Tronhammer: Empire Army Update

In addition to my Angmar army, I have also been refurbishing my Nuln Army - rebasing, repainting, rethinking. I was fond of my old concept of an Expeditionary Force led by a With Hunter - especially because of the campaign a friend and I played which forged their backstory. But the Warhammer Forge and the new Empire Army book releases have opened up a some exciting possibilities for a Nuln themed army that represents the well-developed backstory of the region.

The biggest issue I had with my existing force was to do with the painting. Not only has my basic skill level developed since I started collecting Empire in 2009, I am also no longer rushing to tournament deadlines like I was back then. I look back on my hastily slap-dashed state troops and feel very little sense of achievement. The overall aesthetic is very dark, which I wanted at the time, but I have since been convinced that they need more contrast to really capture the eye.

The first step was to change the bases to a resin-moulded urban design. In this I was greatly inspired by Dave Taylor's Armies on Parade entry. The light flagstones really add an element of contrast to an army whose uniforms are predominantly black. The old mud-with-grass basing scheme tended to lose definition of the models when viewed from afar (see my old miniature gallery on this blog). New foundation paints from GW have also meant my reds, whites and yellows stand out a lot more.

Painting motivation has been a huge issue for the last six months, though partly because of time restraints. We recently started an escalation league using the old Warband Rules, and this has helped greatly. The five of us participating have really got back into the swing of it. I will post more on this at a later date but you can check out our league website using the link at the top of this blog.

My 200 point warband consists of;

5 x Knights Griffon led by Preceptor
5 x Nuln State Halberdiers
5 x Nuln State Handgunners

The colour scheme for the Knights has been taken from the Uniforms and Heraldry of the Empire as well as the recent GW paint job on the studio Demigryphs.

I will post more pictures when complete, but here is a recent WIP picture;

I spent a bit of effort tracking down some waterslide transfer paper, and getting a whole heap of Nuln banner designs and shield emblems ready on Photoshop. Here are the results of my efforts - the Knights Griffon shield emblems are top right;

Unfortunately this did not pan out as planned. I made the mistake of using transparent decal transfers rather than solid white, and the result was that the yellow could not be seen on a black background. I will have to reprint on white transfer paper, and add a black background to the image. Lesson learned!

My bases are magnetised. As they are solid resin, my neodymium magnets were impractical to attatch. So I applied a metallic-based paint to the bottom of the bases, and then purchased a few magnetic sheets to add to my movement trays. This works much better than the neodymium magnets used on my existing army, as I no longer get models clumping together, or being so well-stuck to the movement tray that I break the model trying to remove it.