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The Imperial Muster - Part 3

By Matt Thrower.

This is probably as good a time as any to point out to readers that so far, all the articles in this series have been written in retrospect. This is likely to continue for the near future although at some point it's just about possible that my sluggish writing will catch up with my sluggish modelling and painting skills and I'll actually be able to post articles when I finish units. Anyway, for those of you who want pictures of models, they're coming up in the next installment.

So, to take up the story again, I had myself a broad theme. But I wanted more - a more specific theme to use and I also wanted to use some proper characters. Characters with names, not just "Elector Count" or "Battle Wizard" and who carried a fixed and limited number of magic items just like "real" heroes would. Now this latter idea is something that I'd dreamed about doing when planning my DoW army and I had the concept of making my wargame characters in the image of old RPG characters that I and my friends had played back in the old days. When choosign miniatures for them I wanted them to look the same on foot and mounted since the figure is obviously supposed to represent the same character whether they're riding a horse or not!

It didn't take long to distill down a batch of character templates that I wanted to use. It also didn't take long to weave those templates together with some other ideas to create that more specific theme that I'd been looking for. What took longer was deciding how to equip them and what miniatures to use. But that's probably better explained character by character. So without further ado, I give you my Empire characters!

Mathias Werfer, Marchwarden of Hochland

This is me, my avatar on the Warhammer table. Anyone with a passing knowledge of German will work out where I got the name from although I should admit that I just looked it up in an English-German dictionary since I know nothing of the language. Although he usually has the EC profile I often use him as a general in sub-2k games as well with a Captain profile, equipped just the same. Some days he just gets tired, I guess!

Mathias is armed with a great weapon and armoured in full plate armour. He also possesses a magic item - a Holy Relic, not of Sigmar but of Taal which takes the form of a birds' skull. This wonderous item was given to him by one of his battle captains in return for saving his life. Mathias is a former Hochland huntsman who organised and lead a flying column of stranded warriors against the foe during the storm of chaos. In the aftermath of that campaign, the carnage that had been inflicted on the ranks' of Hochlands' finest forced the Elector Count to fill gaps in the officer ranks by promoting from the surviving rank and file. Since he'd proved his worth as an impromptu commander, Werfer was an obvious choice. As occasion demands, Werfer takes the field riding a barded warhorse, in which case he also supplements his equipment with a shield. Mathias is grim and stern and very much a no-nonsense sort of character.

After taking consultation, I went with the bargain basement EC option for my general. Since the EC isn't exactly a combat monster anyway it seemed the only sensible choice, with the Holy Relic keeping him alive so that my troops benefit from his leadership. I had trouble finding a useful figure to represent him since I wanted something wild and wooly to give a taste of his huntsman past and it's hard to find figures like that with plate armour! In the end I went with the Mordhiem Freelancer Knight model since it looks quite weatherbeaten and I liked the suggestion of a forum poster that the bird skull he wears could be the holy relic. It's a lovely model to boot! My only qualm with it is how to convert it so that the mounted version is carrying a great weapon - I'm going to have a hard time filing that lance off the armour!

Alain Hack, Captain of Hochland

Alain was a figher character who belonged to a friend of mine. I don't remember much about the character himself but I always liked the name. The original character was called "Alan" but we don't have much in the way of Albion characters in WFB so I went for the next most obvious thing.

Alain is an exiled Brettonian Knight who has left his lands and heritage to fight in the service of Karl Franz. Originally a Questing Knight, Alain wandered into the Empire in his search for the Grail. He searched through the lands for several years while slowly forming the conviction that life for the average peasant in the Empire, hard though it was, was immesurably better than the lot of the Brettonian serf. After all, citizens of the Empire had the chance to rise above themselves through heroics or lucky, whereas in his homeland status in life was determined only by birth and rarely by worth. The final straw came when he found amongst the fierce beauty of the high passes of Hochland not the grail, but a Holy Relic of Taal in a simple, forgotten shrine. There, touched by the image of the god he renounced the Lady and his vows and lent himself as a sell-sword to the army of Hochland. During the Storm of Chaos he was picked off from the rest of his unit and carried off by minions of Slaanesh for unspeakable torments at their hands, but he was rescued by Mathias Wefer. He gave him the relic in gratitude and the two have been firm friends ever since.

Hack is a generic cavalry captain who also double as a Luftritter on occasion when mounted on a pegasus. It made good sense to me that an ex-Brettonian who would likely have encountered the winged horses as he grew up would be a natural choice as a pegasus captain in the Empire. Again I wanted to go bargain-basement model so his usual equipment is a greatsword and shield - no magic items at all. What Imperial quartermaster would trust a filthy Brettonian with the great treasures of his nations' past?

I originally planned to use a Brettonian model for this guy, but none of them come in the foot/mounted combination I seek. I've used a lot of models from the Mordheim range and in the end I picked another one for this guy. Not only are they great models but they come with that handy foot/mounted combo allowing me characters to look the same whether they're on a horse or not. In this case I picked the Marienburger Captain because the equipment fits and the lush robes seem befitting an ex-knight. I also suspect that I can see a curly french-style moustache on one of the heads! I've had to thieve a sword off someone with the Mordhiem weapon sprues so I can give both models the same weapon. I plan to drill a hole in his bottom so that he can sit on a length of brass rod inserted into either a warhorse or a pegasus as needed. I've got the old Brettonian paladin model for the pegasus, and I'm planning to use the knight model from that box as a champion in a unit of Empire knights with "heraldic" heads.

Albrecht Justiz, Battle Standard of Hochland

Albrecht is based loosely on an old paladin character of mine, young and fervrent but also filled with self-doubt. I had an awful lot of fun playing him and I didn't want to leave him out. His name is a germanic version of the characters' name.

Albercht is a young officer bursting with pride at being allowed to carry the regimental standard. He is an Ulrican through and through, filled with a passionate desire to please his god on the field of battle. While no-one doubts his zeal or good-heartedness, most agree that he needs to calm down at least just a little bit before he becomes genuine officer material. Being blessed of Ulric, Albrecht has been permitted to draw two magic items from the armoury - the Sword of Might and the White Cloak. He supplements these items with a suit of full plate armour and, on occasion, a barded warhorse.

I debated a long time over what to use for my battle standard figure. There aren't any foot/mounted combination figures who carry a standard or look like they could easily be converted to hold one. Eventually, it occured to me that I could make up an identical foot and a mounted figure from the imperial command sprues by using the same body, head and arms. I was already thinking that that banner was too big to be just an ordinary banner so it'd make a great BSB. I could even use the cloaks from a white wolf sprue for the white cloak.

Brother Pietat, Warrior Priest of Sigmar

We once trialled a system of "piety" for priests and paladins in our RPG group. On it's first outing there was a character in the group on who provided the basis for the germanisation of this particular name. However, the character himself is based on another old one of mine, and one of my favourites. I've still got the painted figure somewhere!

Once the Sigmarite Church became aware that a unit was being raised which had, for it's officer material, a Taal worshipper, a Brettonian and an Ulrican it demanded loudly that a staunch disciple of Sigmar be appointed to watch over the spiritual wellbeing of the majority of soldiers. Brother Pietat was the candidate put forward. A large man, he positively bristles with spiritual fervour and his sermons are very much of the old fire and brimstone variety. As a spiritual counsellor he is often found wanting in his tendancy to pronouce dire judgements instead of forgiveness, but his valour on the battlefield is beyond question. As a strict disciplinarian whom many of the men hold in fear and awe, he is sometimes honored with command of a battallion when Werfer is absent or injured. He takes the field with his double-handed hammer and dressed in the Armour of Meteoric Iron - a gift from the church to ward him when campaigning. He sometimes rides a warhorse. Following prolonged periods of fasting and spiritual contemplation he is sometimes so filled by the spirit of Sigmar that he becomes virtually superhuman and on these occasions I field him with the stats of an Archlector, but with the same equipment. If I'm feeling very cheeky I might decree that his holy aura when so possessed also counts as a holy relic!

We're back to the Mordheim figures for this guy again, and you've got to love the Roadwarden figure. For the mounted version I'm going to have to cut off that crossbow and replace it with a two-handed hammer, probably from the white-wolf sprues. For the foot version that large banner pole looks like a suitable great weapon to me, although I may cut the crest off the top and put on a hammer-head to replace it. All simple conversions. I like the idea of giving the WP the armour of meteoric iron because he can't take full plate and, mounted, it means he can ride an unbarded horse and keep pace with pistoliers if need be.

Trugbild and Zephyrus, Battle Wizards of the Jade Order

I originally planned to use Fire wizards because the introduction to the Empire book, which is based in Hochland, mentions wizards of that order being sent out with the army. However, people on various forums pointed out that Hochland is full of trees, and trees are rather flammable. So surely something like Life or Beasts would be more appropriate? Well, Beasts isn't the most useful Lore in the world so I went with Life, meaning wizards of the Jade order. Or, to all intents and purposes, Druids.

I have got a fantastic old casting of Bilbo, from the original citadel Lord of the Rings range which depicts him as a younger hobbit with a big hat, staff and a pile of old books. I thought he'd make a fantastic wizard model in an army which contained halflings. However when I played my first games (without halflings) he looked rather silly amongst all those tall human models, so I changed my mind and went with two human wizards instead. The halfling wizard was based on a much beloved halfling priest character that a friend ran in an RPG campaign, whereas Zephyrus was one of my old characters. I didn't have any more Druid types to draw on, so I drew inspiration from an incidental character in a Terry Pratchett novel instead.

Zephyrus is a calm and peaceful sage. He believes in balance, trees, meditation and carefully considered wisdom. Occasionally, roused to anger by ignorance or the wanton destruction of innocent plants, he will smite the source of his distress with some of the nastier spells from the jade canon. As someone who is essentially peaceful, he always carries one or two dispel scrolls to ward off threats with the minimum amount of force. The model I use for Zephyrus is an old citadel D&D druid character model with one hand raised high in the air. The hand has fallen off, but I'm planning to replace it with a scroll-holding hand, possibly this or a plastic hand with a scroll scuplted from greenstuff. But I'm such a rubbish sculptor that I wouldn't even trust myself with a scroll!

Trugbild on the other hand is a borderline maniac with a taste for suspicious mushrooms. He has a nasty habit of running madly round the battlefield talking to himself and threatening rocks, grass and occasionally the enemy with his sickle. Quite why anyone from the Jade college trusted such a man with a rod of power is anyone's guess, but in his more lucid moments Trugbild is able to explain that his taste for exotic fungi have instilled in him a higher than normal attunement to the Jade wind, making him able to use the rod more effectively. At least that's what he claims, and no-one is arguing for the time being. Anyone with an english-german dictionary should be able to discover where he gets the nickname "Trugbild" from. For Trugbild I use the generic citadel Jade Wizard model which looks suitably deranged and threatening to me.

So those are my characters. You'll already have got a lot of my backstory from reading their short biographies but there's a few gaps to fill in. Following the Storm of Chaos, the senior commanders of the Hochland army decided that some form of flying column would be in order - a sort of rapid response force that could be in the field for days at a time, scouting the borders of the province for trouble. To command this force the new post of "Warden of the Marches of Hochland" was created and rapidly filled in the person of Mathias Werfer who, as a former scout, would make an ideal commander for such a unit.

Werfer began to fill his unit with members of the surviving Hochland military but it became rapidly apparent that not only were there enough of them skilled enough in wilderness lore to be able to make an effective force but that followng the havoc wreaked by the hordes of chaos there weren't enough young men left in Hochland to man the army! Wefer's unorthodox answer to this was to empty the jails of every bandit, poacher and highwayman that he could find - scum of every description who shared the simple trait of having learned to live quietly in the forests and mountains as part of their crimial training. He promised them freedom in return for a spell of service in the army. The nobility of Hochland didn't like it, but with such a manpower shortage they didn't have a choice.

Of course Werfer knew, as the nobles didn't, that most of the people he sprung from prison were not scum at all but hardy people forced into crime through hardship. And so it was through a combination of hard discipline, mutual patriotism and a careful nurturing of respect that Wefer moulded the two halves of his army to work together. Now the professional soldiers take the field in the knowledge that their supporting units of free company, archers and ex-highwaymen pistoliers are more likely to fight bravely beside them than rob them in their sleep and flee. And it works - for the glory of Hochland the army marches to war!

In the next part, I'll describe my first attempts at painting my shiny new figures and my first few attempts at bringing my legions into battle!

Back to part 2