Path of Conquest 2020 : The 100 Kingdoms - The host of the Iron Wolf

First: sorry for my English, I’m French…

I watched a few “Let’s play” on Conquest in late 2019 on Youtube (It was through those that I discovered OTT). I found the game very interesting and hesitated to order it. I was getting back into the hobby after 10 years without painting a miniature, and I finally decided to focus on more “mainstream” games.

But when the Path of Conquest started a few weeks ago, I decided to take another look and finally jumped in. I got the starter box and decided to try the challenge. I don’t really know why, since there are no players of Conquest in my area. But anyway, it appealed to me.

I like to build an army and spend some time thinking about it. For practical reasons, I decided to start with the 100 Kingdoms, since they are already included in the box, and painting them should not be a problem (the Spires are quite different and would take more time to find the proper color scheme). With two starter sets and a steel legion box, I figured out I would have a strong core for my army (and I would have a lot of spare miniatures to build a Spires army to fight against with my son).

I decided to increase my army by 500 points for each milestone.
For the first 500 points, I picked:
– Noble Lord (cavalry)
– Men at arms (3 stands)
– Mercenary crossbowmen (3 stands)
– Household Knights (3 stands)

You can find the liste here : Link to the army builder

This was the easy part: it’s almost 500 points, and it’s already in the starter set. And I’ll have 3 stands of Men at arms for the next milestone.

But then, I had to face the inevitable: painting.
Along the years, I have developed my painting techniques more in the speed painting area, but I didn’t want to have just a tabletop army.
I wanted an NMM army, which is a bit harder to paint, but there are a few techniques that can be applied.

When you speed paint, one of the most important parts is having a plan and sticking to it. When I build an entirely new army, I think a lot about the way I want it to look, and how effective I can be at getting that look.
I always try my painting scheme on a single miniature (a Man at arms here).

The starting plan was:
– Base coat Vallejo Black Primer with a bit of Vallejo White Primer to have a dark grey
– Zenithal highlight Vallejo White Primer
– Armor and metal parts: Citadel Contrast Basilicanum Grey
– Gold parts: Citadel Contrast Ianden Yellow (thin coat)
– Gold, gambison (twice on it) and a few other parts: Citadel Wash Agrax Earthshade
– Armor, gold and metal parts drybrush: Citadel Dry Praxeti White
– Armor, gold and metal parts highlights : Citadel Base Ceramite White
– Leather: Citadel Contrast Snakebite Leather
– Wood: Citadel Contrast Wyldwood
– Clothes and shield: Citadel Contrast Flesh Tearers Red
– Clothes and shield highlights : Citadel Base Mephiston Red
– Flesh: Citadel Contrast Darkoath Flesh
– Base: Citadel Wash Coelia Greenshade
– Base highlights: Citadel Dry Etherium Blue
– Base details: a few leaves (birch seeds from my garden) and winter grass tufts (Green Stuff World)

It ended up like this :

Unfortunately, I took the picture late at night, and with not enough light. I promise the next pictures will be better !

I decided to add for the cavalry:
– Horses fur: Citadel Contrast Gore Grunta Fur

And there are going to be a few more things for the noble, but I still don’t know exactly what yet.

It took about 25 minutes to paint (not counting the drying time). I think I can have my 500 points painted in less than two weeks. I can assemble all the army in about 3 hours and prime it with the airbrush in 1 hour. If I count about 20 mn per soldier, 40mn per knight and 1 hour on the noble, it’s going to take about 15 hours to paint everything for the first milestone.

Now that I have a plan, let’s do it!