Empirical Directions

Here at Jimbob Towers, there has been, as ever, a lot of hobby going on. After my previous post, I was in the throes of a Napoleonic Russian froth and, as ever, this meant purchases almost galore. My intention was to make my Black Powder brigade commanders stand out a bit more on the tabletop and while I waited for my purchases (another box of Perry Russians and a few Russian command sprues) to arrive my attention wandered and my gimlet eye fell upon another neglected project; my Warhammer Fantasy Empire Army...

a force to be reckoned with....

You may or may not recall that I acquired this army back in February of this year like the big, wargaming magpie I am, but had no idea of how or what I was going to do with it. So, last week I decided to give the employment of this army on the tabletop some deeper thought beyond "cooo, shiny! Bright! Pretty!"  I had the notion to use them in an Italian Renaissance setting so I dug out various rulesets that I thought might work and, lo, I found employment for them in three different rulesets; too whit, Warlords of Erehwon, The Pikeman's Lament and Pike & Shotte. Using this army for these three rulesets meant breaking down the units into 12s (10s for WoE) and 6s for foot units and 6-8 figures for mounted units.

So now that I had some idea of what I was doing (a rare occurance, let me tell you) I made a start, in no particular order, repainting them or at least touching up the paint jobs they already had. Although my bigger aim is for P&S Italian Wars I didn't plan to stick to strictly historical paint themes as I find the WHFB armies of the 5th and 6th edition era (mid Nineties to the mid Naughties) very attractive so I started to look to the Warhammer Empire books that I own for inspiration and was soon rewarded

The army, I was told, had been put together in a rush by some chap or other, who used it to play WHFB with his son and it certainly showed in the detail. The paint job was certainly done for mass effect and it works however I wanted to raise the standard a bit so I chose six figures from what I think are supposed to be Knights of the Panther and did a wee bit of surgery, a wee bit of repainting and got carried away...

Original standard of painting on the right, pretty
slapdash, and a repainted knight on the left; just
pretty...

The 5th Edition book of the Empire contains some beautifully painted miniatures done by the GW 'Eavy Metal painting team of that era and they inspiired me to push my painting abilities...

...especially the Elector Count of Averland figure....

...and his wonderfully painted warhorse armour

So, suitably inspired, I set about painting something similar on one of the knights; my first, real attempt at freehand painting of heraldry...

...and I must say I am very pleased with the results...Not only did I tackle painting freehand but I also swapped the heads of all of the knights as they were, originally, all the same. I added a variety of helmeted and non-helmeted heads so that I could give them a bit more personality. 

This fellow will be one of the generals for my bigger games and I will mount him and a small staff;; herald, trumpeter and standard bearer,  on movement trays when it comes to P&S...

...so I did another, though a bit less grandiose but with lots of character....

...and here's a group photo to finish off with. 

This was a really good start for my Italian Wars force which countered the really poor start I made when trying to paint over a unit of halberdeers; they had been thrown together and very roughly painted/washed. And the more I tried to cover up the mess the messier they got till I threw them into a bath of Dettol and stripped them.....but more about them later.

I have obviously got a way to go with this army. My intention is to write out a 1500 point list for WoE and work on getting that force painted up to a better standard; about which more anon. In the meantime, there's even more hobby going on; WoE orcs, Man o' War, Napoleonics etc etc..it's pip pip for the mo, though

Pip pip 

G of J

ps. Apologies that the first paragraph is in a black font whilst the rest ins in white; can't seem to remedy it ...