Grand Army of Altdof

So, as of the time of writing this, I had a slight accident at work, where I slipped, tried putting my hand out to stop myself and ended up ramming said hand into my chest, causing me to bruise my muscle. I have been living on ibuprofen and little sleep. Not a great combo for wanting to paint, especially when my main painting container is a shoebox underneath my desk. So it looks like the project will be on the back burner for a while.

And I was doing very well too.

I had bought a painting clamp stand (the little box with the holes in it in which you insert alligator clips on sticks into, for those who don’t know) and that has been incredibly helpful in painting up my Pistoliers and General, makes it so much easier to paint them and their horses separately.

I’d also started painting up the detachments for my Veteran Halberdiers too.

Since the Empire system is all about regimentation, I decided to go with keeping the colour scheme similar but distinct as it was. Though I am doing a few change ups.

The crossbowmen will be blue with red highlights in their uniforms, along with their hats being red.

The swordsmen will be red with blue highlights in their uniform, along with their hats being blue.

Both units will have their plumes be yellow to keep them connected to their parent unit, which is something I’m going to carry on with the other units I end up doing.

For the artillery, I’m not doing anything majorly intricate with them. Since they look to be largely wearing loose under garments, I’m doing that as white/off-white with the general Altdorf colours being present in their colour scheme.

Which leads me to…

Cannons and artillery are always good things for mini-dioramas, I think. The ability to tell a minute story in their own way.

And this one was… the crew have a powder monkey with them! Seriously, I love that little guy so much. So small but he adds so much character and fantasy to the kit so easily.

Whole thing was basecoated with Mournfang Brown, while the gun and the metal bits of the cannon painted Leadbelcher, and I used alternating Mephiston Red and Caledor Blue on the wheels as their specific colours. Other guns will get other colour schemes.

And finally…

The unit that, for me, encapsulates the best dark fantasy element of the Empire; the Flagellants.

Now, I had two guys built up already for when I tried to do something with a Death Guard army that didn’t end up panning out, so I rebased them on their square bases then got another box of Flagellants to make them feel more at home with.

You’ll see the guy with conical hood or capirote as it’s called in the Catholic Church. That was a left over from an order of Cultist Heads from Tabletop Art.de which I got ages before Brexit made that an impossibility now. It’s a bit thin compared to the actual Flagellant heads, but once it’s painted, it shouldn’t make that much of a difference. Plus, it makes sense for a flagellant to have something an actual flagellant would wear. So there’s that.

I hope I recover soon. I want to paint everything up so badly, it’s an ache.

As I said in the previous entry, I had used Greenstuff World’s cavalry converter base, upping the previous 25mmx50mm base to the newer 30mmx60mm bases on my Empire cavalry models, and with the resultant gap between the original base and the edge of the newer one was quite unsightly. So I settled on a simple solution: filling the gap with brownstuff.

It was not quick, and it is certainly not pretty, but it does the job of filling in the gap for sure.

But once the base is covered in your chosen basing material, sand in my case:

It works perfectly fine. And once everything is painted and tufted to your heart’s content, it is impossible to tell that there was a gap there at all.

Which brings me to my next topic: decals.

With the dizzying array of symbols in the Empire as a whole, let alone ones relevant to just one province of the Empire, I knew I had my work cut out for me if I tried to approach it all by hand, so I had to use the age old cheat of decals.

After doing a lot of searching (and I’m still searching for the Renaissance style Reichsadler/Imperial Eagle that’s NOT a derivative of 40k’s Imperial Aquila or anything related to the Third Reich), I found The Mighty Brush and their line of waterslide decals. So, choosing the ones that I want, six in total of:

• Gothic Alphabet (black)
• Gothic Numerals (black)
• Heraldic Symbols (gold)
• Skulls (white)
• 2 Crossed Swords (white and black)

I knew what I wanted to do with them.

Turns out though, when applying the decals, I am just that bit out of practice. None of the decals I have applied really sit right, but at least I only binned two of them. It’s those little skulls. So finicky…

I did these all throughout the course of the day, hence the varying quality of light.

With the change of base size, and with the way that the older Warhammer FB cavalry figures, I knew that I wasn’t going to do the whole thing of taking them off their bases and replacing them with new bases.

NOW, in retrospect, maybe I should have gotten the conversion movement trays from Sarissa Precision. Instead, when Greenstuff World released their conversion bases, I had to get them.

They’re good for what they do for sure. Though I found that the fit on Sarissa Precision movement trays for cavalry is a bit TOO tight, which necessitated a combination of filing on the bases and the tray’s inner sides as well until I got a good fit.

So, I’ve rebased all of my cavalry models; 1 Empire General on Barded Horse,  Pistoliers, and 8 Inner Circle Knights. And the bases do the job well, no lie about that. However, if you look at the pictures, you’ll notice a problem:

Combining the current bases and the conversion bases leaves a small but noticeable gap. It’s only about 2-3mm wide, but it is something noticeable when not painted. So I’m stuck on the best way to cover it up. I’m thinking maybe brownstuff or greenstuff to fill it up so I can cover the bases with sand and then paint and flock the bases as I want.

The Pistoliers and the General’s horse will get a new all over paintjob in general.

Since I’m recovering from dental surgery at the moment, I’ve not been in the mood to do any actual painting. Only mental painting, which is nowhere near as fun. But it means I can do a lot of planning.

Now, since my Empire army is, if you can guess by the name, is based around the city-state of Altdorf, capital city of the state of Reikland and second richest city in the Empire after Marienburg, that means I do have a singular colour scheme to work with. BUT, while some might consider this a negative, for me, I consider this something of a positive.

(Finally got this sorted)

So I only got into Warhammer Fantasy a few months before the End Times became Age of Sigmar, and even though I had a full Empire Battalion boxset, I never did anything major with it.

Old World changed that.

My original idea behind the army was a confederacy of different states and provinces in the Empire, but with the change to Old World and the Time of Three Emperors, I altered the idea so that I would have a singular unified forced, in this case, the city-state of Altdorf.

Just waiting for a change in the weather here in the UK before I make a start getting more into the painting aspect of things.