Thursday, 28 March 2013

Warhammer: Halberds, Bears & My Love Hate Relationship With Forge World...


Welcome to what is; as far as I recall; the first Warhammer Fantasy post on the 14th Legion Blog so here we are, updates! 

Gaming - We now have the Warhammer Fantasy rulebook, templates and magic cards. terrain has been built in the form of trees and a guard tower, and there is still a Dreadstone Blight to be built. Next month Lorna is planning to buy some hills, while I build a 6x4 frame of some sort for the Realms of Battle table.

Miniatures - My army arrived on Monday, while the resin bits from Forge World arrived yesterday (more on that in a bit). Annoyingly, Lorna's army is still to be shipped out and we have an estimate of end of next week...Due to the fact that Lorna's army has not even arrived yet, today's post will deal solely with my Empire army.



My Empire army is pretty much here in it's entirety, bar the odd Forge World bits. Originally the intention was to use Theodore Bruckner as the army General (as a Captain of some sort) but the size difference between the Theodore on foot model and the basic soldier is so extreme that it is comical. while I realise the background for this character describes him a giant of a man, I can't see myself fielding the on foot model at all, however the mounted figure is absolutely stunning and I am looking forward to working on this kit once the bulk of the army is built. In light of this, I am looking at some of the Captain figures on the GW site as potential candidates to lead my army. To keep things simple, I am resisting the urge to put him on a Griffon, Pegasus or Pony, and will have him 'lead' the halberd unit.


The bulk of my army still sits in boxes, and there is a good reason for this, at the same time I ordered the army, I placed another order for resin bases and movement trays. Due to the fact that I need some custom size trays cast, the order will be arriving in another weeks time. I really like the way this company designs and casts their bases, so once my order arrives I will write a separate post with links. The starting point for both Lorna and my army is 1500 points. There is only one problem with this, and that is we both made out purchase before the arrival of the rule book, without any consideration given to percentage allocations. Luckily I am in the clear and have not overspent on Specials as I initially feared, but Lorna won't know until her book arrives in two weeks time. So with that cleared up, I am waiting to build the following Two cannons, two boxes of Halberds, one box of Demigryphs and handgunners.


The decision to start an Empire army was based on the Forge World/Warhammer Forge Ironsides conversion set, so last weeks Forge World's order consisted of one pack of gunners and the command set. Now my order was shipped out around 7 days after order which is not what I am normally use too, previous orders of 40K resin have normally been shipped with 24 to 48 hours. This has led me to believe that the Warhammer Forge range is cast to order, or has a extremely low stocking level. Anyways they arrived and I was not disappointed, as the level of detail is very high and the amount of character these parts add to the unit make them stand out a lot from the standard plastics. My warrior priest is also in the picture, I thought it seemed only appropriate for a holy man to lead the fight against the vile undead.


Now it has not all been fun and games. With the majority of miniatures on the table being resin, I have had my fair share of nerd rages at the problems that accompany GW resin kits. Holes, flash and warping have been abundant in both the Warrior Priest model and my Ironsides, it has taken me almost 3 hours just to clean the flash off the command group (3 figures!), and currently I am estimating another 3-4 days before the handgunner unit is cleaned up, and all figures are washed of release agent and had the bubbles greenstuffed. 


Above is the one bit of painting I have managed to do: Bobo the Regimental Bear, who goes with the Halberd regiment for now. It is a finecast figure, and again it required gap filling but other bits of cleaning, however it has a fun and reasonably quick paint job and more importantly, a successful experiment for my Nuln colour scheme. Maybe after a little bit more resin cleaning, I will try and finish the bear handler tonight.

So that's my Empire progress, hopefully within the next two weeks, I hope to have my army list ready for the next post and maybe a couple of shots of the figures with terrain. And If all goes well the next post will be a double progress post (Both Empire and Vampire Count) as intended, but until then I hope the above photos are satisfactory.

Thanks for reading,

DiStudios
The 14th legion

Inspired? Reinforce your army today with: Wayland Games - Discount Wargames



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