How to increase the variety in your Empire army.

k what do you want in your empire army? LOTS of Soldiers!
Ok, no problem, we can do that. You say you want maximum variety with your figures? So you say you need alternatives?
We can do that too.

You can do ANY empire infantry or cavalry with plastics, and many DOW units also. Maybe you simply want to fill out a regiment of figures and the
current stuff just doesnt fit in right. For instance, you have a small unit
of metal spearmen from 5th edition, the new spearmen, while they are really nice, just dont mix well with these. But if you do a little converting, you can easily make figures that fit in with the look and feel of most any unit. This also works with some of the older figures which dont currently have a place in the army list, these can be converted into useful and unique figures.

Here is what you can do with some spare time and the current plastic figs and a lot of plastic glue and greenstuff.

Kitz & Bitz Used:
(Now you dont have to buy all of these, swapping parts with friends is
fine.)
Warhammer Basic set figures.
Solidiers of the Empire Box (swordsmen/halberds)
Boxes of Empire Militia (free company)
Mordhiem Accessory and Middenhiemer Sprues
Knightly Orders boxes (optional)
5th Ed Plastic Bretonnian Knights (optional)
5th Ed Plastic Bretonnian Archers (optional)
Zombie Boxes (optional)
Mordhiem Skaven Boxes (optional)
Between these sets you have access to 30 plus different empire heads, tons of armored and unarmored torsos, legs, arms and too many weapons
combinations for my feeble brain to count.

Lets start with the most commonly available figures Warhammer Box Set Spearmen, these can be used as:
1) Spears (duh!)
2) Halberds, cut the spearshaft off about an inch, add a spare halberd head from the soldiers set
3) Pikemen, simply cut away spears, drill shaft away, and either add premade pikes or make your own with plastic/wire, or another way that works if you have enough of them is to simply cut part off of one figure and use it to extend the other, the one you trimmed becomes a halberdier.

Warhammer Box Set Handgunners, can be used as:
1) Gunners (again, duh!)
2) Crossbows, depending on pose you can trim away the gun and splice in a crossbow from the Mordhiem Accessory sprue or Militia sprue.

Soldiers of the Empire and Militia
These are best for: Swordsmen & Halberds of course but also and any state troop you want.
1) Gunners, use blunderbusses from Militia sprues, its easy to snip front
end and add a suitable muzzle from cut sprue.
2) Crossbows, crossbow arms from the Militia box set,and any soldier or
militia body. (there are 10 sets of arms per box)
3) Archers, bow arms from Militia box set, and any soldier or Militia body,
(there are 10 sets of arms per box)
4) Spears, use the halberd arms and scratchbuild a spearhead, or use the
spearheads you trimmed from the box set figures.
5) Militia, any combo of arms, legs, torso and head work for Militia.

Knightly Orders
1) Heroes, mixing parts allows you to create a hero figure on foot or
mounted with and huge variety of armor and weapon types, this also includes the leader figure from the command sprue. Also you can make Warrior Preists using the hammers, armor, shields and maybe the book from the Mordhiem sprue.
2) Greatswords, use 2 handed swords from Militia box,a plastic knights torso and the thigh armor sections from the soldiers box, or the armored leader legs from the command sprue, and a suitably fluffy feathered head from any set these will mix well with both the old and new greatsword models (or a spare plastic knights head can work well also).
3) Special Units, I am doing foot knights for my Knights Panther and
Reiksguard, I used soldier legs, knight torsos and heads, and arms from
knights and the Militia armored arms (ruleswise these are just well-dressed swordsmen).

Now what do I do with those leftover knights legs?:
Pistoliers , knights legs, any Militia torso and head, pistols and swords
from Militia sprue, and grab a unarmored horse from Mail Order or as I did,
use Bretonnian horses, that gives you room to paint fancy heraldry or simply use your city colors, (I had the Bretonnian horses left after converting some Bretonnian knights to Imperials, see below)

Do you have a bunch of the 5th Ed plastic Bretonnian knights?
By using extra Empire Knight parts like helms and lances you can easily
convert Bretonnian bodies to Empire Knightly Orders or the Middenhiemer
sprue can convert them to White Wolves.
For mine what I did was: I cut off the arms, trimmed and cleaned the torsos, added tunics of putty, and used the Greatswords from the Militia sprue, and some plastic Imperial knight helms, I use them as the Black Guard of Morr, using the White Wolf rules, ie no shields, they use bastard swords (equal to the cavalry hammer).

How many of us grabbed up and used the plastic Bretonnian Archers from 5th Edition?. Something that I did when I noticed I had lots of archer bodies and a stack of crossbows from the Militia box, simply cut the arms off at the shoulder, add either set of crossbow arms, swap a few heads, and if you want, use some putty to make the sleeves look better. These can be wandering Tilean crossbowmen who served in Bretonnia, or you can say they simply are backwoods types who dont pay attention to modern battlefield fashions.
You can also strangley enough use them as archers!! For variety, simply swap some arms with the Militia set, and a few head swaps and you are done.

Mordhiem Accessory Sprue
This sprue is a source of many items that allow for tailoring of characters, command figures and units.
1) If you are doing command figures for a Gunners or Crossbow unit for
example, you can use the gun or crossbow to strap across thier backs, also useful for greatswords, archers or any unit you want.
2) Scrolls, satchels and books for your wizards and warrior preists.
Bucklers, pistols and throwing knives for your Duelists and Militia
troops. Plus bows, rope, and a spare greatsword are all available.
3) More Gunners, using the halberdier arms, trim away the halberd, drill the shaft from out of the hands, add in the handgun or blunderbuss from this sprue.
4) You can add cloaks to accent any special unit you wish this way, I used the Skaven, Middenhiem (non-wolf cloak) and Knightly Orders cloaks on my Knights Panther units.

Mordhiem Middenhiemer Sprue
1) For you Middenhiemers, you can do Hammerers, use the swordsmen rules but give them hammers, beards, sheilds and lots of attitude.
2) You can also do the Tuetogen Guard with 2 handed hammers, follow the greatswords listing above but make them suitably hairy (see the Cult of Ulric list in the back of the book). You can also try using some of the
halberd arms for these guys, just transplant a hammer head for the halberd head.
3) Also anywhere I mention a head swap , take a look at this sprue.

DOW you can make from these sprues include:
1) Skirmishers: pistols, bucklers, weapons for either hand, and throwing
knives are all available.
2) Light Cav, as the pistoliers, simply pick any torso, add a bow or spear,
and knights legs or outrider legs.
3) Pikes, see above.
4) Norse Marauders, use the Middenheimer sprues and go crazy.
5) Crossbows of course, as fancy or as trashy as you want.
6) Not to mention the Paymasters dream, a chest of gold.

Other Random Ideas:
Flaggelants, I mixed Militia, Zombie and MH Skaven bits and added some
greenstuff to do some simple flaggelants, as several of the legs, arms and heads on the zombie sprue are suitable for an underfed, flea bitten
wanderer.

One figure I made used the cannon crewman’s ramrod arms, I just swapped the end for a halberd head, so I have a very dynamic halberdier thrusting straight out of the front rank.

For a silly mix in your Free Company units, use any other figure you have
laying about. Plastic Heroquest figures, spare Elves (any variety), Dwarfs, Halfings and any other single figs you want. My Free Company guys have Dwarfs (including a Trollslayer), a Dark Elf Assassin, a Witch Elf, a Halfing, a High Elf and a Barbarian.

Just a quick mention, grab a box of the Heroquest wizards, you can cover most of the colleges for under $10 US, as opposed to Mail Order at $9 US each.

What about the older figures I cant use currently?
Well, I was lucky, the only figures I had like this were the old outriders,
whch can easily be used as mounted engineers. The problem is that I owned 6 of them, thats a lot of engineers. To fix this problem I simply popped them in half at the waist, attached plastic torsos and pistol arms to the legs and they became Pistoliers, the Outrider torsos were added to infantry legs to become marksmen for my Handgunner units.
If you own any of the Outriders with repeater pistols they are natural
marksmen for Pistolier units.
Of course many other players have metal figs they cant use, but they are still usable. Ogres, Kislevite, Reiksguard and Halfings are the most common items mentioned.

Kislevite Winged Lancers are of course available thru the DOW list, plus if
you want, you can put them on barded horses for a little more protection.

Reiksguard are easily used as Greatswords, since several have 2 handed
weapons or Heros.

Of course Ogres are on the DOW list, either normal or elite (Golgfags).

Halfing archers can be used as DOW Halfings, or as Empire Huntsmen. Halfing spearmen can be regular spearmen on the Empire list, DOW Halfing spears, or if long enough, call them pikemen, the spears are roughly three times thier body length if I remember.

Also since the Dwarf spears were originally released by Marauder as Dwarf Pikes under 3rd edition, so use them as pikes, just use them as human pikemen as far as the rules are concerned. Especially if mixed with the Halfing spears, a very amusing but still useful unit.

Currently the only 5th Ed unit that I can think of that is not in this
edition is the War Wagon, and you can add the important parts of it to the old Steam tank you have as a paper weight.

If you know of any more ideas let me know at:

davetalley@hotmail.com