For a while now I've been toying with the idea of painting up a few (fantasy) armies as quickly as I can (well, I say 'quickly' ...it'll still probably take me a while as I'm not a fast painter - but quicker than I normally do :) ).
As such, I didn't really want to spend a ton of money on an expensive army for, what is essentially, an experiment - plus I also wanted to see how cheaply I could do something like this, and turn it into a kind of 'war gaming on a budget' series of blog posts too.
So, for the rule system, I'll be using the various 'age of fantasy' games by One Page Rules - as the core rules are free (and it doesn't get much cheaper than that). It would also allow me to build up forces/armies for several of their games (the 'skirmish' and 'regiments' variations for example) - plus I could probably also repurpose what I have for other games too (Oathmark, or even The Old World, for example).
Anyway, for cheap miniatures, the obvious choice was to grab a bunch of those cheap orcs and dwarves that are available over on the EM4 Miniatures website...
...as a pack of 48 models will only set you back £14.99 - and if you buy both sets (i.e. the orcs and the dwarfs pictured above), and buy at least one pack of shields as well (£1.99 for 25) that will mean that your order qualifies for free postage too. Nice!
However, the one thing I would like to point out to folks that aren't familiar with these models - is that they do have a slightly annoying nub on the back of each model...
...which you'll have to deal with in one way or the other.
For my dwarf army, I'm only going to tidy up the back of the spearmen (and any special models) - as I'll simply add shields to the back of the guys with axes and crossbows... as that will cover them up ;)
Anyway, seeing as how these dwarves only come in three different poses (one with a spear, one with a 2-handed axe, and one with a crossbow), I wanted to add a bit of variety to my army... which has lead to a bit of conversion work on a couple of the models.
The first of these is a simple weapon swap...
...just by cutting off the top of the axe and replacing it with some hammers from my bits-box.
I also did a couple of weapon swaps with the spear guys (note that the banner is from an old space marine kit)...
...which involved drilling out the spear to replace it with the toothpick and hammer that you can see above - though the axe guy took a bit more work as I swapped out his entire arm and head - which required a bit of cutting and re-sculpting to make it work.
And, as for the crossbows, I've only done the one conversion so far...
...which again, was another head-swap (note that both of these heads are leftovers from Northstar/Oathmark kits).
Now, the original plan was to only use the EM4 Miniatures for this army - but I also found a couple of metal dwarves from Black Tree Design (or EOE Orbis as it's now known) in my pile of shame...
...and these particular ones are a pretty good match (with regard to size and style) for the EM4 dwarves - and so I thought I'd use them for my heroes/champions (and sacrificed a couple of the plastic guys to get them on matching bases).
So, that's pretty much all I did with regard to conversion work - though that, combined with cleaning up the models (getting rid of the mouldlines and 'nub's for example) probably took the best part of a weekend.
THE PLAN GOING FORWARD
The next job is, of course, to start slapping some paint on them - and I had thought to split them up into several batches.
The first would be a 150 point force for the 'skirmish' version of the game...
...which would feature a champion, a ranger, two 'hammer elites' and one group (of 3) mountain warriors.
After those are done, I could expand that to a 250 point force...
...which includes a champion, two marksmen, two hammer elites, and three groups (of 3) mountain warriors (one of which has a banner).
From there, I could then expand on these - bringing them up to full unit size for the 'regiments' version of the game (perhaps completing one unit at a time))...
...until I get up to a full 750 point (starter) army (note that I'm thinking of painting the shields separately - which is why they're not shown here).
However, I'm not sure if it will be faster to just batch paint one complete unit at a time -OR- separate them out into four random piles (as I'll be using 4 different beard colours)... and do that instead (i.e. batch paint all the blond guys first, then the guys with brown beards, and so on).
Whatever I decide, I'm hoping to get started on them this week... and see if I can get them done by the end of the month (though the end of next month... or even the end of the year, is much more likely :) ).
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