Tuesday 1 December 2020

Back again... again! This time with WHFB Empire- kind of!

Like most fun things that get juggled during adulthood, this blog fell to the wayside as I finished uni, started work, emigrated, started a family and so on. 7 years since my last post.... but I'm back!

The madness of 2020 has given me a little time to reconnect with the hobby of my youth and so here I am yet again. Hurrah! 

And this most recent foray into miniature gaming is not the ‘Dark Ages’/ Early Medieval gaming that I was so interested in previously. I still have them all, occasionally still paint a few of them and even more rarely get to play a game with them, but for now my attention has shifted onto something from much earlier in my hobby journey: Warhammer Fantasy! But, with a twist.

Sadly, Age of Sigmar does not tick any boxes for me. I want it to; I truly wish it did, but the theming and lore (or lack thereof) is just something I cannot get into. Plus, it lacks the simple joy of having a solid block of Empire greatswords slamming into the side of your mate’s clanrats, causing you to chuckle with maniacal glee and them to reconsider their life choices.

So, with that in mind I found some *ahum* totally, definitely, absolutely legit and fully allowed *ahum* pdf copies of the old army books and rulebooks online to peruse and reaccustom myself with and before long I was decided: I must start an army! My Dwarf and Empire armies of yesteryear have mostly been sold off to fund other projects and I was left with just a ragtag assortment of minis that I'd designated as adventurers in Frostgrave (great game!) or other fantasy RPGs. The thought of buying new GW products to use for this project made me shudder. The cost, the lack of variety and the gradual realisation that I don't like GW's giant hand n head n comedy sized gun ‘heroic scale’ left me with a few options to explore.

The most viable of them was to put some of the Warlord, Fireforge, Northstar and Perry plastic kits to good use. I'd bought a few of the pike n shotte, frostgrave and medieval plastic kits to use as adventurers in other games, so had a bunch of guys to start with. They're cheap, suitably armed, offer kit bash opportunities, are easy to build and are *mostly* consistent in their scale. I say *mostly* for reasons later discussed.

Back to army planning, I thought straight up Empire seemed a bit contrived with the range of gear my models are wearing, so I started to think about other options. I toyed with Tileans, Estalians and even human-only Sylvanians but in the end decided to go with a force of mercenaries hailing from..... The Border Princes! Truly a sandbox of Old World opportunities if ever there was one.


A part of the Old World map that is populated by humans, containing Empire, Bretonnian, Tilean, Estalian and other human factions that have either gone rogue, are on some special mission or have gone a bit mental sounded like the perfect spot to create a thematic human army that mixes elements of all those factions, while being something distinct and of itself. That way, I can use a wide range of historical figures alongside some fantasy elements. Winner winner Border Princes dinner.


So, on to the project!



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