You don’t need to be a master of fieldcraft to know that the Kroot Hunting Pack is available to pre-order on Saturday. A few members of the Warhammer Community team were lucky enough to track down some Kroot beforehand, and have been putting their painting to the test on these gorgeous new miniatures.
Luke
After spending a lot of time painting Flesh-eater Courts, I’ve got cold skin tones on my mind, and I thought it would be fun to do a War Shaper in this colour range, which is a little less common among Kroot.
I used mixes of blue using Fenrisian Grey, Sons of Horus Green, Lupercal Green, and Karak Stone to get a nice neutral tone, and one that’s a little on the milder side. I did my best to contrast this with warmer tones in the leather, the cape, and in the quills while adding some glazes to represent subcutaneous bloodflow around the knees and knuckles. The shoulder pad was a great place to work in some freehand, and I made the fletching of the arrows red to match with the patterns, tying the whole thing together.
Gadge
My Kroot carnivore squad joins an existing T’au Empire force, and so I needed them to fit in with their allies.
As my Fire Warriors have black undersuits, white armour, and red emblems, I decided to give the Kroot a dark skin tone based around Vulkan Green with a liberal wash of Poxwalker Shade paint. The kit includes some armour pads that are clearly of T’au manufacture – to further fit in with the Strike Squads, I painted these white to represent gifts to respected Kroot warriors from their employers.
Muted reds, dark browns, Runefang Steel, and Screaming Bell were chosen for their wargear, for a beaten copper effect. Their treasured weapons, however, are kept quite bright and clean, and feature lighter tan leather straps, slings, and wraps – which also match the stitches on the Kroot’s minimal clothing. I tried to create a simple wood grain effect to enhance the natural look of the weapons
The colourings of final details like the red eyes, bone-white quills and bright pink inner mouths were also chosen to contrast with the deep green skin covering most of the models
Ben
I love Kroot, as anyone who has seen me commanding the Farstalker Kinband on Battle Report can attest! These strange and enigmatic xenos mercenaries captured my curious heart from when I was a lad, and these new models look amazing.
For my Kroot skin, I used Gutrippa Flesh over a Wraithbone Spray undercoat, layered up with Skarsnik Green and Nurgling Green topped off with Krieg Khaki highlights.
I wanted a dark teal for my Krootox skin – to achieve this, I mixed five parts Gutrippa Flesh with one part Terradon Turquoise over Wraithbone. I then layered up with Kabalite Green and Sybarite Green, before a cheeky Gauss Blaster Green highlight.
Across the models, I wanted to keep a fairly natural tonal palette, so I went with browns, yellows, and more sepia tones for the rest of the non-metallic bits of the models. I allowed myself only two patches of red anywhere – the scope on the Krootox rider and the Flesh Shaper’s lunch.
Charlie
I loved assembling the new Kroot Carnivores. They fit together beautifully, but probably my favourite part is how their combat webbing works – all the holsters, grenades, pouches, ammo, meathooks, etc, fit very neatly onto the bandoliers and bangles. This makes your accessories look really natural, like they're actually attached to the Carnivore – but at the same time, leaving them off to travel light doesn't leave awkward gaps.
I wanted to get these Kroot table-ready very quickly, and the different textures make that really smooth – the focus on organic skin and quills also means you can afford to experiment with different recipes without feeling like you've messed up because one looks a bit different from the others. Almost every Carnivore has a different idea I tried out, and can carry over to future Kroot.
I decided to paint the Kroot guns and armour in matte white rather than metal, to give them more of a T'au-like, high-tech look. I was surprised how well it came out – I'll be adding some freehand kindred glyphs to break up the white ahead of my next game.
Joel
After painting a Farstalker Kinband Kill Team earlier this year, I already had Kroot on the mind, but having already tackled some infantry I wanted to paint something a little different this time. The Krootox Rampagers are super cool miniatures, and are packed full of details.
Since my Kroot are all quite pale flesh colours with dark quills, I wanted the Krootox to be almost the reverse – darker shades with pale quills. I also like to mix and match my leather colours, so they have very different gear.
To add to the tribal nature of my Kroot, I add warpaint to all of them, but I try to stick to triangle-based patterns that seem common within the range. It also means after painting a bunch of earthy tones, I can finish them off with some bright colours and inject some personalised character into each model.
You can pre-order your very own Kroot Hunting Pack this weekend. On Warhammer Community tomorrow we will have an interview with the ’Eavy Metal team about how they painted the box art versions of the Kroot.