Tuesday 24 November 2015

Painting Pikemen

I stated in my last post that I was intending to work on my regiment of Ricco's Republican Guard, and I actually seem to be following through on it. This is relatively novel, as my last few months have been full of stalled efforts to pick a project and try to build up some momentum with it. I think this time I will actually be able to push through to my goal.

I've finished painting the first wave of 21. That leaves 7 more models and 3 Ogre fillers (which don't exist yet) to push the unit up to KoW horde size (ie 40 models). That's my current goal, despite the fact that I will have a number of models left over at the end. Given that they need work to sort out their incorrect and/or missing pike situation and 40 is a reasonable footprint in Warhammer too, it might be a while before I get onto doing anything with the remaining models. Let's not be picky. At least I'm making progress!
21 Ricco's Republican Guard, or if you speak KoW, 21 Heavy Pike. I thought these guys would be really fast to paint because they're pretty much fully encased in plate armour. But there is still enough feather, leather and cloth to slow me down more than I would have liked.
They're not exactly works of art, but they should be fine in a massed unit. I'll take some better photos using the light box when the whole lot are done.
My attention is now shifting to making proper matching Ogres. I'm part way there, but the posing with the arms remains a work in progress. And I will need to make new hands and heads for all of them.
In other news, I signed up for Kings of War at Cancon in January. It looks a realistic chance to sell out the 50 tickets available, which is promising. It uses timers though. Whether I am enthusiastic enough to actually play practice games with timers remains to be seen...

4 comments:

  1. Just out of curiosity, have you been looking at any of the "8.5 edition" army books that have been being released at warhammerarmiesproject.blogspot.com/ ? They've made new books for Brettonia, Skaven, and the Beastmen, and now are working on The Empire. Just curious to see if you've looked and, if so, what you think of them.

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    1. I think you'll find "8.5 edition" and the stuff at the Warhammer Armies Project are 2 separate initiatives. 8.5 only kicked off with the demise of 8th edition, whereas the other one has been going on for years, bringing forward all sorts of fan-made initiatives like Cathay and Kislev. I've looked at the Warhammer Armies Project stuff in the past. I was very impressed with the quality of the production and all the material, but rules-wise I suspect they lacked balance a bit as they just seemed to have been developed by a single guy somewhere, possibly working in relative isolation. Of course, given the questionable rules design in some core 8th edition products anyway, I'm not sure you can even really point at that as being a problem.

      8.5 is more aimed at improving the balance and viability of all armies that were present in 8th edition. So it's probably coming from a more competitive angle, and being driven by more voices. That is no guarantee of quality, but I guess having more drivers, it might be more aligned with "what the people want"?

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    2. I was actually talking about the newer projects, where he was working on recreating army books for existing armies (i.e, making a new Empire army book is his current project). Those seemed more like an 8.5 edition project.

      Either way, though, thanks for your thoughts on the matter.

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    3. OK. When I hear 8.5 edition, I immediately assume you're talking about this:

      https://www.facebook.com/groups/1483795728606274/

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