restored ranges: https://www.seb-games.com/store/product-category/void/koralon/
You could lurk on ebay.es or pt.ebay.com for cheap "Nids models deals like termagant or hormagant broods since they do always come in larger numbers (about 15+). 😉
BUT since you are looking for cheap plastic stuff, most of the models above could not fit your game-allowed budget, most are in leadfree pewter and coming from the UK so they are quite most expensive than Northstar's Oathmark, Frostgrave and Stargrave kits. So it is up to you meu amigo.
The second and third-hand markets could be a solution according to your needs and budget, so both iberian ebay sites could be interesting.. I know a lot of french gamers are selling their miniatures using rakuten, but I do not know if there is a portugese or spanish site.
@GreenScorpion
Gnolls (I do mean the kit mixed with bits from others especially Cultists) are already used in Stargrave to depict some alien scavengers -with limited chameleonide abilities; I do use prefer WGA lizardmen or some GW lizardmen to to the job... since the models do not fully fit with the description. But in your setting, they could be used as these wolflike aliens of yours... and since they are the cheapest way to do it, it is a win-win deal. Another solution could be:
A wolfman from Bronzeage miniatures, lost amidst John Carter Warlord of Barsoom ranges here.
Or buying some old GW Space Wolves 13th Company in order to cannibalize them to create your own stuff.
@Steven StGeorges
Thanks for the suggestions. I am mostly looking for plastic or resin rather than metal not because of the price (although cost is always a factor) but because metal is significantly harder to kitbash as most have a lower amount of parts and cutting up is difficult compared to cutting plastic or resin to replace arms or something like that.
In what relates with the gnolls, I saw some conversions with the gnolls heads/bodies and stargrave arms before the stargrave release and they look close to what I wanted. I will likely need to make some adaptations to fit the background in the books, but nothing too difficult to accomplish with plastic models.
I have been considering getting a 3d printer sometime in the future, which might help with some of the races, but from what I have seen so far, even among paid stl, the available stuff is still heavily human centered (there is way less variety of the rest although it exists).
On an unrelated subject to the latest posts, today I finished painting some gors which I am using to represent the tougher fauns from my books, with the fauns from RGD as the more typical and less muscular fauns. In the books fauns are sub-species of humans which might have been genetically engineered but are often persecuted for the imperials as unwanted mutants. Many fauns tend to join the Barbarian Warbands, as the barbarians are more open to mutations and have no issue with strong and loyal warriors.
One of Cornelivs allies is in good standing with a large group of fauns, because he took part in rescuing them from persecution, so Cornelivs has access to the fauns as part of his ever expanding alliance.
@GreenScorpion
Did you know that... once upon a time in Rogue Trader days -so W40K 1st till 1.5, Beastmen -or Gors since the 90s- were part of the IG like Squats, Ogryns and Ratlings? ... Most of a squad members were equipped like common beastmen -so very low tech armory and weaponry, like your Gors- while leader could have access to hitech stuff like laspistol, plasmapistol, carapace armor and so forth?
Anyway good job once more ... 👌
@Steven StGeorges
Thanks!
Although I have never seen the old beastmen "auxiliaries" in person, I have seen many pictures of models of "ancient times" and even some rules for them. My gors have mostly primitive close combat weapons, but they have grenades or their waist (you can see for example on the last picture on the model to the left) which are mostly on the back so not so visible from the pictures. Some of them also have holstered pistols.
For the RDG fauns I have a few of them equipped with escher weapons, since that was the closest thing I could find to get some of them equipped with advanced weaponry. It is not a perfect fit because fauns are very thin, especially the female models, but it is good enough for me 🙂
I got my order of stargrave and frostgrave boxes delivered yesterday and I have to say the details of the minis are great and the kits seem to have a large amount of options. I had seen people in other foruns saying that frostgrave/stargrave miniatures were shorter than other 28mm models, but I compared the bodies in sprue with some assembled WW1 germans and they are the same height, from feet/disks to shoulders, although it is certainly clear that the proportions are closer to historical miniatures rather than for example death fields models. I plan to use the spare female heads from the stargrave/frostgrave female kits to diversify a bit my conversions and allow me to have a larger female presence in my armies. The wizard boxes will be used to make some psychers based on my books (I have a few of those in the story but most have no tabletop representation yet), while the soldier boxes will be used for a tribal/clan based sub-group of Cornelivs allies which are not yet represented in miniature form, so the medieval like gear will dominate in those miniatures, but parts from the stargrave kits will likely be mixed in to provide the connection with the sci-fi world.
In the same order I also got some grognard heavy weapons which I plan to assemble soon.
My plan for the grognards is to make some moulds out of the kneeling and sitting legs for my own conversions, since I have lots of spare heavy weapons from GW which need soldiers for the crew and I might get some toy vehicles that would require seated soldiers for driving/operating weapons (I also have 2 1/48 scale apache helicopters that have seats for 2 pilots but didn't bring any pilots).
Today I managed to finish painting another batch of miniatures, this time a group of dwarves mounted on giant spiders and their dwarvish infantry support.
The high temperatures and the fires in the region don't exactly making painting easy, but I am quite happy with the result, despite the fact that paint simply dries too fast at the moment.
Yesterday I finished building some heavy weapons and command groups based on the grognards command and heavy weapons box.
I made moulds of some of the parts to help me with building the full contents of the first sprue, building a total of 15 soldiers, including 7 working as heavy weapon crews (the odd number is because I have decided to leave the gunner of the quad cannon by herself, as I am planning to use it as a turret rather than a HWT) and 8 soldiers in the command group.
Most of the parts came from the first of 3 sprues of the grognards box, with some arms coming from the spare bits of the regular grognards boxes I had built before.
The command group includes a sitting wounded soldier which was an initial miscast from a poorly done mould that was missing one foot and had other small issues. The wounded soldier will have some signs of blood and damage when I paint him, so it is clear that he is a fighting casualty.
I have 2 more sprues in the box, so my expectation is to build 30 more soldiers in a similar way.
Another week passes and more progress is ready to be shown ☺️
This time I finished painting another batch of miniatures, some marauders for my Berserkers of Lobivret. I will start on another batch of 20 marauders tomorrow for the rest of the Berserkers (at least for the moment as I might need to find miniatures for their werewolf berserker state).
This week I have been continuing to work on conversions.
To spend some of the spare marauder shoulder pads and giant spider arms, I decided to make some sort of alien robots on wheels. No name for them yet.
In parallel I have been working on my second batch of grognard heavy weapons/command box based conversions and yesterday I finished assembling these 15 soldiers:
The amount of stuff in both grognard kits makes me think that an upgrade sprue of just bodies in different poses would be an excellent way to spend all the extra parts.
This weekend I finished building the third and last group of command and heavy weapon teams from the grognards box. The end result is similar to the other two batches, but with different weapons, poses or heads :)
I also finished painting the second and last batch of GW marauders for my Berserkers of Lobivret, which means everything bought until the end of 2019 is now painted :)
It also means that the only GW miniatures I have left to paint are a few chaos cultists to represent my pirate crew along with the traitor guardsmen from Blackstone Fortress.
Last week I finished building 2 squads of heavy weapon teams based on spare cadian weapons/arms and grognard parts.
I also finished painting some mantic plague zombies and larger monsters to serve as enemies for the forces under Cornelivs.
Next on the build queue are more HWT squads and on the paint queue I am going to start some mantic mutants next.
This week I finished 2 more HWT squads from spare cadian HWT and grognard bits.
I also finished building a sprue of Stargrave Troopers (5 soldiers).
The troopers are really nice miniatures, somewhat similar in proportions to historical miniatures, but with a clear sci-fi look. The numbers of the shoulder link for the arms help with identifying pairs, although I have noticed one or two of the numbers are not completely visible from the mould used for the production, although pairs are typically close enough on the sprue so that is not an issue unless you cut several arms in one go and mix them up.
The sculpts are nice and well detailed and should take paint well, even with my reduced ability to paint stuff
Finally, I managed to get a few more VTOL's from a nearby store to support to one I had converted before (https://i.imgur.com/ZTEy88b.jpg), so I removed the stickers, filled in some of the lower details and added some weapons.
Another week passes and more progress is available to show.
This week I worked on building some more conversions based on grognard parts, mostly using kneeling poses and special weapons, since I spent the last rifles from that particular box with the HWT, so now only pistols, swords and special weapons are missing to be spent.
I also worked on painting some mutants from Mantic which will be used as enemies along with the zombies.
Today I come bringing some news on the painting and terrain crafting fronts.
I have managed to paint a batch of 30 WW1 germans I am using to represent a trench warfare regiment and while they would likely be easy to spot on no man's land, I really like the end result 😃
I have also finished building a fortress that could be used by a garrison of several dozens of soldiers at a time.
The fortress was built using mostly used matches and some cardboard, with all materials used (except for the glue) being reused rather than purchased for the construction.
If anyone wonders how patient I am, each tower in the fortress contains several thousands of matches.
It has certainly been a while since I last posted something in this thread, but that doesn't mean I haven't been working on miniatures, although I have been investing a lot of time on the translation for my current book (first of a fantasy series, which will be published in both Portuguese and English soon).
2022 was actually a good year for me in terms of painting and I managed to paint 790 models of several kinds (infantry, vehicles, buildings...) and several manufacturers, which represents an average of almost 66 models per month.
2023 is up to a good start and last weekend I got a batch of 24 raumjagers done, getting the current total to 68 models painted in 2023. Not a bad start.
A few examples of what I have been working over the past few months:
If things go well there will be many more painted miniatures in the near future, especially given more than half of my collection still needs paint, but I am slowly getting there.
Another week, another batch of Raumjagers finished. Only one more to paint and I will have finished my current Raumjagers batches.
These 24 miniatures bring the current total for January to 92 painted miniatures.
I have also built 5 of my stargrave crew models to check some of the options and I will be using these to complement my current pirate forces with some irregular crew members that are less pirate like in behaviour (currently the pirates are represented by traitor guardsmen from Blackstone Fortress and chaos cultists ).
They are essentially irregular units which are not supposed to see combat on the battlefield in most cases, but would be part of fights inside the ship or perform repairs and other stuff inside the vessels commanded by Cornelivs.
My picture does not do them justice, but the stargrave crew is a nice kit for lightly armoured or civilian based forces and should kitbash nicely with the more recent sculpts from GW in terms of proportions.
