Army Showcase - Asag And The Stone Allies

One of the first army lists in HOTT which seems to grab people's attention is that for Asag and the Stone Allies. This is an army derived from Sumerian mythology; the demon Asag raised an army from the very earth itself, and waged was on men until he was defeated by the hero Ninurta. The army essentially consists of the demon himself, and then lots of rocks; big ones, small ones and ... medium ones. And that's attractive to the first-time army builder, since you can put one together with stones from your garden.

I out together my Asag army many years ago, and decided that it required a little more effort than just gluing a few rocks to bases. In the end that's really all I did, but I like to think I did it with a bit of style.

Here's the whole army - Asag in the centre is an Aerial Hero general. To the right of the picture are eight Hordes, and to the left are three Beasts and a Behemoth. The Hordes, Beasts and Behemoth represent small, medium and large animated rocks and boulders.

The medium and large rocks and boulders were easy to put together. The Beasts I did with three different colours of gravel. I selected pieces which I could lean forward on the base slightly, as this gave a sense of movement and also made it easier to identify the element's front. I adopted the same approach for the Behemoth, but I actually bought and paid for that element; it's made up of two mineral samples from the gift-shop in the Natural History Museum in London. 

I carefully selected two pieces that, firstly, would fit on the element base (I took a blank one into the shop in order to check) and secondly were shaped to give a sense of movement.

And this is the bulk of the army - Hordes made up of gravel. Now it would have been easy to have just glued these small stones to a base and leave them at that.

However, I chose to glue them to each other as well, making little (and not so little) rock-humanoids. I felt this gave the bases more animation and, from a practical point of view, made the front of the element easier to identify.

And, finally, Asag.

Asag started life as a resin griffon from a gift-shop here in Australia. However I replaced its head with that from a Games Workshop Temple Dog, to create the hideous monster you see below. I wouldn't say he looks particularly Sumerian, but he does look fairly demonic, and makes an excellent centrepiece for the army.

One day - a phrase I say a lot, so don't get too excited - I will put together an army covering his arch-enemy Ninurta, and have an epic Sumerian mythological battle. You'll probably be waiting a while for that though.