Friday, January 27, 2017

Ninth Painting Challenge Submission - More Warmaster Stuff

More troops for the Empire in GW's "Warmaster"

Since reconnecting with my old Warmaster stuff I wanted to make more progress on them in the Painting Challenge before moving back to other things.  The Empire forces in the Warmaster game are built around crossbowman and halberdiers, so I added some more of these basic units. This submission includes two more units of crossbowmen and another unit of halberdiers.

The provinces of the Empire have different colours to set them apart, but as I started to work once again on these figures two weeks ago, I noticed I had selected a palette of blue and green which seemed to match...no particular province.  Maybe I had something in mind when I first started painting these like 12 years ago? Who knows?

No matter! It's a fantasy game after all.  So for the crossbowmen I just used variants of blue and green uniforms with a dab of red here and there, and popped some bright colours on the feathers to help tell them apart on the battlefield.

Empire crossbows - blue clothing, red feathers...
Perhaps the elector count fielding these troops has access to animals with a lot of different-coloured feathers...or maybe there is just a lot of coloured dye in his province...

More crossbows...green and blue this time, with yellow feathers

For the Halberdiers, I wanted to change the colours a bit.  There is one particular province in the fictional Empire - Hochland - which interests me (connected to another hobby project, blah, blah, not interesting at this point).  Their colours are red and green, which make me think of Christmas, so that's nice! It would also look suitably different from the blue and green.  A large Empire force in Warmaster would have troops raised from several provinces anyways, I expect, so good to have some different colours into the mix. I tried them out on this unit.

Halberdiers of Hochland
The red and green are a fun colour mix, one I hope to repeat on a couple more of the units as I continue to expand the overall force.

 I love these little sculpts - total home run by GW...
These castings are some of the best work GW ever did.  Painting the Halberdiers in particular is just a great treat, with all sorts of character and small details.  They are a total joy to paint. Getting back to these figures has been like reconnecting with an old friend. It has been so much fun!

Ready to defend the Empire! One poor chap in the rear rank had his halberd break off..hopefully doesn't stand out in the unit

The overall Empire force is a good basic size now - four regiments of halberdiers, four units of crossbows, two regiments of Knights and some artillery.  On reflection, I think I need some more Knights...there is always more, and no project is ever truly "finished" :)

A good basic force of Halberdiers for the Empire
My Empire army continues to grow...those Knights are kind of lonely now...and you can see there is still room for more...
These figures netted me enough points to get me half-way toward my goal of 1000 points of painting in the Challenge. I hope to have some more Warmaster stuff ready next week.

5 comments:

  1. Great job! How do you go about painting these?

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  2. Thanks guys.

    @ Viking - I use GW's paint line, and generally will start from a black base coat. The strips of figures are all organized along a popsicle stick for painting, and I just pop one layer of colour on at a time. In the case of the Hochland Halberdiers, for example, the green portions started as "Incubi Darkness", then a higher layer of "Warboss Green" and final dabs of "Moot Green"...each colour gets "built up" in that way, usually with two colours, but three at most...

    With smaller figures, I often use a much brighter final highlight colour than I would for a similar figure in a larger size, to create a bit of extra contrast and help the little figures pop out more.

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  3. I love the look of these figures. Well done! The contrast really lets them pop.

    The actual game Warmaster is maybe the best written game GW ever published.

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  4. Just planning on doing some Empire of my own for Warmaster and you're right - the Empire models in particular are absolutely bursting with character. The general with the 2 d6s on his table always amuses me!

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