The second part of our ongoing Tale of Four-ish Gamers is now up, over at the Union Gang channel: https://www.youtube.com/@uniongangwargaming! Huge thanks to the gang for all the great work and organization here, and hope you are enjoying!
Really excited for all the progress from across the group. I made some good steps forward, but I’ll admit I need to pick up the pace! But the army is coming along, and this is a really fun project with a lot of energy- we have some great plans coming together to wrap this project up!
Update 2: Plan for first 500pts, Assembly and preliminary painting!
Today I’m going to give you an update on the first (approximately) 500pt milestone for the army, including progress in conversion and assembly, and some preliminary painting! I also have some _very_ exciting acquisitions I picked up at the Barrage convention that I will be unveiling.
So if you haven’t checked out the Warhammer Renaissance rules yet I personally think you’re in for a treat. The more I’ve read about this system, the more I appreciate the efforts of the team to really curate some of the best stuff from 4th, 5th, and 6th edition Warhammer Fantasy Battle. Those of you who played those editions I’m sure have rosy memories of the different editions but they all had their flaws, power creep and drift over a dozen or more years. Warhammer Renaissance goes back to pick and choose some specific strong elements- the card based magic of 4th/5th, the exciting herohammer magic items of 5th, and the more rank-and-flank infantry battles of early 6th. These are blended together into a cohesive system that I really appreciate.
So back to Empire! The Empire in Warhammer Renaissance list mostly blends the 5th and 6th edition Empire Army Books. Some of you may remember the 5th edition book- It was a very early book and way out of date in terms of power on the tabletop by the end of 5th edition, easily steamrolled by the powerful characters in others books. But you had all the classic state troop regiments and, very exciting for me, units like Imperial Mercenary Ogres, Haflings, Imperial dwarves, and kisslevite allies all integrated directly into the army list. Unfortunately the weakest part of the list was definitely the Imperial Infantry blocks themselves- the detachment system was mostly useless and large blocks could be easily steamrolled by characters or monsters.
The 6th Edition book felt like a breath of fresh air to me as a fan of the basic Empire infantry. The book focused in on the core Empire army- with the improvements to the core rules of 6th edition infantry blocks were better, and previously useless units like swordsmen and greatswords became quite viable. The detachment system could actually do something with the stand and shoot and countercharge options. But all the Ogres, hafflings, kisslevites and so forth were removed and the army became much more homogeneous.
Warhammer renaissance solves this! It keeps most of the effective improvements to infantry, and even makes musicians more useful in the base rules, allowing you to get a free turn and other cool maneuvers. But you can still take 25% of your army in auxiliaries, including my lovely halflings and ogres. Many classic magic items made it into the list, and overall I’m very excited to see how this blend plays out- I have high hopes.
For my first 500 to 600 points, I focused on getting a little bit of everything. First up is one of my core regiments- want to get that done for sure. I’m doing the spearmen first, and with my wargames foundry models it will be a mighty block of 24! And spears are pretty good in warhammer renaissance!
The main block will have two shooting detachments- one of mercenary crossbowmen from Tilea and one of Averland Handgunners.
For my hero, I’ll paint up my Marius Leitdorf model, the mad elector count. To start, I will just run him with hero stats and a runefang in smaller battles.
Five pistolliers including an outrider champion will give me some mobility, and finally a mighty great cannon will be overkill in small games but can knock out any heavily armored troops.
So that should make a good and achievable starting force that I can build from to get up to 1000 points.
Ok, let’s talk about acquisitions for this month. While I had the vast majority of stuff I needed already, I did pick up a couple of things at the Barrage Convention flea market.
First, I needed a pistolier musician, as GW never made one of those! I found this very cool musketeer looking fellow who will go well with the unit. Finally, I got a mint, in blister back, piece of oldhammer …. Some slottabases! I was very specifically looking for once with parallel slots for my handgunners, so they would actually be facing forward! A steal at $2. I would have even paid $3.
So even after these stunning new acquisitions, you can see that I had most of the miniatures I needed for this update already in the basement! We covered these models in the last update. I am also using my Ex-Citadel Wargames Foundry spearmen, as well as my new acquisitions from barrage. In the tradition of Paul Sawyer from the original Tale of Four Gamers, I decided I had enough left over in my monthly budget to enjoy a fine oktoberfest beer as well as I put all these lists together.
Now some people seem to think the Tale of Four-ish Gamers is a race. A race to see how many models we can paint in rapid succession. These people have pointy ears and live in the woods. The humans of the Empire have a more measured pace about life, realizing that the Journey is more important than painting 1000 points in a month. Alright, it’s just an excuse, but I did make some progress just not as much as some people. But let me tell you what i did.
Here is what I did do this month, first up I assembled my palette for painting
I put together my army palette. You can see I have a range of manufacturers and colors. I have a strong version of each primary, and a couple inks to amp things up. For my yellow, I picked this fiendish yellow which is more of an ochre. I’ve got some purples I will use in the black to make it more interesting. I have a couple base fleshtones and a brown (yellow and purple will make more browns for me). I will be doing TMM here for the traditional oldhammer look, so I’m including some AK gold and silver. I’ll use inks to help modulate these colors. So it’s a pretty big range, but should give me the flexibility to do everything from halflings to steamtanks. Astute paint connoisseurs will note that there are a lot of different finishes here- and you will probably be thinking ‘Oh Erik, you’ve done it this time! Now you’re done for!’
Now I spent most of my time this month on assembly prep work and planning for this first milestone. First up is my spearmen and the other models that needed cleanup!
I had a lot of fun assembling things. First, my old classic paint jobs got thrown in the dip. I used acetone to get them squeaky clean. You can see the original command and the paper banner I made many moons ago! I’m going to update this to be Averland, but will try to pay homage to this homey classic haha.
So here you can see the spearmen after their delightful acetone bath, all clean and ready to repaint!
Now the handgunners were assembled like normal, paying close attention to which way they are sitting on their bases! They make a nice little detachment.
Marius was not converted, but I converted his horse a bit to get a rearing pose and shift the head. Placed on a tactical rock, I think this will help him stand out.
For the pistoliers, I really wanted to get some variety and action poses in the classic two-pose unarmored plastic horses. I took a look at the old images of galloping horses (a classic little story in the history of cinema) and reposed the horse legs to try to match different stills. I sculpted over the gaps with apoxie clay, then added tails made out of wire and more putty.
All the bases are magnetized for a tray that I will get someday!
I put together a test model for the color scheme and process of painting. At this scale, I wanted to focus on two things- clear communication of the empire heraldry and clear definition of objects. It’s not exactly a traditional heavy metal style, but very much inspired by that kind of thing. [Handgunner photos]
- I put together a base meant to represent Blackfire Pass- so a scrubby mountain land with varied grasses, dirt, and rocks
- Primed in black, I then focused on painting in the pattern of the Landsnecht uniform in white
- After this, I work up the yellows with a purple-yellow brown, then the yellow ochre, then some yellow ink
- Other stuff is sort of painted haphazardly, some pouches are black, some brown etc- this is a great place to explore and have happy accidents.
- I hope to focus on faces, getting a range of skin tones reflecting a large group of soldiers and mercenaries
- As I get to the end of this, you can see that I’ve done it now! Look some things are glossy, some are matte- this looks terrible!
- Never fear! Mr Hobby is here to ultramatte this stuff. I do this before the metallics, so they stay shiny.
- Finally I end on the metallics, using inks to shade, highlight, and color the metal.
So that’s a quick rundown of where I am at this month- less painting than I would like but we have a plan, solid progress on assembly and conversion, but much more to do! Catch you at the next cozy Empire corner as we push to get some forces done for a test battle!
Until next time- we hope you are enjoying this series, and it is interesting to follow along! We hope this is going somewhere cool, and striking that right balance of nostalgia and inspiration for you!
-BS