Continuing Nuln and another slow grow

I have been continuing work on my new Nuln Empire army. Progress has been steady, and I've completed 10 Handgunners with another 10 well on their way.

Technically these are meant to be Ironsides (a resin upgrade kit for normal Handgunners that came from Forge World), although they're a Magori 3D printed version of them. They still sport the heavier armour, and include kneeling models for the front rank. I printed a pile of these and undercoated them years ago, then they languished in a box, waiting for their time in the sun.

We're on a boat!

It has been about 10 days since my last update, and I'm afraid that I have not yet made any progress on the slow grow painting challenge. Poor Dwarfs. Their time will come. In the meantime however, I have managed to complete the Marienburg Landship! In many ways I felt like I had already broken the back of it in my last post (or maybe broken my own back), but it is undeniably more colourful now.

One Empire Landship, complete with a 18x10cm base that a friend made for me on an FDM printer. It probably could have been a little smaller, but this feels appropriate for the size of the model.

The Halflings cannot be stopped

My progress on the halflings has rolled on inexorably. Or maybe it's that I've made progress on halflings who roll on inexorably. In terms of actual time spent on some of these guys, how can something so short take so long? It's a riddle indeed.

I find the Duncan Shadow halflings quite straightforward to paint, and I like that their snappy uniforms are so crisply defined. It basically forces me to paint the puff and slash in separate colours, which is why I elected to put them alongside the MOM greatswords, who are much the same. Of course, finding them straightforward and them taking little time seem to be two unrelated things for me. And I still find that I struggle with some of their faces, particularly the female ones. Painting faces is often one of the most rewarding parts of the model, because it is sometimes really clear where the highlights should go, and it draws the model together. I didn't always find that here, and it's discouraging. But they'll be perfectly usable as a regiment on the tabletop. Looking at them individually (or with a camera) is always a little less forgiving.

20 Duncan Shadow halfling archers, up to my usual sort of tabletop standard. I had already shared 10 of these. The other 10 were done in a reverse colour scheme to try to break up the fact that there's only 6 different models there.

Hobby Update

We're well into the month of April, and I'm happy to say that my effort for the Tale of Two Taverns is well under way. I made a lot more progress over Easter than I expected, and I honestly feel like I can take it a bit easy for the rest of the month. This isn't my proper post for the challenge - this is just a bit of a general hobby update. Just in case you thought I had forgotten about you.

This is Grubbi Geldsson, the owner of the Brass Farthing. He's not very nice, but he dresses very nicely. You can sort of see some of his patrons behind him. See, I'm making good progress!

I have a War Wagon!

As someone who grew up playing Warhammer in 4th and 5th edition, I find nostalgia for that period to be very strong. I read every battle report and article in White Dwarf, and pored over the pictures. Every time I pick up an old model to paint it, I am conflicted about whether to paint it in a (rather dull) manner that is coherent with my existing forces, or to surrender to my baser urges and paint it exactly as it appeared in those magazines...

I didn't play Empire back in those days, but I have since accumulated enough of the older models that I have this same issue when I'm painting them. I find myself wishing that my stuff looked like the old studio armies, so that I could properly recreate the vibe of that era. I haven't given in yet, but the urge is there. In a similar vein, it has bothered me for years that I didn't have a War Wagon. They were a fixture in the Empire army photos of the time, and it always felt like a gap. This is of course rather silly of me - there haven't been rules for a War Wagon in an Empire book since the 4th/5th edition one. So it's not like I had a functional gap in any list I cared to make. But that didn't stop me really wanting one. And any time I saw one for sale online, they went for an eye-watering amount of money. I have a stupid amount of stuff, but I still don't really see myself as a collector, and hence I have issues with paying what can only be considered collector-level prices.

Well, in recent times I have finally had the means to do something about my terrible need for useless War Wagons! In actual fact, I've done a couple of things. First there was a Norba kickstarter with some suitably retro-looking War Wagons that I backed. With the last year being what it has been, I'm not entirely sure when those models will arrive. And then along came another option, in the form of 3d printable files from Magori Miniatures. This would mean I could print unlimited War Wagons!! So I could really double down on my largely unusable models. This was perfect. I had to do it. And so I did. I became a patron, and I printed 2 War Wagons. Just the 2, so far. But I can always make more...

Of course, I say I printed 2, but so far I have only painted 1 of them. The other awaits assembly. And there are some learnings from this one that may or may not be acted upon.

A War Wagon by Magori Miniatures, with traditional GW barded warhorses. At the time, the wagon only came with unbarded horses and that didn't fit the traditional vibe I was going for. So I stole the horses from elsewhere. There is muttering coming from one of my bags of unassembled knights, I think... Amusingly, the designer added some barded horses maybe one day after I stuck this all together.