Conquest: Weaver Courts - Crann Guardians Model Review

Special thanks to Para Bellum for providing the model in this review. If you want to get 10% off and support Goonhammer you can make your Conquest purchase by clicking here. You’ll also need to enter code “goonhammer” at checkout.

Three Weaver Courts Crann Guardians about to drop the sickest rap album of the year. Credit: Rachel/Para Bellum

These are fantastic treemen… but I have some complaints.

First, let’s talk about the positives. The lore is cool: The Crann Guardians are not Weavers, but trees awakened and inhabited by the gestalt consciousness of dead Weavers. Spooky! This background is reflected somewhat in the models, with symbols of death like bones and animal skulls attached to their bark and distinctly-humanoid spines visible on two of the bodies. Their faces are these weird alien masks with various numbers of eyes, nostrils, and so on. Some are more suggestive of certain animals; some are much more abstract. I’m not sure what they’re based on, but I like them. They remind me of the forest spirit from Princess Mononoke.

Two-thirds view of a Weaver Courts Crann Guardian, showing the big cow skull stuck to its arm.

Two-thirds view of a Weaver Courts Crann Guardian, showing the big cow skull stuck to its arm.

Credit: Rachel/Para Bellum

The detail is nice and fairly crisp for a plastic kit. Things get a little mushy in places but not in a way you’d notice once painted. They take drybrushing and Contrast-style paints really well. There weren’t any bad mold lines or gaps worth filling (to me at least, I am quite lazy about these things), and assembly is easy.

Rear view of a Weaver Courts Crann Guardian, showing its spine.

Rear view of a Weaver Courts Crann Guardian, showing its spine.

Credit: Rachel/Para Bellum

The kit consists of three separate sprues, each building one Guardian. The instructions say there are three possible poses you can make. This is not true. The bodies and legs must go a certain way, but the upper arms, forearms and faces all attach using ball-and-socket joints, so can be mixed and matched for greater variety… but here’s where I get into the negatives. Perhaps the reason the instructions say there are only three possible poses is because that’s the only way the design team could figure out how to make the models rank up on square bases.

Six Weaver Courts Crann Guardians ranked up in threes. You can see how tricky it has been to achieve this.

Six Weaver Courts Crann Guardians ranked up in threes. You can see how tricky it has been to achieve this.

Pain, suffering, anger. These fellows simply do not want to form a nice neat battleline! Credit: Rachel/Para Bellum

Seeking diversity, I tried to mix and match arms and faces, and changed the angle of the arms when not doing so. I don’t think this was a mistake as I like the results, and I feel like even if I had built my guys exactly like the ones on the box I’d still have to play a puzzle every time I put them on the gaming table. They’re just so big and overhang their bases so much. I don’t understand why Para Bellum would design models that seem like a total nuisance to play with in their own game. Maybe that matters less for you, dear reader, but it does annoy me.

Side view of a Weaver Courts Crann Guardian.

Side view of a Weaver Courts Crann Guardian.

Credit: Rachel/Para Bellum

Anyway, apart from my (possibly idiosyncratic) pedantic quibbles, I find these models delightful. You gotta have treemen in a wood elf army, and these are great treemen that feel both traditional and new. I haven’t quite finished painting all of mine yet but I’m excited to do so. Maybe I’ll experiment with some moss effects…

A Weaver Courts Crann Guardian, strutting towards the camera.

A Weaver Courts Crann Guardian, strutting towards the camera.

Credit: Rachel/Para Bellum

Crann is Irish for tree, by the way. I’m enjoying the Gaelic names Para Bellum have committed to in the Weavers range, and as these model reviews progress we’ll be getting into some really gnarly stuff that might require pronunciation guides. I’m Scottish so I’ll say farewell for now in Gàidhlig (Scottish Gaelic), not Irish: Mar sin leat an-dràsta!

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Tags: Conquest | Weaver Courts | TLAOK