The Empire!
Looking at this blog, you’ve probably been thinking ‘boy this person sure needs another project, preferably something big and intimidating like an entire 28mm army.’
Well here, we are, I am staring down the barrel of getting together a 28mm Empire Army for Warhammer Renaissance. I have joined the Tale of Four-ish Gamers Project over on youtube, you can find our vids and the intro over here: https://www.youtube.com/@uniongangwargaming
The vlogs will be our main record as we build our armies and fight some battles, but I’ll basically put transcripts over here for those of you who find listening to audio difficult!
Without further ado, here we go!
The Cozy Empire Corner
I’m kind of surprised to find myself here, as I’ve largely sworn off 28mm army projects due to time and space (focusing on smaller scales for big armies like warmaster), but this is the rare project I will make an exception for!
I’ll start with a bit of background on myself- it always feels a bit egotistical to give my hobby backstory but I hope this background will help you find things in this project that resonate with you and inspire you to tackle a dream project.
I’ve been playing with toy soldiers for quite literally as long as I can remember. Army guys of all kinds were a major toy for me growing up, and we had huge army guy battles with my cousins’ mountain fortress.
My dad was a bit of a nerd as well and started taking me to the hardware/hobby store where they had a bunch of 1/72 scale models. I was too young to start building tanks and planes- but he did pick me up boxes of Revell 1/72 scale paratroopers, roman legionnaires and so forth I would clip out and use as little army guys.
We moved around a bit and found ourselves in a new city, and my dad found a new hobby store on the walk to the bus from work. He took me in one day, and while they didn’t have the 1/72 scale kits I was using as army guys, they did have a whole line of GW stuff and many other models. My folks were kind enough to get me a couple boxes of the plastic Epic 40k/Space Marine hordes which I also just used as teeny tiny travel army guys, which was my intro to the GW universe (still have some of ‘em in my epic chaos army!). I believe the store kindly threw in two other goodies, which is where this tale finally begins (sorry for the rambling intro).
The year was 1995, and they threw in a copy of WD 185 and the Green-cover 90s Citadel Catalogue.
I was way too young to truly get what Warhammer was, but I would pour over these looking at all the warhammer and 40k minis from the GW range
Anywho, fast forward a few years and my mom found me a copy of Shadow of the Horned Rat video game in a bargain bin at Best Buy, and it reignited my interest in the Empire and the warhammer world. This led to me finding local hobby shops and playing WHFB right at the end of 5th/start of 6th.
I eventually got a pretty large (maybe 5000 pt) Empire army together. Some were the classic metal sculpts (mostly the Perry Twins), but much of it was the (also good) plastic kits of the time. I played a ton with this army all the way through high school, but over the last 20 years it has sat and slowly decayed.
My goal is to resurrect this army to try to make that perfect Oldhammer Empire Army straight out of a 90s WD:
- 2500 points of Empire- to do 2000 pt games with some variety
- Use all metals, primarily drawing from the 4th edition Empire range (to build my dream army from WD 185)
- Tentative theme: Defenders of Blackfire Pass – will let me do a core of averland troops, but with an imperial flying column of reinforcements as well as some cool auxiliaries!
- Very inspired by oldhammer style- paul robbins slayer sword winning dwarf army is a great example of the type of heraldry, banners, and vibe I’d love to get anywhere close to! With luck, I’ll also build a display board inspired by his excellent work.
If all goes well with this project, I might then progress to a similar project resurrecting a 2000-3000 pt Orc and Goblin army, with the aim of hosting a con game for the Battle of Blackfire Pass, perhaps at a future Unioncon!
Rummaging through the basement, I already found about 80-90% of what I need in my old collection, so getting this all together shouldn’t be too hard! Next up I’ll discuss all the old minis I found!
The Defenders of Blackfire Pass
As I mentioned in the intro, I had a pretty large 5th-6th edition empire army that already featured a lot of the classic metal sculpts I’m excited to use for this army!
So I dragged myself into the basement to go through my old boxes. This army has been hit by many moves over the years. It has also been pillaged for models to create mordheim warbands (which I’ll leave untouched) and I’ve done a lot of swaps with folks over the years. I pulled out as cohesive a group of sculpts as I could.
Now this army, as I mentioned before, is the Defenders of Blackfire Pass- so the core is the army of the count of Averland
However, given the strategic importance of the empire, this also gives me an excuse to have a contingent of fast-moving imperial reinforcements
Now you’ll notice that I have a few gaps – specifically I don’t have enough knights to make a proper unit, nor do I have enough metal state troops to make proper size blocks! Next time, I’ll run through the work I’ve done scouring ebay, friends’ collections and vendor halls for a few things to round out the force.
I had previously mentioned my goal to stick closely to the 4th edition Empire metals and that general asthetic. As I’ve said, I do still have a number of the plastic multipart empire regiments as well as 6th edition boxed set troops, but I’m not going to include them as I build up this dream army, as it must be perfect!
So that did leave me with some gaps that I needed to fill, and of course while I was scouring the internet and vendor halls I got a little carried away with stuff that I don’t strictly speaking need!
So to start, I’m going to focus on getting about 500 points of the core Averlander force up and running- we will have the elector count, the spear unit, a couple detachments, pistoliers, and a cannon!
See ya next time!
-BS