Empire Heroes and Counts

Found more old Warhammer models lurking in the Loft Full Of Lead.

Planning on undercoating most this weekend.

Viking Ship

I made some progress on the Viking Longship over the weekend. Having removed the plastic deck, I decided to get rid of most of it and only keep the centre bit to support the mast.

Using some polystyrene and foam card, I built up the deck to a good model height and then decked it all out with balsa.

Once some fiddly detail was added around the bow and stern (that’s the front and back to all you land lubbers), the thing is ready for painting.

I still have to make the mast this week, but that can wait.

Oldhammer Empire Outriders

These are one of the old Empire units I liked the most back in the 1990’s, shocking really that I never got around to painting them.

Although these models have black powder weapons, I am going to add these to the Empire backlog even though they can’t be used in an Oathmark army list…although maybe I could use them with the Mounted Ranger profile?

Oldhammer Empire Greatswords

I had painted up about ten Empire Greatswords a long time ago, so thought that was going to be my lot in a unit…until I found more in The Loft Full Of Lead needing some attention.
I am in the progress of rebasing the painted models and will repaint the lot to give me a nice big twenty man unit ready for Oathmark.

Oldhammer Empire Reiksguard

I have had these old Empire Reiksguard Knights for…er…a few years. Probably since about 1992, along with a small pile of other Empire models waiting to be given some love and attention.

With the release of Oathmark, and the fact that we are all stuck without any games being played, I have been given the time to get some of these old models built and painted.

I thought these would not take long to make, after all, a body and some legs. Stick them together, what could possibly go wrong.

Well, it seems that the body and the legs do not line up very well, the sash on the models left fouls on the legs and the lance fouls on the knee. When lined up correctly, there is a gap of about 2mm at the waist.

Is it too late to complain to Games Workshop? Only by about 28 years…

One option was to trim bits of lead off the legs and the torso until they fitted. I tried one, but it was a pain. So I have added a thin slither of plastic between the torso and the legs and it seems to have worked. I now need to undercoat them in the next few days.

Oathmark

Perhaps not the best time to release a new set of rules, during a global lockdown when none of us can get together to play a game, but Osprey have popped out the new Oathmark rulebook. The advantage is that now is the time to dig through the Lofty Full Of Lead and find an appropriate set of figures to use.
Rather weirdly, an army can include figures from several races so mixing Human, Dwarf and Elven models o one army is not out of the question. In fact, for the first game (eventually), I will be able to use my Rackham Dwarves along with old Human militia. I don’t think I should mix Orcs in there…

The rules look good, movement tray based, not sure there is ever a reason to have a single hero runing around without a unit.

Mr Steiberg reckons cavalry are seriously tough and I have been wanting to build and paint some old Games Workshop Empire models for a decade or two. Nearly three.

Siege Crawler

It looks a bit clean, but it has just rolled off the production line for my Steampunk British Army.

Viking Longship

You may have noticed that there has been a Viking theme going on here recently, with no actual games being played, I have found a bit of time to design and prototype a few MDF Viking buildings.

Vikings are not Vikings if they do not have a Viking Longship to plunder and pillage. As if I do not have enough projects on the go, I am starting yet another.

I bought a Playmobil ship off eBay and plan to do a simple conversion, basically just to build up a flat deck after removing all of the current deck gubbins and give it a coat of paint.

Viking Longhouse

Here is another for the expanding Viking village, this is the main Chieftains Longhouse. I tried out a new way of doing stone effects on the sides and I am really pleased with the end result.

There are a few changes needed to the design, but I am getting better at getting the design right (well, nearly right) on the first attempt.

Viking Prototypes

In a brief pause in the design of Tudor buildings, I created a few Viking style buildings for whenever we get back to playing games like Ragnarok.

The buildings were easy enough to design, I had fun doing a slighty curved roof. Rather than just have a tiled effect cut into the mdf roof, I wanted to use some roofing material to make it different from my other designs. So far I have experimented with a couple of roof materials, old towel and teddy bear fur.

I used loads of PVA glue painted onto the roof to stick down the towel (above) and the fur (below).

With both drying, I then mixed up a bit of water with PVA and liberally applied that on all over the top to let it harden for subsequent painting.

I think the fur has the best finish and with a bit of drybrushing, the effect is pretty good.

The towel ends up looking a bit too flat, I don’t like that at all.

More to come with teddy bear fur!