Finished some foot units for my Midgard project

 I've been working on this Warhammer Empire project, using Wargames Atlantic conquisadors for ages but I keep losing enthusiasm for it. Anyway, I've finally finished 32 figures as four units of foot troops. Scroll down to see them all.

Above are eight double-handed swordsmen, known as Greatswords in Warhammer Fantasy. Next is a unit of Halberdiers.

Below are two groups of Sword and Buckler men, playing the role of Empire Swordsmen.

Although my original plan was an army representing Averland in yellow and black, I decided to add some extra colour to some of the troops, basically because I was bored with just yellow and black. Black, yellow and red still works for Averland, but the red and blue colour scheme gives me the opportunity to add troops from elsewhere in the Warhammer Empire, in this case from Altdorf. The predominantly red and yellow uniforms could represent Talabecland, or maybe ar just a variant of Averland's yellow and black but with a more dominant red component representing the colours of a local lord. It doesn't really matter too much. I've got some blue, yellow and white figures on the go as well. Maybe from Nordland or perhaps Tilean mercenaries?

Overall, it gives me a nice colourful army.

I've also got to work on my cavalry next. These will also be Wargames Atlantic and will be a mixture of armoured types with lances or pistols and lighter horse with lances and swords.

28mm Wizards project

This is going to be a bit of fun, I hope. I am planning a Renaissance 28mm fantasy army based upon the Warhammer Fantasy Imperial Electoral Province of Averland for Midgard and other sets of rules (e.g. Sword and Spear Fantasy) based on the Wargames Atlantic Conquistadors, Landsknechts Ogres and Renaissance Cavalry sets and I thought that a couple of wizards would be a good idea. My original plan was to get a single sprue of the Frostgrave Wizards I set but then, I realised that the whole box would give me eight bodies which could come in handy in the future. 

I then got to thinking that the Warhammer Fantasy Empire used to have Eight Colleges of Magic and I now had eight wizard figures. Therefore I knew that I'd have to make up eight wizards who could be painted up to represent each of the eight colleges. I assembled all eight figures and have now undercoated them.

So, across the back line in the photo above, I have a Jade Wizard, a Bright Wizard, a Gold Wizard and an Amber Wizard and in front there are a Grey Wizard, an Amethyst Wizard, a Wizard of Light and a Celestial Wizard Obviously, I've chosen an undercoat of primer that will work well as a base for the various colours I'll be using for each Wizard.

As I said at the beginning, I see this pretty much as a fun project. I'll do a separate post for each Wizard as I finish him.

Four units of Knightly Orders for my 15mm Warhammer Empire project

Well, two real ones and two inspired by the idea of knightly Orders First, two units of Reiksguard Knights;

 Obviously, they have to be given a white/red colour palette, so that is what I did. I don't really have anything to add to that. 

Next a single unit painted in a red and blue colour scheme, which I think ought to make them Altdorf Knights, but maybe not one of the "official" Orders but perhaps the guards of a powerful noble in Imperial service. Anyway, my army, my colour schemes.

Finally, a complete invention, mainly because I wanted something unique and I was playing around with washes and different metallic colours. I present to you The Knights of The Rose Cross;

These had copper horse barding with oiled steel highlights and white cloth under that and black surcoats on the knights, but I wasn't happy with how they looked, so I washed them in Winsor and Newton dark red drawing ink. Intitally, I wasn't sure, but the colour scheme grew on me. I added a pink standard from an 18th century Prussian cavalry unit,  reduced in size to fit.

I'm sure that some people will say "Yuck!" but they will certainly stand out on the tabletop.

Once again, these are all from Alternative Armies.

I've primed up some infantry now and also figures for two more command bases for Sword and Spear Fantasy, so more painting to get working on!

Some characters and leaders for my 15mm Warhammer Empire project

All armies need leaders, and in fantasy armies they need heroes and wizards too. So, here are a few I've completed.

Above are two generals for my army, once again from Alternative Armies. The figure on the left could quite easily be the Emperor Karl Franz and the other just has to be an Elector Count. Both are accompanied by standard bearers

Next, some Imperial Battle Wizards;

The two on the left are mounted and dismounted versions of Leonardo Da Vinci and the right-hand pair are Niccolo Machiavelli, from the Alternative Armies renaissance collection but I think that these are great as wizards. In Sword and Spear Fantasy, wizards don't really dominate games, I find them most useful to either bolster units in combat or to try and remove hits on units at the end of game turns.

I've given the mounted Leonardo figure a barded horse, to mark him out as a wizard of great power and repute.

I like wizards in purple, it seems a good colour for the Hermetic Arts and the Occult.

Finally, what self-respecting Empire army would be without a Hero on a Gryphon? Well, certainly not mine.

One of the things I like about Alternative Armies' figure ranges is that you can buy mounted figures and mounts separately, as seen here. The Hero is a man-at-arms from the Renaissance range and the Gryphon is from their 15mm Fantasy range. I think he will look pretty impressive on the table.

 

A Warhammer Fantasy Empire-themed army in 15mm

A long time ago, I created a renaissance army for HoTT, which I based upon the Warhammer Fantsy Empire province of Averland. I still have it, but I rarely play HoTT nowadays. However, I am always thinking about renaissance wargaming and a year or so ago I bought a load of Alternative Armies figures in the form of two complete (French and Italian) Italian Wars armies plus some extra odds and ends. My plan was to create a Warhammer Fantasy Empire army that I could use for Sword and Spear and, especially Sword and Spear Fantasy.

Obviously the figures aren't an exact match and the Warhammer Empire didn't have any pike blocks, but I don't see that as being too important. It is the theme that counts.Anyway, I've now made a start and here are some of my first efforts.

The top picture shows two units of mounted men-at-arms who I have painted up to represent The Order of Knights Panther. I've stuck to a blue and yellow palette and also painted their helmet plumes in a desert yellow colour to give an impression of tan panther pelts.

The lower picture is of two army generals, using the mounted versions of Georg von Frundsberg (left) and Cesare Borgia (right) with standard bearers. The former does a reasonable impersonation of the Emperor Karl Franz of Warhammer fame.

Banners are a problem. There are plenty of images on the internet, but they are very large and generally only show one side of the flag. So, I've had to download large images, shrink them considerably (which loses all the detail), create a mirror image and then join the two halves together before printing them off. They aren't great, but they will have to do.

All my units will be on 8 cm wide bases, with any Heroes, Monsters and War Wagons on 4 cm bases and leaders and magicians on round bases. I will be able to reuse my Leonardo Da Vinci turtle tank as a WarWagon and maybe also some of the other HoTT bases as Heroes too.

Unlike real renaissance armies, my units will all be painted in uniform colour schemes, to create that Empire appearance, but I can still use them in historical games too.

Some vintage Games Workshop figures

A long time ago, I used to play Warhammer and 40K, plus a bit of Necromunda from time to time. However, I sold off my armies ages back and never really gave much thought to playing any GW games again.

Anyway, back in 2015, when I was looking for something else, I found a  undercoated or part-painted GW figures in a box of odds and ends that I'd just stuck up in the loft when we moved house in 2013. I decided to paint them up for practice, and also so I could submit them to the TooFatLardies painting challenge.

I've still got them, but previously never posted anything about them on my blog, so I thought that I'd remedy that now.

First, there is a Chaos Space Marine standard bearer and a Savage Orc Shaman. Both of these were part-painted, just having basic colours blocked in and therefore needed a fair bit of work to bring them up to scratch.

This figure was originally a Necromunda Redemptionist gang leader (I think) but I remember buying him to be used as an Imperial Inquisitor for a Inquisition force that I never got round to completing. He was just undercoated in black, so painting him up was a fairly straightforward job. I think that he might come in useful if I ever get around to putting my Sci-Fi skirmish rules notes into some kind of order and collecting a few models to play with.

This last one is a bit of a mystery really, because I never had any Space Orks. I think I bought the mini in a sale in the old GW shop in Bristol that was pulled down when Broadmead was redeveloped and they built Cabot's Circus.

He is a Bad Moon Space Ork Big Boss. I remember the figure from AARs in White Dwarf back in the early 1990s. He is from the old ranges that Games Workshop replaced with larger and more brutal-looking Orks. Personally, I liked a lot of these older figures a lot. They had a quirky charm, although the older Space Marines left a bit to be desired, in my opinion.

So, now I've remedied an omission and put these few remaining figures on the blog. I'd be interested to see what people think of them.