nymrod's WIP – Ironweld Arsenal / Freeguild Company

[nymrod]

Getting back into the hobby after a long while out. I used to have a gunnery college-themed Empire army circa 6-7th edition. I sold that years ago, but I always like the idea of gun-focused guys in a fantasy setting, so Ironweld Arsenal (not actually all Ironweld units) had to be my first choice for Age of Sigmar.

 

Luckily, while I sold all my painted armies and sort of hate myself for that, I kept all my bits, and I had all the parts for these guys lying around from a unit of inducted Bretonnian handgunners I was planning for my Empire army back in the day.

 

Here they are unpainted – that’s Men-at-Arms heads and bodies, Handgunner right arms and guns, IG backpacks (Catachans? can’t remember) and slightly iffy green stuff left arms. I realized after assembling them that I put all the backpacks with shovels on them upside down, but I think I just likes ‘em better that way.

 

Here are some of these guys a little further on, which brings me to some PAINTING QUESTIONS: I’m pretty much learning from scratch after so long/not having been a very good painter before anyway. What should I do layering on on these guys? They have been washed if you can’t tell. Do I pretty much need to dip to get a strong shading effect? Should I wash these guys again for a stronger effect until I can get a big can of ink or will that look sloppy? I started to drybrush some silver on the edge of a hat but I quickly washed it off with water because it looked way to shiny. Should I just do a little bit of highlighting on the flesh and cloth and not overthink it for the rank and file? Is it okay to use the same color I basecoated with if I don’t want them to look too bright or will that not look different enough?

 

Is anyone experienced with the Army Painter range? The booklet says the paint doesn’t have to be watered down but I had a little bit of thick brush texture on the first guys I did, so I tried watering them down with like one drop on my palette, and they run down the model and into the cracks like that. I assume the sweet spot is keeping the brush lubricated all the time without actually having a full drop on it? I’m having a hard time not feeling like my paint is always too thick or too runny.

 

Here’s their command – everything pictured is primed now but I assume it’s easier to see the details like this. The musician’s left hand is like twice as big as his right because it’s a bit from the old monopose handgunners – apparently hands have shrunk over the years. The guy with the grenade launcher and the guy with a Warmachine body are both options for the sergeant – I have a few Warmachine figures lying around that loosely match the theme of this army so I’ll paint them to match, but I probably want to have GW alternates for them.

 

These guys are a kitbash of Greatswords and Outrider/Pistoliers. Do you think people would have a problem with fielding them as Irondrakes? There aren’t many options for heavily-armored gun infantry.

 

Hewmon miners! Catachan legs and torsos, various grubby-looking Empire heads, Dwarf miner weapons and a variety of bare arms. They have cargo pants in the Mortal Realms, right?

 

This guy was theoretically the centerpiece, although the Contemptor was a lot smaller than I expected. I hope to field it as a Steam Tank – will anyone have a problem with this because of the smaller base size? 

 

Here’s a guy I intend to use a General/Captain or something next to the sergeant from my Irondrakes to pose a question – re: AoS basing size guides I found on this forum, people are putting characters even from the factions/races that usually go on 25mm bases on 32mm. GW doesn’t seem to be doing this in all of their pictures, but that’s what people recommended by-in-large and I don’t want to raise anyone’s heckles and I’d rather have a consistent rule than go model-by-model anyway. But in cases like this it just looks wrong – the sergeant clearly has a bigger profile (not even the best shot to illustrate that, but his cape is huge). Thoughts?

 

Also, GW 25mm round bases from before and after a certain copyright (2013?) seem to be different heights, with a lot more of the old ones floating around, and the 32mms are all at the higher height. So even if you can keep your 25mm consistent, your characters are all slightly higher up. Infuriating when you’re trying to source cheap bases for stuff that comes with square bases.

 

Down the line, I managed to get my hands on a box of Empire militia that’s on its way, and I’ll probably get some more characters, a Helblaster gun and maybe some flagellants – even though they don’t particularly fit the army’s theme, they’re just cool models. I have enough bits from the Outriders/Pistoliers left to make a full unit of both if I got another box (as opposed to one or the other), but I didn’t really want to have horsies in this gun army. We’ll see. I have some wizards assembled that aren’t particularly converted so I’ll wait to post them until they’re painted, and an Empire General kit I’m not sure what I’m going to do with yet. I’ll probably name my characters and write up some fluff when I’m done with this army – my thinking as of now is that they’re an expedition to Chamon or have been trapped there for a while.

 

Further down the line, here are some ideas I have:

-Desert Wanderers – Elves who’ve been living in Ghur; Great Beast of Gorgoroth and Ripperdactyl conversions with elves on them; Ogre allies; brown, black and grey leathers, red strips of cloth

-Deathmage/Clan Skryre alliance – A necromancer who’s turned from Nagash to the Great Horned Rat converted from a Haemonculus – he’s got a giant rat tail!; zombies, Clan Skryre artillery support, Stormfiends; Dark Eldar Wracks converted into something; revolting fusion of magic and science

-Mortal followers of Slaanesh – mostly Dark Elf units, Dark Elves on Hellstriders, Lord of Slaanesh on daemonic mount, Chaos Spawn; most units in golden masks (Executioners/Sisters of Slaughter)

 

Folks gonna balk at these because of mixing Grand Alliances? I’m anything but a WAAC beardy player, I just look at what models I want to collect and paint so if anything these are probably not functional forces on the tabletop, they’re just combinations that appeal to me aesthetically.

 

Edit: Image porbelms. Photobucket is the devil.

[Soulsmith]

I love them. Awesome simple conversions giving a completely different feel to the standard handgunners. To me, they certainly feel like they come from a more industrial, grimey city. I'm sure most people wont mind your converted variants, you aren't really proxying, they're so similar. In terms of the steamnought, I wouldn't worry. If people play bases then they should be fine with it, the rules say model to model so they're all house ruling anyway. Otherwise, cut out a black card oval base that would fit the steam tank and just blue tak it to it for the really edgy types.

 

Also nice future ideas. You make whatever army you want to make, it's your hobby.

[Kramer]

They look amazing. Love how the militia hats tie everything together. Like @Soulsmith says if they are playing base2base they are already houseruling so use the base that fits the model the best. Be sure to post occasionally to show the progress. I'm really curious to see them painted and as an army, i'm most likely not the only one. 

[cb_rex]

These are super cool, great work... I'd never thought I'd see a Dreadnought used in an appropriate context in fantasy, wow!

[uncool]

Love this idea, and great execution. The steam-nought needs more steam, maybe something wooden to bring it wholey into fantasy? Cant wait to see more.