The day was May 7th and it had been mostly uneventful, slowly trudging along. We were on the fifth day of Warhammer Fest, which was very enjoyable for the most part. I was excited for the new Soulblight models to come and felt bad that my Hedonites would most likely see the shelf much lover due to it.

The air was different on the 7th, however. It was day two of 40k and we had an idea of what was coming based off from teasers. I grew more and more antsy as time ticked ever so slowly toward go live.

And then… they dropped it.

2017

I had started up a new ork force, leaning very heavily into conversions. I called them my Bloody Skull Boyz and my aesthetic was a somewhat tribal half-feral ork army. They had war paint and spears, collected skulls, and really only had trukks and bikes for actual tech. I needed more, though. Something bigger. My ideas started to flood in and eventually I created the model that many of you have either seen on twitter or on the warhammer-community page.

This was supposed to be a battlewagon but ended up so far from my original scope. It was so much fun to build and it started a massive flood of other ideas, involving more and more squigs. The problem was: It was 2017. The only squigs around were extremely expensive and hard to track down. I basked in this project for a while and then eventually others came. Gloomspite Gitz introduced a huge wave of squigs and my mind churned a bit, but it was not enough to spark the fires of the forge.

What it needed was what we received May 7th.

The beast snaggas felt like a love letter from GW, supporting the ideas I’ve had for years and adding official models to the roster, like the squig hogs. I quite literally screamed then they showed the full box. The ideas came flooding back, as if they had never left and I started having even more. I needed to start now; I couldn’t wait for this box to release. There were conversions I could work on while waiting, things to put into the world and compliment the new orks when they finally hit my table.

There’s one model that I have wanted to see redone for ages: The Squiggoth. Now, please keep in mind (as it seems to confuse some) that we are NOT talking about the gargantuan Squiggoth.

This absolute chonk has a wonderful model, which sits in my closet partially painted. I definitely plan on finishing him up soon, but there are more pressing projects, not to mention a gargantuan most likely won’t see much game usage. No, I am talking about the regular squiggoth

Here we see him side by side with the most recent rendition of ork trukk and he is just…not that great. In his defense, he is an old model and the paint job here is doing him a lot of favors. He just looks like an uninspiring block, though. I wanted something with a fresher take, something that might not be bigger in size but has a bit more character.

So I started my own.

The core concept was fairly simplistic. I felt the Mangler Squigs looks like the perfect heads for the project and theorized they should connect *somewhat* nicely with the Stegadon kit from AoS Seraphons.

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The Stegadon kit was built per standard instructions, leaving off the head and neck. I built the manglers standard as well, but took a saw to their tails; cutting them off at the collar around them. Each had spaces for their legs, which I assembled but trimmed to fill the gaps. This also built up the sides a bit and gave a nice area for tusks. Trimming the stegadon horns just slightly, I glued them in similar to pinchers found on centipedes.

The construction left a lot of areas for sculpting in order to make them look like a connected head. Laying a foundation, I packed in some greenstuff around the necks of both and smoothed them out. Once they cured, I could add some actual detail work.

Large collars were spulpted onto both of them, obscuring the bulk of the filled in areas. While waiting to dry, I started working on the palanquin for the first. Most of this assembly was by the book for the stegadon kit. I used ork trukk bits to extend the platform further and to add a bit on the end. We very little done, it was already shaping up nicely and felt very promising for the project, overall.

Next time, we will continue looking at the progression of these squiggoth. There is a lot of work left for both and I cannot wait to show you everything I have in store.

Thank you all for reading and I will see you next time,

❤ Soph (HobbyistGirl)