The Road to Axemaster

Oh my. How long has it been? No wait, don't look at that - you'll go blind. Let's just say that it's been a while. I have been a naughty and neglectful blogger, but I'm still here. Lurking quietly in the shadows or something.

In terms of gaming, the club has recently seen a bit of a resurgence of interest in Mordheim. It's never really been a big focus for me - I think the best thing about the game is the tables some people create for it - ones you could never really use for a battle game like Warhammer. Anyway, I've joined in with a Sisters of Sigmar warband. About half my models have been painted up previously as Warrior Priests for my Empire army. The rest are running around wearing nothing but their undercoats. It's disgraceful, and I'm sure Sigmar is judging me and colluding with the dice gods against me as some sort of punishment. If I get around to fixing the situation, I'll provide an update here.

Progress has been slow on the hobby front in general. I have jumped around between a few different model projects, but in the end I managed to focus long enough to get another one of my wagon unit fillers done. It only took about a month longer than it should have. Well, maybe 2 months...

A unit filler for my Ostland Swordsman regiment. The wagon is a 3D print from Highlands Miniatures. I think the Swordsmen might be as well, but the arms are GW and the shields are old custom resin ones I've had kicking around for years, like the rest of the regiment.

Realistically this model may not be all that useful to me. To justify its inclusion I'd probably need to be fielding a unit of at least 50 Swordsmen, which as a rule is not a very good idea - even in 8th edition. It might make a good objective, though. I have a whole baggage train worth of wagons at this point.

The gear in the wagon is a random assortment of printed bits and a couple of weapons. I couldn't come up with a specific theme for this one, so I figured it just carried stuff for the unit.

And here it is inside the unit. Really there should be another 20 or so models to make it more proportionate, but they're still buried somewhere in the painting queue. Who knows, maybe they're more likely to get done now that the filler is completed.

Anyway, my focus now is shifting a bit. We've decided to resurrect Axemaster, which is a tournament that the club used to run back when Warhammer was still an active game. It'll be 6th edition because that seems to be what the people want, and after flicking around various books, I have decided that I will be using a "mercenary Ogre army". That is to say, an Ogre Kingdoms army with multiple Regiments of Renown jammed in. The Dogs of War rules didn't give me the option to have a fancy Ogre mercenary general, so I'm trying things the other way around.

The tournament is in a few weeks, and I need to... Do something about Braganza's Besiegers...

Help us! We're in a terrible state...

I also want to make a couple of proper characters to lead the army - Ogres that will fit the theme. So I started digging around in the Ogre cloning department, and plans are currently afoot. All things being equal, I should be able to start jamming something together and converting it pretty soon.

Rummaging through the various Ogre pieces I've made over the years...

These are the ones I'm really looking at as a starting point for these models, but I'll want to make them unique in some way.

I feel like my plans are achievable, even if my methods feel a bit archaic at this point. Bit of a blast from the past, really. Anyway, it probably won't be that long until you hear from me again. Getting back on the wagon!