Topic: Hot Ale & Mud

[Tyvw]

Hello Everyone,


This year I decided I would finally begin working on the Empire army I've been wanting to start for the past.. decade or so. In that time I considered just about every state, and flipped a coin late December to decide between Wissenland/Nuln and Stirland. The coin said Wissenland, but I managed to get one final change of heart in before starting the project earlier this week so Stirland it is. 

My first unit is starting to look the part and I figured I would share it with the fine people here at Warhammer-Empire:



I want to work on the faces a little more, since the beards and moustaches (an integral part of any Empire army) are giving me some trouble. And I think I'll redo the shot pouches in a different colour to make them standout a little better.  After that I just want to fix some smudges/chips and they should be done.

The bases were made when I was still certain I was going to build a Nuln/Wissenland army, so I might redo them. Or I'll try to make them a bit more rural looking... somehow.



The miniatures are on magnetized 15mm bases, so they can rank up in the movement tray which gives them the same footprint as a unit based on 20mm squares. But I could also print round bases for them should I want to use them for a game system that uses those.

[PLC]

Very nice group, they look much better than the handgunners currently sold.

[GamesPoet]

I like"em!

[Zygmund]

Nice! Love Stirdland. It was my first Empire army.

Gotta say the equipment of those handgunners speaks loudly Nuln to me. But hey, from the perspective of Stirland, Nuln is their Imperial city, and any well-off prince of Stirland will surely buy the best gear, nulnese gear, for his troops.

-Z

[Tyvw]

Thanks guys I'm quite pleased with how they are coming along.

Very nice group, they look much better than the handgunners currently sold.

Yeah I think so to, although I do like the powder monkey that comes with the kit, so I might pick it up just for that.  I still have some of the 'old' handgunners from a 6th edition starter set I picked up at a fleamarket years ago.. but they are buried deep in my storage unit so it was much faster to print some new ones  One of these days I'll mount an expedition to rescue the minis from storage, since I'm fairly certain there's some characters, knights and war machines in there.

Gotta say the equipment of those handgunners speaks loudly Nuln to me. But hey, from the perspective of Stirland, Nuln is their Imperial city, and any well-off prince of Stirland will surely buy the best gear, nulnese gear, for his troops.

The equipment is quite Nulney, and that's mainly because I had these minis ready to go on January 1st. But like you said, it's not unlikely some Nuln made equipment made it's way to Stirland.

Once they are done I'll add some different units to balance it out. Some units of the River Patrol as well as some Free Company, since they both sound like fun modelling projects to me. I think it'll also 'average out' the more expensive nature of the unit's I'm working on now a bit, but I'm trying to limit the amount of unpainted minis I have sitting around.

[GamesPoet]

Nice! Love Stirdland. It was my first Empire army.

Gotta say the equipment of those handgunners speaks loudly Nuln to me. But hey, from the perspective of Stirland, Nuln is their Imperial city, and any well-off prince of Stirland will surely buy the best gear, nulnese gear, for his troops.

But when it comes to shoes, bare feet are a much more fun thing to play around in the Stirland Mud.

[Zygmund]

Nice! Love Stirdland. It was my first Empire army.

Gotta say the equipment of those handgunners speaks loudly Nuln to me. But hey, from the perspective of Stirland, Nuln is their Imperial city, and any well-off prince of Stirland will surely buy the best gear, nulnese gear, for his troops.

But when it comes to shoes, bare feet are a much more fun thing to play around in the Stirland Mud.

Ah, the barefoot joke again.

Stirland is cattle country. They have plenty of leather. It's the urban poor of the big cities who go barefoot. 

-Z

[Tyvw]

So I've just read that Highland Miniatures (which these guys are) are slightly larger than their GW counterparts and should be scaled down 10% to match.. Which means GamesPoet's could get his way as I might have to sink these guys ankle deep into some mud in order to have them look 'right' next to regular minis.

I'll probably go rummage through my storage unit this tomorrow so I can grab the empire models I have buried there. That way I can compare them to the printed ones and take some measurements so I can scale future prints.

Before that discovery derailed my hobby mojo, I did manage to apply some more paint to the hand gunners.



The small stuff like eyes always takes me a long time, and the idea that I've been "cheating" by painting figures that are ~10% bigger is kind of a kick in the shins. So I might just get a head start on the scalecreep and make everything 10% larger 

[PLC]

How did you do the bases btw? Are these stones repurposed bits of sprue?

[GamesPoet]

They don't call it "Stirland Mud" for nothing.

[HertugenAfHest]

They look really good, great models!

[Tyvw]

How did you do the bases btw? Are these stones repurposed bits of sprue?

The bases and the top of the movement tray were "cut" from a larger sheet in Blender and 3d printed, I used this file I found on Thingiverse for the texture:
https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:3607436

Technically all the bases I printed have a pattern that lines up perfectly with the top of the tray.. but that was turning into more of a puzzle than I expected so I just put them in randomly. The pattern I used is quite forgiving in that all the stones are different sizes anyway, so it looks alright I think.

You could use sprue to create a similar effect, but I think it would be easier to use plasticard or a glossy cardstock if you'd make these by hand. It'd be easier to get 'stones' in different widths that way. Sprues would work well for a brick paved surface, or types of cobblestones that are more uniform in size.

Alternatively you could get a texture roller and some lightweight clay or sculpey and do it that way; greenstuff world makes some good ones, but there's probably others out there. That is a bit more expensive, but if you want to do an army it would be so much faster than cutting hundreds of stones from sprue/card and paving your bases by hand.

@HertugenAfHest: Thanks

[The Black Knight]

These are some lovely models I must say and you've done them justice! I think the colours you've picked work very well on these. Keep it up!

[GamesPoet]

I agree, the unit came out very nicely, and the bases are ace!  Regardless of my silly humor, there is nothing that says these dudes aren't defending a fancy Stirland central town square from the invading undead sweeping over the town walls.

[Tyvw]

Thanks guys, I'm a little torn on what to do with them though.

Earlier today I went to my storage unit to find the Empire minis I knew I had in there somewhere.. and these guys are quite a bit bigger.



The extra wide stance of the plastic handgunner makes up a bit of the height difference, but the printed ones are a lot chunkier in general.



The most upright handgunner makes the spearman next to him look almost comically small. The difference between them and the "new" state troops isn't as noticeable though.


Scaling the minis down by 10% would definitely help them look more unified scale wise. So I think I'll cut my losses and call the unit of hand gunners 'done', and move on to the next project. They probably won't look terribly out of place on the tabletop as long as they aren't standing right next to the plastic ones.

Then again I don't really have enough plastic models to make up the core of an army anyway. So maybe I'll clean them up and try to sell them on to someone who has more use for them and print my core units instead.

[The Black Knight]

Mate, you're gonna end up with more than one unit of handgunners in due course surely. Treat this one as a test subject. You can always game with them until you paint new ones, if the size difference bothers you too much to keep them.

I think if the prints would be scaled down by 10% you could mix them with plastics easily. Unless you mean you have a whole army of the large ones printed already?

[GamesPoet]

I'd keep those 10 handguners in their own unit, and not worry about the size.  Then if a try to scaling down a unit of some kind by the 10% suggested and see what happens.  Its not the end of the world, just messing around with "printing" them.

[commandant]

Give the unit a fancy banner and called them something fine like "The Elite Guard" and have a requirement of being over 6"2 for consideration and move on.

[Zygmund]

Give the unit a fancy banner and called them something fine like "The Elite Guard" and have a requirement of being over 6"2 for consideration and move on.

This!

History knows many such tall-men parade units. And many such units also entered combat.

Their handguns are still the same size, so the scale can be the same. 

-Z

[Tyvw]

It was more than a little frustrating to discover the size difference after I had spent several days working on them, but at least I found out whilst I was 10 models in and not a 100 

They'll look alright as long as they aren't right next to another unit/model so they won't be going anywhere anytime soon. I just tend to overthink such things and got a little demotivated. But who knows maybe there was a minor breakdown in communication when one of the Stirland Nobles  commissioned someone to form a regiment of Longriflemen 
An elite tall men regiment feels a bit like an awkward self-insert since I'm 6'6 myself... and my most likely opponent is a solid foot shorter than me. I do like the idea of naming each unit and giving them a bit of a backstory though, so I'll keep it in mind.

I did decide to scrap the great swords I had printed; they were in the same scale, and I managed to bang them up quite a bit between cleaning/washing/curing and they all needed repairs of some sort. So it'd be much easier to print some new ones further down the line and continue with those. I have a box of the GW greatswords on order at my local gamestore so I'll revisit that unit down the line. The style and proportions look fairly similar so I'm curious to see how well the two types mesh.

In the meantime I'm going to get started on some flaggelants; that way I'll be able to meet the 'barefoot in the mud'-expectation certain members of this community have off Stirland armies.. _{also I had two boxes of them in my storage unit that I forgot about and want to play with}


-edit-

Snapped a WiP of the first 5:



I decided to print some of Highland Miniatures'  'fanatical zealots' at 90% to see how they scale up. The hands and feet are a good bit smaller than GW's heroic scale but it works well height wise. The print itself came out poorly, I had six models on there and 4 of them came out damaged. One was completely unusable, another needed some minor green stuffing to fix.. and the remaining two inspired me to do some converting.

The guy on the left was missing his head and part of his shoulders so I trimmed up his torso and stuck the stockade bit from the flagellant sprue on there. The torso when printed at 90% is apparently just as wide as the GW ones so that's good to know. I'm going to sculpt him a little collar with greenstuff and add some sleeves to his tunic to hide the areas I carved away.

The Gentleman in the middle is shaping up to be my favourite; his arms got flattened so I cut them off and replaced them with a pair from the flagellant sprue. GW's flagellants have beefier arms, but I think it'll look alright once I bulk out his sleeves a little. He's also missing a leg, which just didn't print.. at all. So I built him a little crutch from a bit of sprue and part of a banner pole. I'm going to get him an empty hand instead of the torch, and change up his weapon; the hourglass is nice but I think he'd look good with a flail.     

[Tyvw]

The first box of flagellants was built over the past couple days; I re-positioned most of the chains/flails since so they rank up a little easier, and so that they don't all stick up in the air. They are led by a warrior priest; I was planning on having a captain as my first character, but figured this guy would be a better fit in the unit.



Currently I'm printing a "pointy hand" for the guy with the crutch who I think will get promoted to unit champion when he's done, as well as a standard bearer and "musician" for the unit (although I don't think they have the option to take those in game, they'll just be there to look cool). Once I have the parts ready I'll break out the greenstuff to start work on Crutchey and fix some minor stuff on the other guys in the unit.

I'm not sure how people tend to field these guys, but I'll probably build the second box along with some extra stuff so that I can have a big unit of 30 or break them up in smaller units.

[GamesPoet]

Their bare feet are hidden by those long robes!

[Tyvw]

Progress!





Now I just need to get a little mud on their bases and they'll be ready for primer tommorrow 

[The Black Knight]

These are really cool! Mixing of the parts has really worked out, each one looks very distinct.

[Tyvw]

These are really cool! Mixing of the parts has really worked out, each one looks very distinct.

Thanks, the scale is a little different from the GW heroic one.

It's not bad when they are all mobbed up together though: