Empire project on hold indefinitely

My The Empire - From start to Finish project for 2013 has been put on hold indefinitely. Due to conflicting responsibilities, travelling with work, sporting activities and other life related shenanigans, I have not been able to allocate any time towards this project.

In response to this, I have decided to pack away the Empire collection for now and focus on developing my painting skills with other, less numerous pursuits.

Ive started another Blog for the miniature painting adventure and if you want to keep track on what ive been working on, head on over to triggazart.blogspot.com to check it out.

I wont be updating this blog in the near future, at least until I start painting the Empire collection again.

Thanks for the adventures and have fun!

The other banner

I started on the other Empire General banner last night after work, Im really happy with the results so far. Im going to work on the rest of the mini over the weekend. There are 2 of them in the collection. One on horseback and one standing.

A bit of painting over the weekend

I got sick of assembling over the weekend and decided to do some painting. This was the result. Im happy with it mostly. although there is still a lot of work to clean up the details.

it is the banner for the Empire general. I have 2 of them and I am going to paint up the second one as an angel type thing. with white wings and a bone coloured cloak. Ill post an update once I do a bit more painting.

Building plastic to build strength

I am still having problems with my wrist and have been trying to get as much done as I can on the Empire army before it starts hurting too much. Ive been assembling the new orders that were received over the last few weeks. As you can see from the picture, there is still soooo much to do. lol

Im going to assemble everything before I start painting. My house has been put on the market this last month and I am really hoping that if it sells we dont get kicked out. lol I really dont want to have to move house again...

Order has arrived!

The next order turned up yesterday and I got my cast taken off on monday. I celebrated by starting work on the Steam Tank.

Although I think I need to start sorting and organising a bit better. the workbench at the moment is covered in plastic. Tonights job is to clean up the work area and start a painting schedule...

The final order will be submitted next week.

A bit of an update

Well, Im off to the hospital on Monday to get some more xrays on Monday, Im hoping for the best, but based on the pain levels im still experiencing, I think the cast may be staying on. Fingers crossed.

In anticipation of getting the cast off however, I put in an order this morning for another 9 boxes of Empire miniatures, including:

1 x Cannon/Mortar - A cannon or Mortar kit
1 x Captain of the Empire - A single model Captain
2 x Knightly Order Knights - 8 Knights in each box
2 x Pistoliers/Outriders - 5 horse riding pistoliers or Outriders in each box
1 x Handgunners/Crossbowmen - 10 handgunners or crossbowmen.
1 x  Steam Tank - A steam tank (Looks very cool.)
1 x Warrior Priest - A single warrior priest, (This one is finecast resin, I was trying to avoid resin, but most of the heroes for the empire army have been released in finecast now. :(

The order would haev been much bigger, but the company I buy from had limited stock. So will have to wait till they restock. :)

Project has been put on hold...

Unfortunately my Empire project has been put on hold for the next 6-12 weeks...

This is why...

I came off my bike last week and cracked my scaphoid bone. The doc has said that it could be a long term injury. but hopefully not too long. Being right handed I cant hold a paint brush or any tools. so there will be no progress till further notice. :(

Finally put brush to plastic

I finally got a chance to start painting over the weekend. Undercoated a unit of greatswords and worked out a colour scheme.

Its still quite rough, but once I get the colours sorted out i will tidy it up...

Another part of the collection ordered

I put in an order for 4 boxes of Demigryph knights last night. These things are awesome minis...

This picture is taken from the games workshop website. Each box has parts for 3 knights. which is very rude because i paid $78 per box...

I also ordered an Army painter mega paint set, which has a range of paints from the Army painter range and a few brushes. I needed to buy some more colours to be able to start on the empire painting and the Mega paint set was the most cost effective way of doing it. lol

Ill post some pics of the work in progress so far when the order turns up.

Alternative Creative Focus

My Empire project has been put on hold this last 2 weeks, I had a friend ask me to design her a tattoo (ive posted the design at triggazart.blogspot.com). So ive been working on that this weekend. Also had another friend who is a photographer ask me if I would be interested in doing some body painting for an upcoming photo shoot she is doing. So I did some sketches up for that as well.

My Empire project has been moving along slowly... Havent done any painting yet, but ive been assembling a lot of the minis in preparation for paint. Ill take some work in progress photos soon. :)

Back from Canberra

Ive arrived back from Canberra in one piece and after playing cricket yesterday in the D grade grand final (which we lost, the game was called off due to rain halfway through our batting innings and due to our run rate, we lost.) I am a little sore after copping a ball that was hit at a great rate of knots in the forearm, lots of swelling and bruising... lol good times.

I am on night shift for the next 2 weeks and hoping to get a little painting done. Ill post an update once I start putting brush to plastic.

Plastic overload!

I had a productive weekend cleaning up the multitude of miniatures that arrived last week and started assembling some of them. The problem that I have is that a lot of miniatures are obscured once fully assembled, arms across chests and other such nonsense.

Ive assembled as much as I can without obscuring anything. However it is going to be difficult to paint the other parts as is. A lot of the parts are very small. Im going to have to look at engineering a fix to allow me to hold the various parts to enable easy painting. Going to look at that tonight. Ill post some pictures tomorrow of the work so far.

Finally Arrived

With all the weather around, my order got delayed in transit. But it finally arrived today!

Here are some pics of the order during the unboxing. Im going to start cleaning up the minis and assembling tomorrow...

 

The Empire Boxed set is huge. Its going to take a bit of time to go through and sort everything out. Should be fun...

First Half of the order submitted

I had some extra $$ in this weeks pay so I decided to put in the first order,

The Empire Army Boxed set - contains 1 Karl Franz, on Deathclaw; 1 Captain of the Empire with Army Battle Standard (mounted);1 Captain of the Empire (on foot); 1 Celestial Hurricanum; 12 Reiksguard Knights; 20 Swordsmen; 10 Handgunners; 10 Greatswords; 1 Helstorm Rocket Battery; and 1 Master Engineer
2 Boxes of Archers,
The Empire General,
various resin bases, mostly cobblestone bases. I want to do the Cobblestone theme across the army. But after I put in the order I got an email from the supplier saying the Cobblestone bases had been discontinued and transferred to a different company. So if I want to use the bases across the whole army I need to order from the UK. Shouldnt be a problem. Just adds a bit more into the process.

Also once I put in the order I realised that the Empire General is included in the Army boxed set so now I will have 4 generals. lol which isnt really a problem. :) They are pretty cool minis.

When I get the order Ill take some photos of the unboxing.

Why I chose The Empire for 2013

I thought I might put up a bit of a post about my thought processes around my choice of The Empire for the 2013 collection.

When I decided to start the project I sat down and looked at the massive list of available miniatures in the Warhammer Fantasy Battles (WHFB) range. This resulted in a mild depression because I would love to just be able to buy everything, however, as I dont poop $100 bills, that wasnt an option. In the range of WHFB the available armies are:

Orcs and Goblins,
Vampire counts,
Ogre Kingdoms,
Skaven,
The Empire,
High Elves,
Dark Elves,
Wood Elves,
The Empire,
Beastmen,
Bretonnians,
Chaos Daemons,
Dwarfs,
Lizardmen and
Tomb Kings.

I removed the armies that I already had miniatures from as this was a new collection and I didnt want to use stuff that I already had. That took out Orcs and Goblins, Ogre Kingdoms, High Elves, Skaven and Bretonnians. I then took out the armies that I didnt like the look of. That took out Vampire Counts, Dark Elves, Tomb Kings and Chaos Daemons. Then I started to look at minis that I would enjoy painting. After a while, I ended up with The Empire, Beastmen and Wood Elves. The range of Wood Elves available is limited so that ruled them out. The beastmen range is quite varied and would be a lot of fun to work with, however as they mostly resemble cows and other beasts, the range of colours available would be limited.

I ultimately went with The Empire as they are a human race with a high regimental style. Large units of swordsman, archers, halbadiers and other medieval type weaponry with a similar style of uniform. This appealed to me because I could model the units with the same things in mind. Going for a regimental, "If you get out of step ill kill you" style that I enjoyed during my time in the Air Force. The uniformity of it, with slight variations across different units will be the basis of the collection. I am going to have one main contingent being led by Karl Franz on deathclaw, which is one of the best miniatures currently available, in my opinion, he is a general on a large Griffon. As the centrepiece for the army, he is an imposing thing. Then I will have detachments of units under the rule of the captains of the other factions. This will allow me to vary the paint scheme used on each unit to indicate the colours of the respective families.

Im looking forward to getting stuck into it. Should be lots of fun. Im counting down the day till I am putting in the order, 17 days to go. Ill post up next week a list of all the miniatures I plan to buy and what I will be painting them.

Empire Battle Wizards WIP

I started working on the Empire Battle Wizards recently, they are the only miniatures I have so far in the Empire collection. The main order will be submitted on or around the 8th of March.

Here is a couple of shots of the sword for the fire wizard. Im pretty happy with it. Its my first attempt at painting Fire. I will do a bit of Object Source Lighting when I finish the rest of the mini but this is the basic paint scheme.

Ill do a bit more work on them this coming weekend after cricket.

Order planning

Today I am looking at what to order for my Empire collection. Im looking at spending about $1500 on the collection so I have a lot of options.

So far I am looking at the Army Limited Edition boxed set which contains Karl Franz on Deathclaw, a couple of Army captains, a celestial Hurricanum, 12 Reiksguard knights, 20 swordsman, 10 handgunners, 10 greatswords and a rocket battery. which is a good starting point for the collection. Im also going to add 20 Archers, 12 Demigryph Knights, 20 Greatswords, 24 Knightly Order knights, 40 militia, 20 state troopers, 1 steam tank, 2 rocket battery's and 30 handgunners/crossbowmen.

It will be a big collection and will take the better part of the year to paint which is good because its a year long project. There are about 250 peices in the collection so with the larger miniatures aside, I will need to paint a unit of 20 soldiers a month.

There are a large range of named characters in the empire range, mainly captains and lords of the various factions. there may be an addition or six to the above collection but a lot of the named characters are finecast resin which I am trying to avoid buying due to the experiences I have had so far with the poor cast quality and imperfections as well as the price increase over plastic.

Im putting in the first stage of the order this week so when it arrives I will post some pics.

Flooding impact on hobby

With all the flooding in SE QLD this last week I wasnt able to make any progress on anything. I was stuck down the coast for most of the week with the highway closures and whatnot.

However I have just received a bit of a bonus from my employer for some work that I did over xmas so once it comes through I will start buying the Empire collection. Ill post some information on the order once I finalise everything.

Planning stage 2

Spent the weekend planning out the collection. Finalising paint schemes and unit make up. The plan has changed slightly from my original outlook. Instead of having large units of infantry, im going to look at various smaller units so that I can have some variation in unit colours and standards.

I am thinking about having various armies within the one collection. With the Emperors army at the head of the collection with all of the other counts included with their various detachments. I think this will become a bigger project over time and I may look at completing the Emperors army this year with the other collections branching off over the next little while.

I started painting the Battle wizards that I ordered with the army book. I havent decided which wizards I will end up making from the pack. I thought I would paint all 6 of the heads and weapon combinations and then whichever turns out the best I will paint the bodies to match. I am going to start ordering the collection early February so stay tuned for the first pics of the packages arriving.

Some more research tools

I put in another order last night for the "Uniforms and Heraldry of the Empire" book from Games Workshop. This is a full colour, 72 page book on the history and armies of the empire. Should give me some good tools to work out colour schemes for the army. My orders should arrive early next week so ill be able to get stuck into planning the composition of the collection and the painting scheme.

First stage of planning

I ordered the Warhammer Fantasy "The Empire" Army book this morning. So when it turns up I can start planning out the army collection.

So far the plan is to have Karl Franz on Deathclaw as the champion, a couple of wizards, various artillery type pieces and an overwhelming mass of troops. I like the idea of the empire in that I can model and paint the army with a regimental theme in mind. I am going to have at least 1 unit of each type within the empire range, archers, pistoliers, crossbowmen, swordsmen and all the different knights. As this "army" is really a display collection instead of a gaming collection I dont need to stick to any sort of strategic plan with how i am going to play with the army so I have a bit of flexibility with what I will collect.

I also ordered the first miniatures for the army, with "The Empire Battle Wizards". Im thinking I might grab 2 of these as there is 4 options for assembly of the wizards but only enough major component to build 2. so if I want the full range of wizards from the different schools of magic ill need 2 boxes.

The Empire adventure begins

For my 2013 project, I have decided to start and finish a collection of Warhammer fantasy "The Empire" miniatures. Ultimately there will be some semblance of an army but it will really be a collection.

I will be buying the collection in one hit mid february and over the next 12 months assembling, painting and displaying the collection. I will be chronicling the adventure on this blog with weekly updates on the progress as I go.

Ive been collecting and painting games workshop miniatures since 1994 when I started with an Ork and Gretchin collection from the Warhammer 40K starter box that a mate gave me. since then ive collected Imperial Guard, Eldar, Orks, Necromunda, Space Marines. I stopped collecting in 2002 when I joined the air force and got married. 2 years ago I left the air force and separated from my wife so I started collecting and painting to keep my mind busy.

This time around I decided to collect only Warhammer fantasy, in that 2 years ive amassed a collection of Orcs and Goblins, Skaven, Ogre Kingdoms and High Elves. All of which are in various levels of painting and assembly. My habit of buying and starting but never finishing a project this last 2 years has started to get to me so this year I have decided that the only thing I will be working on will be the empire collection.

I have started the planning process this week and started pricing everything so stay tuned and i will post next week with the collection plans.

Good times!