For my long-term projects on Model Mondays, I'm going to be putting together a series of complete Warhammer Armies, from Games Workshop/Citadel Miniatures.

For those who don't know, Games Workshop is a UK-based gaming and model company that has producing its own series of fantasy and sci-fi tabletop war-games since the 80s.

Warhammer Fantasy and Warhammer 40,000 are their two main hobby games, and they saw a major surge in popularity in the mid-late 90s.  Given how expensive it is, though, people who actually PLAY the games are often rarer than people who collect and paint the miniatures, like myself.  There's a lot of reasons for this, not least of which is that putting together a game requires a dedicated room with a large table and a sizeable chunk of time in a busy schedule (usually a couple of hours to an entire afternoon).

Long story short, I don't play any Games Workshop games these days.  But I still quite like the hobby of painting and assembling the miniatures, and I especially like the look of a complete army.

So, to start off with, I'm going to be assembling a large Empire force, styled in the colours of the province of Averland.

If you're interested in the  backstory of the Warhammer universe, and the Empire in particular, you can always check out the links here and here.

The backbone of the Empire is their large infantry blocks of State Troops, resplendent in the finery of their provincial colours.  To this end, I'm starting off with two State troops kits I had:  swordsmen and spearmen.

Sadly, I didn't think to take any "in-progress" pictures of these fellows as I went along, so we'll have to settle for the finished product:

The swordsmen unit is an older kit, actually the 5th edition handgunners kit.  Basically, what they did back then was they supplied you with a basic empire soldiers kit that included all the usual arms, legs, etc. and also provided a separate blister pack with metal arms that held handguns.  I prefer the look of the new 7th edition handgunners, which we'll get to in a later entry, so I simply made use of all the sword arms and left the metal arms in their pack.

The spearmen are the new 7th edition version, and to be honest I think they're kind of a pain.  A term you might hear tossed around by Warhammer hobbyists is "seeing if the models 'rank up.'"  In other words, when you assemble your minis, you want to put them in poses such that they don't bump up against each other when arranged in a regimental block like so.  I found it extremely difficult to put these guys together in poses that DIDN'T result in them smacking each other about the head and shoulders with their spears.  The older 5th ed kit had them posed with spears held straight up and down.  Perhaps not realistic from a combat point of view, but certainly more practical for placing them on the tabletop.

At any rate, I'm reasonably happy with how these first two regiments (blocks of soldiers for the newbies) turned out.  They're not about to win any Golden Demon awards or anything, but they're not going to embarrass me on the battlefield either.

There are a few things that I might do differently with future regiments:

1)  Bugman's Glow is the basecoat I use for flesh, with a layer of Elf flesh overtop.  I think I either have to switch out the Elf Flesh for Bronzed Flesh or the Bugman's Glow for…something.  Right now they seem to have a creepy, pallid look to them.

2)  I'm not altogether thrilled with how the bases turned out.  I was using static grass from the Citadel Starter Hobby Kit, which also comes with sand.  This was because I initially wanted to model Averland's flowing, open plains (which they use to raise horses) but instead I might go for a "Black Fire Pass" style (a mountain road that Averland patrols).  I think what I might do is do a thin layer of sand with static grass as highlights to model the more rugged terrain.

3)  You'll notice a number of the troops have bronze breastplates on.  I'll be honest here:  the way the moulds are done, it can be tricky to tell who's wearing a breastplate or leather jerkin or no armour at all.  Not the end of the world, but I think there's a couple cases where my choice looks…odd.

4)  I'm really fond of the champion figure that came with the Handgunners set.  His head and arms are pewter, and I don't think they came with any other Empire Soldiers kit, so that makes him something of a rarity these days.  I just like the idea of him pointing somebody out and going all COME AT ME BRO.

That's all for this time, folks!  Next week we're going to talk about some tips and tricks for collecting and cleaning those hard-to-find miniatures...