An anomalous unit was included in the very back of the 7th Edition Warhammer Armies: Orcs and Goblins book:
The "Mangler Squig"...
A couple things made this new addition to the usually little-changed menagerie of orcs, goblins, black orcs, boars, wolves, snotlings, giants, trolls, squig herds, and ramshackle artillery an anomaly.
First, despite being called "Mangeler Squig" in the Bestiary section (where background info on units is printed), the Army List section (where the unit point-costs and army-building constrains are printed) and the Summary of unit stats inside the back cover, the brief description in the Bestiary specified in no uncertain terms that this new unit was a pair of Great Cave Squigs chained together.
Its in-game rules specified that it behaved like a bigger, more deadly, and night-goblin-unit-indepedent version of a Night Goblin Fanatic. That is to say it could be engaged in combat normally, and moved a random distance in a random direction, dealing a random number of wounds to whatever it touched until it crashed into something or died by missile-fire.
But what was really strange was that there was no official model to represent it in games of Warhammer.
Usually, an updated Warhammer Armies book was accompanied by several new kits and single miniatures updating those with dated-looking sculpts or representing whatever was new in this edition of the book. There had always been (and still are) certain things without their very own specific model, but it would always be stuff that was easy to convert on your own (read: "Make people buy more models") e.g. otherwise identical units with different weapons. In other cases, less popular units still had printed rules, but their models were discontinued.
This was the first example I can recall of this practice of releasing rules-without-models for brand new units that never existed before but it would become a common practice for a couple years, presumably because it seemed like it would be profitable, somehow. (Maybe it let them crank out new books and stuff faster, and worry about all the fancy new models later-if-at-all).
However, eventually Games-workshop realized that this strategy essential created a market for competing miniatures companies. When a new Codex or Warhammer Armies book would come out with holes in its coresponding model line, other companies would, for example, starts selling "Space-Knight Direwolf Riders!" (or something to that effect) as stand-ins for GW's model-less Space Wolves Thunderwolf Cavalry.
That particular example was the subject of a lawsuit. Games-workshop took some independent miniatures company to court over it... and lost.
"You can't sue people for infringing on intellectual property that you haven't actually made yet"
- a judge.
Here is the official model that was ultimately released:
Here are the other sides of mine:
The top Squig's tusks are tendrils from the Hellbrute. His smaller teeth are Goblin Wolf Rider toes.
Its body is mostly greenstuff, but its head is sculpted around a Wolf Rider wolf head (you can see the ears, and general head-shape).
His legs are from a Kroot Carnivore that was missing is right foot. The left leg was broken at the knee, and repositioned as seen with brass rod.
His right foot was very conveniently replaced with a one of my ace-in-the-hole bits: an old plastic Night Goblin hand (meant to be the off-hand of an archer releasing an arrow)
The shackles are styrene tube/rod, with locks from the Warhammer Giant's caged skeleton accessory.
A better view of the bottom one's face. This one's teeth are sculpted. His forearms are from the Krootox used for the body of my first Great Cave Squig.
As I mentioned in my Giants post, deep inside of this one is the one-eyed Giant of Albion's head. Only his ears are visible.
You can also see the underside of the base where I attached neodymium magnets. This is an off-brand 60 mm round base that I got at the local game store. Since it was a flat disk with no cavity underneath (like the old Games-workshop dreadnaught bases, current GW 60 mm rounds are raised and have the cavity, as seen in my Hellbrute post) I had to drill all the way through, score the hole out with a razor until it just barely fit the magnet, and fill the gaps with greenstuff.
Originally there where three, but I removed one because this piece is fragile and the magnets are so strong, that I was afraid the piece would be damaged upon being pulled off whatever it's stuck to. Two are plenty since there's more greenstuff than metal, anyway.
A couple mushrooms adorn the base like on the official model. I would have used more prominent ones, but the little guys were all I had left.
The Night Goblin is a metal Fanatic. His hand and prodder-handle are from the old Night Goblin plastics. The head of the prodder was a trimmed-down piece of sprue with sliced-off new Night Goblin spearheads making the points.
The chains are a couple sizes of actual little chain.
The chain in the goblin's hand leads to a large metal ring, which is linked to a heavier gauge chain terminating in a massive iron ball like those wielded by Night Goblin Fanatics. Fed through the ring is another chain shackling the two Great Cave Squigs together.
I would have attempted a more dynamic positioning of the giant ball, but the larger chain was strongly attracted to the magnets under the base.
These squigs started as "dump projects" for left-over greenstuff. Like most other projects, they got out of hand quickly.
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