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

For the next milestone I decided to do things in a different way. Since I worked on the lore for my 100 kingdoms army, I’ve had a lot of ideas coming out of nowhere.
I also had a problem to take into consideration : cost. Conquest miniatures are great, but not cheap, and this month, my wallet is almost empty.

I still have in mind to buy a second starter set along with the Steel Legion, but I will wait for this..

Thus, I decided, for this second milestone to do things differently and add some very special units to my army. I limited myself (considering cost and available time) to 800 points for this second Milestone (300 points more than what I already had).

I already have 12 Men at Arms remaining from the starter set I bought. I built a standard bearer using spare parts for both units (the new unit and the previous one).

I used two of the men at arms, and spare parts from the household knights and my bitz box (for the standards, and I had to work on one). Here is what it looked like before assembly.

Here is what it looks like after 20 minutes of work.

I decided to add a noble lord (infantry), and a unit of militia. The noble on foot is there to provide some strength to one of the Men at Arms unit. I didn’t chose an Imperial Officer since the Iron Wolf is not really fond of the empire…

And for the militia, there are not many men in this Kingdom, and most of them dig for Iron. But what about a pack of wolves hunting those stupid trespass on the Iron Wolf’s land ?

I ended up with my 800 point army list : you can find it here.

And the trick is that I have a resin 3d printer…

I already had decided that the militia was going to be a pack of wolves led by a hunter (no standard bearer for the wolves, despite its usefulness, because it doesn’t fit the spirit of this unit, and I really wanted a hunter as a leader). I looked for suitable wolves models and found these : 3 wolves for 3$…

I also found a suitable hunter to lead the wolves : The perfect hunter to lead a pack of wolves
I had to remove his gun, but otherwise he looks just as wild as I wanted.

For the noble lord, I found this one : “Noble” lord…
His tough look and the fur on his cape fit perfectly with the lore of the army. He does not seem very noble, but he looks badass.

I bought the models (in fact, just the three wolves for 3$), scaled the miniatures (they were too small), and launched the print.
I also designed bases to print on my FDM 3d printer while the resin printer was printing the miniatures.

Thus, I’ll have two new units. Here is what the men at arms look like with the noble lord leading them.

But I must say that I really like the “Militia”…

In next update, I’m going to focus on the speed painting techniques I use to create a step by step tutorial for painting the wolves.

Sometimes good ideas come out of nowhere, or from tiny details and expand into great stories.

That’s what happened with my 100 Kingdoms army. I named them “The Lions” at the beginning, because lions are great animals and I didn’t have a better idea (yeah, I know…).
I thought I was going to figure out the lore of the army later. I just didn’t imagine it would turn out like it did…

While trying to figure out the paint scheme for my army, I thought the shield of men at arms was a bit empty. Since it was about speed painting, I didn’t want to make a freehand for each one, thus, I wondered about water transfers.
I saw some sheets on sale on amazon to print my own, but I decided to go through my old box of water transfers, and I found a bunch of space wolves water transfers.
That’s when it came to me.

The Iron Wolf.

The name came out of nowhere and stuck with me, and I had since then glimpses of knights mounted on giant wolves (heavy cavalry), hordes of wolves led by huntmasters (militia), and so on…
And the Iron wolf would be no Jon Snow…

In a nutshell, the lore that follows came from the following simple facts:

• I don’t have much time to paint minis (I’ll use transfers sheets)
• I don’t like spending money when I can save it (I already have space wolves transfer sheets)
• Red is a good color (I like the contrast paint flesh tearers red), and is the color of rust
• I had just ordered snow for my bases from Green Stuff World…

There’s a kingdom, far in the east of the 100 kingdoms, where life is even harder than everywhere else. High mountains, covered with snow. Vast forests of pine trees. Pack of wolves, hunting those foolish enough to travel alone. Bears with a fur as dark as night and able to tear apart a knight in his armor with a single blow.

Nobody would live there willingly if it wasn’t for the mines. Hidden deep in the mountains lie vast quantities of iron, and it is the blood of the Kingdom, that made it so rich. Despite the harsh conditions, there’s a good living to make out of it, if you have what it takes to endure the climate, the beasts, the hard work in the mines, and, probably, worst of all, the Iron Wolf.

The Iron Wolf is nickname known throughout the Hundred Kingdoms. Old men tell tales around the fire in winter. Old women say to children to behave, or the Iron Wolf will come for them.

The Iron Wolf is a brutal Lord. Mercy is not a word he knows, and weakness is what he hates the most. He has no love for his people and accepts only one thing : strength. Nobody even knows how old he is. The Iron Wolf seems to be a title that the kings have given themselves, otherwise it would mean he is centuries old…

Rumour says he rides a giant armored wolf and he‘s probably the only person strong enough to wander alone in his kingdom. People have met him, and all those who can talk about it ended up fighting fo him on the battlefield. Probably because fighting in his army is the only thing that earns more than working in the mines. He is always looking for brave and strong men, and some of them end up as Nobles, fighting in his Wolf Guard.

It was even colder than usual. 
Maria stumbled on a stone, hidden by the snow. And the wood she was carrying ended up on the floor.

“Mom, are you all right ?“ asked the boy.

Walder was her last reason to live. He was ten, and her last child. Mirella had died 3 years ago, after catching a bad cold. Brenn and Evan had died last year, deep under the mountains, while digging for the iron. And her beloved husband, Egron, had been killed three months ago in a tavern fight. Only Walder remained, and he was so small, so frail. She took him in her arms, then looked him in the eyes.

“Walder, it’s just that I am tired. Life has been unfair with us. Don’t worry, I’ll take care of you.“

Then she noticed. 

Walder was paralyzed. 

He was looking above her shoulder, right behind her.

She then felt the warm and foul breath of what was behind. She turned slowly and faced the biggest wolf she had ever seen. It had dark eyes, and could obviously kill a horse with a single blow. His head was just a foot from her face.
His fur was covered with an Iron armor, and an armored man was riding on his back. 

A Knight. 

He was also staring at her, and she could feel the coldness of his gaze.
She started to move away, driven by fear, but Walder moved forward. 

He had his knife in hand and was facing the wolf and the knight.
She wanted to move, to protect him. But fear was stronger.

“Woman, you deserve to die“ said the man.

“You are weak, and you can‘t take care of that boy, because you can‘t even take care of yourself”.

Then he turned his head towards Walder.

“Do you expect to beat me with that knife, kid ?“

“No” answered Walder, his voice shaking.

“Then what are you trying to do with that ?“

“My dad said that inevitable death was no reason to stop fighting“.

The man didn’t move. The wolf didn’t either.

Then a strange sound broke the silence. The knight was laughing. 

He stopped and looked again at Walder.

“Where is your dad ?“

“He died three months ago.”

Walder was still pointing his knife at the knight. Only the breath of the wolf was breaking the silence now.

“That’s a shame, but he left something valuable behind him…”.

The knight moved his hand and the wolf moved a few feet away.

“What’s your name, boy ?“

“Walder”.

“Walder, if you want to live, you have to get away from that weak woman. Come tomorrow morning at dawn at Fort Balgron. You‘ll get an opportunity to train. If you don’t die while in training, you‘ll become one of my Men at Arms.“

Then the knight turned away, and a few seconds later he had disappeared, hidden by the trees and the snow.

Maria realised then what had happened.

She had met the iron Wolf, and she had lost her son. She talked to him, tried to convince him not to do something stupid like going to Fort Balgron, but the boy remained silent.

Next morning, when she woke up, he was gone.

She never heard of Walder again and died three years later beaten up to death in the brothel she ended up in to survive.

A quick update : I finished milestone 1 just before the Weekender got out last Friday.
There are a few things I could have done better, but I consider it finished and playable. I haven’t done the highlights on the armor (just the drybrush), and I didn’t do it either on the red clothes of the crossbowmen, and I‘ll still have the opportunity to do it later.

One thing I‘ll have to do is to put some water transfers of the shields of the Men at Arms. I‘ll explain which water transfers in the next update since it‘s closely related to the lore of my army.
Speaking of the lore, I‘ll have to put some snow on those bases…

Here is what it looks like now.

Second report in my progress on the Path Of Conquest.

First, I changed the name of the army: I first chose “The Lions”, but things happened (I’ll explain what in another update) and I have changed it for “The host of the Iron Wolf”.
You’ll know why later…

About the progress in painting, there’s one part I hate with miniature games: assembly. Cutting the parts off the sprue and removing flashes and mold lines. On those first 500 points, I thought it would take 3 hours or less.
It took more than 4 hours…

There’s a lot of work on those, especially on the mold lines which, in some cases, were really thick, and since the miniatures are bigger than others and come in many parts (especially the 100 Kingdoms cavalry), it took even more time.

But it’s done and here is what it looks like for now.

I went then to the next step: preparing the bases before priming. I simply use PVA glue with sand and rocks form various origins. Here is what I use for this.

I then apply a coat of diluted pva to make sure nothing will get off the base while painting it. It took about 1 hour to prepare all the bases.

I then primed the models with my airbrush. First with black (I found it simpler than trying to get a dark grey), then a zenithal highlight with the white primer. If done correctly, the miniature is ready for the NMM part which will be much easier thanks to the zenithal highlight.

The priming part took 1 hour.

So far, I’ve put 6 hours in. I intend to batch paint the entire army step by step (and I’m going to do that while playing D&D on Roll20 with my friends). The plan I outlined in the first post of this project is solid, and I intend to stick to it.

I also have another project going on, related to my 100 Kingdoms army. I’ll just put a picture below, you’ll understand that The ost of the Iron Wolf needs an opponent…

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!