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...