Regimental Rebasing

Greetings!

It's been a while since my last post but now I'm back on track with an assortment things to show you. Although I'm still working on my newest Path to Glory report, I thought it'd be nice to let you see how my army projects are coming along!

Since my order of hundreds of 25mm round bases arrived I've been working hard to re-base my old Empire models from squares to rounds. Who once were the ill-fated and grim conscripts of the 14th Talabheim State Regiment have now been transformed into the stalwart defenders of the Mortal Realms as proud members of the Puffington Host!

Swordsmen, Handgunners, Spearmen & Greatswords

Witch Hunter, Bright Wizard, Warrior Priest, Engineer, Warrior Priest & Freeguild General

Freeguild General on Warhorse, Freeguild General with Stately War Banner & two war machine crews

As all the models are varnished I have no way of changing the colour scheme more to my current liking, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. This Empire force was my first real Warhammer army (as in, I had only owned some separate models before) so perhaps it is for the best to leave it as it is. At least I can easily see how the level of my painting skills has slowly increased over the years!

I simply cut, sawed and pried each and every square base from the models and quickly painted up some new ones to glue them on. The workload seemed enormous at first, but in the end it was quite a fast and simple operation. I really like how the round bases change the general look of the models, giving them all some individuality rather than just making them bricks in a wall.

What I did to the bases was also very simple. Simple is the keyword I designated for this army project, as I have many armies on my plate and this one will have to be as speed-assembled, speed-painted and speed-based as possible.

First I took a wide square-tipped brush and slapped some flagstones onto the bases with Dawnstone, adding a few details with Gehenna's Gold (sewers, ornate swirls...) and Sotek Green (mosaic, coloured flagstones...) to break up the monotone black-and-gray a bit. Lastly I washed it all over generously with Nuln Oil, and the bases were done!

They don't look that great when inspected up close, but they do the job when there are 100+ models on the table and you just want to get on with the project.

I also added a couple of new heroes to the army's ranks to bolster them for the new age of warfare they're about to enter. A couple of evenings' speedpainting resulted in two Freeguild Generals and two allied Battlemages!

Not the greatest of my paintjobs but I'm happy with the result. As I only have limited time on my hands and there are loads of projects to do, I opted to go with a very simple palette and a bit less finishing touches than my heroes would normally receive. It feels oddly good to get things done in so little time and to leave some small details less detailed in order to finish the model sooner... I feel like I've actually accomplished something. Perhaps I've finally broken out of the perfectionist's cage, that infernal loop of doing and redoing things to get it all nice and perfect?

Nah, that's not possible.

Speaking of swelling the ranks of my army, I recently acquired 50 old Empire Militia models from various different sources. All unpainted, most unassembled, some still in their sprues. I have untold amounts of Empire bits and pieces in my bitz box, so I decided to go crazy with it. Taking out all my unused human arms, heads, weapons and shields, I assembled 10 models at a time while making sure each one was different from the others before moving on to the next batch of 10. I went through all 50 models by slapping on parts from multiple kits like Handgunners, Greatswords, State Troops, Outriders, Knights, Pistoliers, war machine crews...

I ended up having a nice company of armed men kitted with various tools of war: pistols, axes, clubs, swords, crossbows, hunting bows, blunderbusses, halberds, pikes, knives and so forth. I really like how they look as a unit. They're not a coherent and uniformly armed fighting force, but a mixed bunch of irregulars who fight for their homes in the ranks of the Freeguild Militia.

Here are a few pics of the unit before I started painting them. They're all on squares for the duration of the painting, but as soon as all 50 have been speedpainted through I'll put them on those rounds bases they deserve.