I’m doing a few things with this Empire army that I haven’t really done with earlier armies.  I’ve been meaning to throw together a post about them for a while now.  Behold!  I’ve finally gotten around to it!

More Gap Filling

Obviously I’ve filled gaps in my minis previously… but with rank & file and on certain joins it’s unnecessary.  This time around, I’m using some thinned Liquid Green Stuff (LGS) to smooth over dang near any join where it’d be appropriate.

Platform Shoes

I’ve read before about why it’s important to put your models’ feet on some plasticard, so they appear to be standing on the terrain on your bases, rather than in the terrain.  I’m using 2mm thick plasticard.  For the most part, this hasn’t been a problem, though on a few models the contact points are small enough that doing this hasn’t helped much.  I’m hoping that basing will help with that.

Base Gap Filling

I’m a strong believer in gluing metal bits to your bases to give your models weight and stability, as well as making your movement trays less dangerous.  (I hate when I pick up a tray, something slips, and models go everywhere.)  I just glue the weight to the base.  This time around, I’m using LGS to smooth out any transition or gap between the base and the metal.  This should make the base look sharper.

Zenithal Highlighting

I absolutely get the theory behind it, though I expect that I slap enough paint on my models to Defeat The Purpose.  Still, it’s negligibly easy to do, and helps make details stand out…  and it’s entirely possible it does make some difference.

I finally finished this dang batch of ten Halberdiers.  I could talk about how and why I’ll be tackling them in smaller batches, but I think that’s been covered to death.  Ultimately it took me something like a month to paint these suckers.

So, that’s them.  I’ll be knocking out more, soon.  Later today, I’ll be getting in my first real game with this army.

From Day 1, I’ve been planning to play up the nautical aspect of the Nordland army.  (I’ve already got a pretty clear idea of what my display board’s going to look like.)  Although a general lack of easily accessible, usable nautical bits has thwarted me in terms of converting up most characters, I’ve been pretty determined to make sure that it’s clear that my Arch Lectors and Warrior Priests can’t be mistaken as Sigmarites: they serve Manann.

I’m definitely thinking Aeron “Damphair” Greyjoy, here.

Here’s the first one.

He’s the bottom half of a Flagellant body, with the top half sawn off and replaced with a Greatsword torso.  The shield’s from the Empire General kit: I shaved the skull off and replaced it with a plasticard Manann’s crwon.  The clerics should have portfolio-appropriate weapons, so I converted one of the Flagellant’s scythes into a boathook.  The head’s a Flagellant’s, with a paper crown reinforced with superglue.

Since the last time I really posted, I’ve been stupidly busy: both at work and at hobby.

On top of all that other stuff, I’ve done:

• 20x Greatswords
• 10x Handgunners
• 10x Archers
• 3x Wizards
• 1x Captain of the Empire

At this point, I just need to do up the Engineer and the Arch-Lector.

I ran out of metal squares to glue to their bases: I’ve had to order a heap more of them from Wargame Accessories.  In fact, I had to go on a spree: ordering metal squares, movement trays from Litko and skirmish trays from Back 2 Base-IX.

I’ve been holding off on building the characters, since they’re the most clear place to do conversions and work in the Manann / Nordland theme.  I threw together some wizards (Light and Fire) without any trouble.

Nothing special, right?

Well, I also needed a Shadow Wizard… and they don’t really have any bits in the (otherwise magnificent) Wizard kit.

So, I trimmed the hair off of a Fire Mage’s hair sculpted the hood up over it.

Not entirely pleased with the skull on the staff, but nothing else in the bits box really leapt out at me.  I might take a stab at it scratching up a crystal or something.

Ran the Storm of Magic Tournament over the weekend.  I’ve got some ruminatin’ to do about it at some point in the near-term (particularly in terms of how I structured and scored it), but that’ll wait.

I was also extremely productive Sunday and Monday: grinding through wrapping up the remaining Empire models.

In two days:

• 20x Archers
• 20x Handgunners
• 10x Greatswords

Before my current list is ready to field, I still have 10 Handgunners and 20 Greatswords (10 of which are in progress) to assemble… plus characters.  Beyond that, just 10 Archers and 24 Knights are still on the sprue.