Warhammer Fantasy Revisited

I have been tinkering away when the opportunity arose over the last couple of weeks making incremental progress on the men of Middenheim. Nothing that was individually a major progression point so didn’t want to update the project until they were tabletop ready. Which is where, for my purposes, they are presently residing. Plenty more I could do to them to bring them up another level, and have actually been struggling not to start, but they pass the three colour rule and the three foot test so will park them at this point.

The above gives me a Warrior Priest to accompany each of the infantry hand to hand units, plus a spare to add to the Teutogen Guard when I get them sorted. Markus Wulfhart will accompany the archers and the Captain will just hang about wherever he is needed.

Next step will be 3 blocks of 10 White Wolf cavalry, each consisting of 6 standard knights, and a command group of three. Each unit will have one character accompanying, either the Grandmaster of the White Wolf or one of two mounted Priests of Ulric.

From here, I’ll look to add a couple of packs of warhounds (Need to do an order to Warlord…), the aforementioned Teutogen Guard (Need to do an order to Norba) add a wizard (couldn’t find one that looked rustic enough so waiting on the Frostgrave Wizards kit to be available locally…) and a battle standard bearer (recent test games have impressed upon me how important these actually are in game – have a spare Greatsword standard bearer so that may end up doing the trick). So everything else is pretty much paused until I have sufficient need to place an order to the relevant companies…

Had originally thought it would be fun to convert up a unit of mercenary ogres to accompany the army but then I remembered I already had an army of converted to fit with the Empire force of ogres in blue and white livery so will maybe seek to upgrade their paint job instead of reinventing the wheel…

Having just completed a large infantry based army the only logical thing to do is to immediately commence work on another large infantry based army. Inspired by the excellent army book by Mathias Eliasson I’m going to give a Norse army a go. A bit of a rummage through my pile of shame yielded the below options, all of which I think I can sneak in scale-wise (The bases on the shieldmaidens are lower so they hide the heroic scale of the mins…).

Rather than batch painting a couple of hundred minis at a go I might just rotate through a few small projects a couple of units at a time and have a go at ‘slow growing’ some forces. Will see if that approach has a different feel to the larger volume batch painting I’ve been doing of late.

Spent today sidetracked from the Knights of the White Wolf I was supposed to be working on and ended up getting some assembly done for the Norse project instead. As mentioned, going for small manageable chunks this time around. Have been a little bit spoilt of late by almost single piece Perry and warlord historicals or picking up Ebay second hands so haven’t done any multipose assembly in a while. had forgotten how long it takes. Gave up on parts cleanup beyond a token effort somewhere after losing my third desprued shield-arm to the great dark void under the hobby bench. Anyhow, I did get a block of 10 Shieldmaidens assembled, and a block of 10 warriors that I will use as Reavers. Also remembered I had a standard bearer from Shield Wolf minis so dug her out of storage too.

While tinkering away I did notice some similarities between the sculpts of the Shield Wolf heads and the GW plastic Slaanesh Daemonettes. So I got curious and did a bit of kitbashing. Seemed to work OK so when I get to my Daemons in earnest (probably shortly…) I think I will convert a few to make the units look like they are shifting between a human and daemonic form.

No further advanced on the Knights of the White Wolf (so many horses…) but I have made some progress on the Norse.

…And I may have accidentally started an Albion themed army too using Warlord Celts. If anybody is thinking of holding an intervention at this stage, I’ll understand…

Appendix 4 of the 6th ed WHFB Main rulebook covered rules on fighting a siege. There were further developed in the excellent General’s Compendium for the same edition. I’ve never actually played a siege game and was curious about the way the rules would interact with the 9th edition core rules so decided to run a test game. OK, I’ll be honest – this is all with a view to perhaps one day playing out a large scale version of the siege of Middenheim, but we won’t go admitting to that one quite yet 😉

I used the basic siege rules for 6th ed without any of the additional content form the General’s Compendium. My main observations follow:

• Having the siege towers move at the base movement value of the unit pushing them (so 4 inches per turn) meant that they fell to shooting before they could get near the wall. The defending cannon in the top of the fortified manor in the centre of the board behind the wall may have been overkill (although mounting cannons in the defensive walls of a city does not appear unreasonable to me). May need to up the defensive stats of the siege towers, increase their movement (an upgrade so they can be hauled more rapidly by a monstrous beast perhaps?) or just add more siege towers to split fire?
• Battering rams had a similar issue with regard to movement. Attackers were languishing under concentrated fire trying to bring the rams forward, which is realistic I suppose. Perhaps need to add mantles or a cover save for troops pushing the ram due to the protection of the ram?
• Having missile units deploying behind infantry units armed with siege weapons meant that it was several rounds before they could get into range with their opposite numbers. These should have been deployed ahead (along with infantry units with ladders and grappling hooks) to engage/annoy defenders and prevent fire being concentrated on the siege towers.
• Using two artillery dice for  the scatter effect of indirect mortars seemed to work OK – next time think I will swap out one of the scatter die for a standard d6 for indirect fire, meaning even a direct hit will scatter somewhat (more realistic). ie, indirect fire mortars roll a scatter, artillery and a standard d6 to determine where the shot lands. on a ‘hit’ it just scatters the value of the d6, on a scatter result add the d6 and result on the artillery die.
• Walls can disappear with one lucky hit form a stone thrower or swing from a giant’s club. Might need to revisit the rules to reduce the chance of  a breach happening on one lucky set of rolls.
• Large monsters will apparently make great living siege weapons.
• If/when attempting the Middenheim siege game will probably need to look at having two sets of walls (ie outer wall and inner wall, or even a fortified keep within that) to maintain the siege element for more than a few turns.
• If attempting the above will also need a bigger tabletop. This game was on an 8×4 and was really compressed (attacking units were blocking one another). If doing the game properly would need to be on an 8×8 or possibly an 8×12 table…
• Having troops sally out to meet the opposing force worked a lot better than anticipated.
• Magic was interesting. Not a game changer but certainly helped to thin out the battlements.
• No use of flyers in this one (Empire had one captain on a Pegasus prepared to counterattack when units made it through the breaches but I stopped before hitting that point). Unsure how dedicated squads of flyers hunting down warmachines would have impacted the game (ie not sure if they would have been successful or outright shot to ribbons).

So interesting to work through a siege scenario. Of course if doing the Middenheim siege then there would be Skaven arriving from under the city at inopportune moments, cultists starting riots near the main gate etc so plenty of other elements to keep things interesting…

Have been busy with work but have made minor headway on a few bits and pieces over the last few weeks. Firstly, knights of the White Wolf done to tabletop standard. Just need to add a paper banner for the main standard bearer and can call them ready to play. I know it just wouldn’t be cricket to field them as such in game, but fielding them as a single block of 30 does look sort of cool…

Additionally  I have assembled a whole bunch of hundred years war Perry minis and some Freforge cavalry into what I’ll probably roll out as a Dogs of War force. Or possibly Estallia…

Have also been revisiting a half-started Kings of War undead army which was done as single based minis so that I can repurpose. Project stalled because I thought it would be a good idea to practice painting blacks and whites and learn NMM’s on a horde army. Pro tip – don’t do this…

And finally some work on a couple of Tzeentch characters which I had parked rather than roll up as part of my earlier Chaos project. has been fun to spend a bit more time on a couple of character minis. Still plenty more to do on them though.

Managed to get in a couple of games of 9th edition WHFB at 500 points. Really good fun. Unfortunately with the more expensive point per model armies it’s difficult to field lists at such a low point count that aren’t particularly unbalanced, so have started looking at low point cost minis again. With the end result being that I broke out, assembled and primed all those Skaven I’ve had kicking around from the 8th ed box set. With those minis plus some accumulated second hand extras think I should be able to field something at least fun, even if not competitive.

So current armies I’m tinkering with:

• Empire Middenheim – Pretty much complete, I’d like to add a BSB and a Wizard (if I can ever get my hands on one of those Frostgrave wizards kit…)
• Cult of Ulric – 40% done. Have the  Knights of the White Wolf and characters done, warhounds should arrive next week from Warlord and then just need to sort some more Teutogen Guard (these will be proxies form Norba minis). Not really a priority as I’ll just be running these guys in tandem with the Middenheim army and swapping in units if needed if not running them as a pure force. So pretty much starting and stopping as I get the bits I need to progress.
• High Elf Sea Patrol – 20% done. Army is assembled and primed, first pass done on the flesh base coats and some work on the dragon. Also need to do rigging and sails for the cutters I’m doing for this force and then organise some appropriate bolt throwers.
• Norse – 10% done. have about 500 points assembled and primed. Going to be using a mix of Fireforge Scandinavians, Shieldwolf Shield Maidens, Frostgrave barbarians and reaper bones frost giants, and possibly bones yhetees as trolls, not sure yet. Will slow-grow this as the mood takes me.
• Albion – 5% done. This one has had a couple of rule updates in the last 2 weeks so will need to revisit. The new take on the rules seems sensible. I’m breaking this project down into 2 components – all the Core units seem to be ably represented by a combination of Warlord or Wargames Foundry Celts. So no problems there, have a bunch of old second hand miis fit for purpose. My main concern is that all the special and rare units seem to strongly correlate with Rackhams Kelts from the Confrontation game, so I may need to actually start painting some of the shiny minis I have been hoarding in an elder great dragon-esque manner…
• Dogs of War – 20% done. Core force is assembled and primed, flesh tones on. Will add in some heavy foot knights that are too out of scale to use directly with the Bretonnian force to give these guys some more punch. And may as well add some hundred years war historical archers to boot. should be a quick turnaround on this force though given the paint scheme I’m planning on using.
• Undaed – 1% – Haven’t even started to look at how a KoW army would translate to 9th ed WHFB…
• Skaven 5% – A bunch of minis from the Mordheim and 8th ed starter box set assembled and primed. A bunch more Ebay 2nd hand casualties very much in need of repair and/or stripping.
• Chaos mortal – 80% done. Working on some Nurgle infantry, Tzeentch characters and then need to seriously revisit my Slaanesh force and modernise it a little (presently badly painted 6th ed models).
• Night Goblins – 60% done. Units are pretty much all at tabletop, just need to add in characters and fanatics.

On a positive note with all the assembly and prepping the pile of shame has taken a severe battering of late 🙂

Also will own up that I’m thinking of doing Pirates of Sartosa – because pirates. Also because of the Frostgrave Ghost Archipelago crew box set. If this fits to scale with Warlord Pike & Shotte plastics then it could be a cheap way to put together a 500 point, or even 1000 point army. And I know I have a lot of pirate minis lying around to add in for characters etc as swashbuckling adventurer types make the coolest D&D characters…

Heading through peak period at work presently (July and August will be a write-off as far as hobby progress goes in all likelihood, but don’t worry I’m lucky in that I genuinely like my job so all good 🙂 ) so haven’t gotten as much achieved as I might have otherwise hoped. Having said that, using the army painter method apparently you can roll out a 100 mini army (okay, 99 mini army… haven’t done a wizard or paymaster yet…) in little to no time (Conservative estimate 25 hours although was probably closer to 20…).

Core of a Dogs of war force. 2x units of 5 cavalry (Fireforge Mounted Sergeants, with standards and musicians), one with spears and the other with bows (taken from the Perry agincourt box), 2x blocks of 20 foot (pike with some hand weapon units mixed in plus command), 2x 12 crossbowmen and 2x 12 handgunners. The foot were predominantly sourced from the excellent Perry ‘Mercenaries’ box with some kitbashing involved. The mounted general was a D&D mini who was too out of scale to sit with the Bretonnian force. As alluded to above, still need to paint a wizard (I now have a box of the Frostgrave Wizards kit so one in progress there, plus another for my Middenheim army) plus a paymaster (I’m sure I have the mini I want to use for it stored somewhere logical…).

Speaking of dogs (Bam! Segue, all professional like…) 2 units of Hunting Hounds with hunt masters (the remaining 2 of the Fireforge mounted Sergeants form the Fireforge box) for my Middenheim/Cult of Ulric force. The dogs were from Warlord and really quick to paint up. Should add a bit of tactical flexibility to the force hopefully. I find fielding fast cavalry helps to create the false illusion of tactical competence as far as my generalship is concerned…

Finally a WIP shot of a test unit of pirates, using a combination of Warlord Pike & Shotte infantry and the Northstar/Frostgrave GA Crewman box set. Quite enjoying these guys so think I will push on with the project.