Monday, June 4, 2012

Empire Swordsmen

o/

I finally made it to the FLGS to restock some much needed paint. I had the GW color conversion chart printed off, but they still had the old colors so it wasn't needed. So while that was good on the one hand, it was bad on the other as they were pretty well wiped out. Scorched Brown was one of the colors that they were out of, so the bases of my Empire minis are still just the color of primer. With the restocked paints I was able to get a few swordsmen painted though:

The guy in the black coat will be the unit champion.

The first one I painted was the musician, with the intent to put him with my Halberder regiment. However after painting him, I realized that I had used the wrong wash on him, and he really didn't look good with that unit. So I swapped him with the one from the swordsmen. I figure that as long as the same wash is used per regiment, then it ought to look alright in the end. Having 60 or so Stirlanders, I guess its a little unrealistic to assume that they've all been wallowing in the same mud puddle, right?

I bit ordered some swordsmen arms & skaven shields since the militia box (1) doesn't have any shields and (2) the left arms were never meant for them. Meaning ranking them up with shields is all but Impossible (whereas with shield arms its the normal situation of: difficult but doable). Originally I had bit ordered some swordsmen shields to try with the militia arms (see #2 above), but those shields, for the most part, really look kinda dumb.  However the old Skaven shields are simple wooden round shields, with their icons as separate pieces. So I just omitted the icon &  painted them in the varied green & yellow stripes. As impoverished as my Stirlanders are, I can easily see them stripping usable weapons & armor from the enemy dead. Indeed I wouldn't put it past them to have skinned & barbequed some of the furry little bastards!

By my guesstimation of the new point costs (gleaned from army lists online as I still don't have the new army book) all I need is another box of militia which will be spread across the regiments I have now, a wizard, and to just use the great sword standard bearer as a BSB and that ought to bring me to approximately 1000 points. Were they ever to see the table top, I figure I could just pair up with Neverness and his fledgling Empire army to fight against someone else. That and hope that he has some knights, artillery and some other hard hitters as I don't. I know he has a lord on a gryphon at least...

This probably came from the Warhammer RPG.
I'm not sure as to where Neverness' army is based in The Empire (he probably doesn't know either), but in looking at maps of Stirland, I settled on the small city of Leicheberg as the home for mine. Leicheberg is more or less out in the middle of nowhere now, though it used to straddle the Stirland/Sylvania border prior to the latter providence's annexation.  In looking online to see if there was any canon fluff on the city I found this map & that settled it.

Actually I looked at several of the towns in that area, but Leicheberg was the only one with a map, so it won out. An army of any even meager size will need at least a substantial town or small city to support it, and looking at the various maps of the Empire you often never know if a town is nothing more than an inn at a cross roads, or an actual town/city. I also found this blog. Its a pretty good read though it appears to be dead (which is disappointing but also kind of ironic considering...). It details an Empire army that is also set in Leicheberg, though it was during the city's apparently more prosperous days when it belonged to Sylvania. Judging by my army thus far, its safe to say that the years have not been kind...

8 comments:

  1. 1000 points of empire ? Sounds like a challenge to me.

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  2. You're into Fantasy now? When are we going to play a game?

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  3. from looking at your other posts and your plan to get a wizard I think this list may be close.

    Empire captain general pistol full plate armor 71 pt

    master engineer grenade launching blunderbuss light armor 76 pt

    Battle wizard level 2 100pt

    13 halberdiers full command 108 pt

    12 archers marksman 94 pt

    10 swordsmen full command 100 pt

    15 greatswords full command 195 pt

    744 points

    for a 1000 point army you can only add 3 more points to your heros so no points for magiic items unless you drop one. Using the greatsword standard as a BSBearer is 91 points so you would have to drop the wizard or the captain and engineer to be able field the BSB and be under 250 points for heros. It seems that the Captain can't take a pistol and great weapon like your model so I went with the pistol option. I don't have my armybook handy to double check army builder,

    You can add a magic banner to the greatsword standard the ranger standard is 50 points and gives them the strider special rule and makes the great swords 245 points and the total 794.

    Add 2 mortars at 100 points each for 200 points takes you to 994.

    So a Wizard, 2 mortars and a magic standard on the Greatsword will put you right on 1000 points.

    ColKG

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  4. I built some bombards for my Venusian lizardmen to use in VSF games. The guns will also work for Empire mortars. The center piece of the build are some wooden dowel rod finials with a 1/4 inch hole. They are the little bell shaped knobs that go on the end of dowel rods they use for flags. Unless you only play at GW stores they should fine for friendly play, all you need to do is add a few crew men and you are in the mortar business.

    Here is a link to my tutorial on my blog.
    http://mlwodementia.blogspot.com/2011/05/venusian-bombards.html

    I found most of the bits on sale at craft stores and made a half dozen for less than $10.

    ColKG

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  5. My province is the mighty Reikland of course! If my tactics suck, I can just say that they 'reik'... (boo?)
    For an AWESOME gamer community, and more info on the Empire than GW has ever offered, check out my favortie WHFB site Warhammer: Empire http://www.warhammer-empire.com

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  6. @colkillgor At 1000 points, you have 250 points of lord allowance. Make the captain a general and make him a lot of points and you could make the 1k mark

    @cheef if you guys want, I may be getting some goblins via trade and I can play small games with you guys.

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  7. @Bob: heh, this army is actually a VERY overgrown Mordheim warband (speaking of which, the Skaven will be crawling out of the sewers to kill some Reiklanders tonight...). I still don't have any current books, movement trays or even a full 1k. So like I said to Madival, it'll be a while.

    @Colkillgor: Wow! Thanks for the info! As Madival just suggested, I was going to move the captain to a lord choice general. That ought to then make room for a BSB & Wizard (dropping Nick Nolte as I have no Artillery for him to assist). The militia box comes with 4 Halberds & 4 Greatsword arms, so that's where most of those two regiments came from, hence my splitting that box across the army. However some arty will be needed eventually. I'll check out your link here in a bit.

    @ Neverness: Yes, boo. lol. Yeah I periodically peruse that site & have found that most Stirland themed armies are built from multiple militia boxes, just as mine is.

    @Madival: Patience Grasshopper.

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