Witam! Gentle traveller, ye best bring some vodka to the table – the good men of Kislev have worked up quite the thirst.  The fiercest warriors of the great white north have tested their mettle against the fey spirits of Athel Loren and the dregs of the Lustrian jungles, and have even got some paint on their bones!  Welcome to Part 3 of my Tale of Fantasy Gamers series.

Just in case you’re catching up, have a quick butcher’s hook at Part 1 and Part 2

This month, I completed building all of the models for my 1000pts initial army and undercoated the lot; played 2 games of WHFB against others in the Olympians crew; worked out an army list to take these bearded bad boys all the way to 4000pts; and sorted the models I’ll be using for the expanded force.

I picked such a ridiculous amount of points because a) thanks to my outrageous plastic crack, resin and metal addiction, that’s a mere third or so of the total Kislev and Empire models I have unmade sitting in boxes and b) it should give me the ability to chop and change any sort of army so I can tailor to 2000pts nice and easy.  There are some additional models on top of that 4000pts as well, such as a ravenous horde of hungry Ogre Ironguts (after all, they have fantastic beards too and smell almost as bad as the cossacks) and a noble Kislevite General on a Griffon.  I couldn’t resist giving myself some toys on top of the regular bods.  However, whilst sorting bits for models is always a brilliant way to waste an evening, ’twas simultaneously a sad day in the Apolloian household – the remainder of my Kislev and Empire chaps are getting redeployed to the eBay wastes and we shall not see their like again until I inevitably crack in a fit of mad obsession with bearded models sculpted in the early 1990s; festering in a foetid sweat of nerd obsession, equal parts shame and delirium, and order a whole load more.  I know exactly how weak I truly am.

This guy knows it too.  He’s like a Kislev dad, wondering whether I’m ever going to actually grow up.

But enough of my remorse and naked self-awareness!  On with the models!  Last time I put up some pics of the models I’d done, and now here are the rest

Kislev Horse Arch…cough cough Pistoliers!

Well I cracked – I previously made all sorts of wild assertions about ‘proxying’ and manly claims about Kislevites firing ‘extra super hardcore leaded’ arrows and being ‘strong like bear and not needing armour’ but in the end, the temptation of producing some AWESOME conversions was too much, and I decided to actually give these lads a brace of pistols.  The shields are stand-ins for the light armour they’re supposed to have.  This doesn’t matter too much for these ones, but when I do the ‘naked in the snow’ regiment (because barechestedness is the only way to take on Chaos), the shields will be needed.  The horses are from Chaos Marauders, similarly defrocked of all spiky bits like the Knights, the pistols from the Pistoliers set, and the shields are stolen from Goblin Wolf Riders.

Urugan Cannon

As you maaaaay have picked up, I am a bit of a sucker for cool conversions, and the great cannon was a fantastic opportunity to make a mini-diorama, and in the grand tradition of Wojtek the Soldier Bear, (who carried artillery shells for the Polish Army in North Africa and Italy during WWII) these mad, drunk, cossack artilleryman have got a pet bear!  The bodies are from the now out of production Forgeworld Empire Handgunners, with Chaos Marauder Horsemen heads and Empire artillery crew arms.  All my cossack artillerymen will be built like this, and the next piece of artillery might have an even bigger bear to help them out…

Kislevite Bear Riders

These boys are the real stars of the army – they’re fast, incredibly hard hitting, armoured all to hell and probably smell worse than an orc.  I used the Mierce Miniatures Kraan Bear model and as the model is one-pose, I needed to introduce some variety.  That meant the judicious application of whopping amounts of heat from a borrowed hairdryer, lots and lots of swearing as I bent some variety into the models, and filling of gaps with greenstuff plus the easiest sculpting in the world (fur texture is the bear’s proverbials).  The riders are mostly Chaos Knights with Maxmini Hussar Wings in the traditional ‘crossed wings’ form.  I initially used Empire Demigryph Knight heads (which you can see in the first photo above), but it didn’t look right so I swapped them out for Empire Forgeworld handgunner heads and added shoulder pads.  Beards were a must – not enough beard showing on those original heads.  I also used the same out of production Dogs of War Bearmen shields.

Gospodar Militia

And here’s my lynchpin unit to hold the centre of the line – these lads are the old dependables of the army, my Kislevite inheritors of the grand tradition of the British Tommy, French Old Guard, Harald Hadrada’s Huscarls and Ragnar Lothbrok’s longboat crew.  The battle standard bearer is going to live in this unit, bolstering them with his Ld8 and battle standard and daring the blokes next to them not to run away, lest he make fun of their manliness and moustaches.

The models are, of course, mostly Kislev Kossar Infantry released around the Storm of Chaos in 2002.  I used the ones which aren’t firing arrows and gave them all the old Dogs of War Bearmen shields.  I’m quite proud of the conversions in the front rank.  As I’m going to add another large ranked infantry unit in due course, I didn’t want to duplicate the command group, and as the Kislevite infantry only ever had one group released, that meant getting funky with some conversions.  I used a Warmachine Assassin Boss as my unit champion -he’s got a suitable baldy moustachioed and furred collar look about him – and the now out of production GW Empire Bear mascot as my musician.  Every bear needs his handler so that’s the chap alongside the bear, who had weapons and a suitable Empire Archer head added.  There are some cracking furry hatted heads in that set and I expect to use plenty as I go.

You’ll notice that these are undercoated grey.  As I am going for a wide mix of colours, and I especially don’t want to dull down the reds too much, I used a grey undercoat rather than black.  I spent a highly enjoyable New Year’s Eve watching the Desolation of Smaug Extended Edition, getting high off airbrush fumes (don’t do this at home kids!) and the whole army is undercoated now.  The purple was because I had just basecoated a Necromunda gang.  Airbrushing is just the best.

I think in the scene below Kili has just collapsed in Lake Town.  It’s definitely that and not anything dodgy, honest….

I mentioned at the top of the post that I’d played a couple of games – one was a fourway (cheeky!) with Hephaestus (an honourary Tale of Fantasy Gamer) and his High Elves allied with me to take on Aphrodite’s Dark Elves and Hermes’ Lizardmen, and which pretty much ended in a bloodied draw, and the other involved me (well mostly my Bear Riders) knocking seven shades of pixie dust out of Ares’ Wood Elves.  Now that I (vaguely) know how my cannon works, it’ll be even worse for him next time.  He has threatened to add a THIRD unit of Waywatchers to his army though, so my brave Kislevite scouts will need to keep an eye on the borders of Athel Loren…

I’ll leave you with a list of the entire army that I intend to build, and don’t worry, once the Tale of Fantasy Gamers ends next month, I’ll be chronicling the rest of the epic army building process, as I claw my way to a Grand Army of the Rodina.  It’s not exactly optimised yet, I’ll be refining magic items and so on as I go, it’s more about giving me a list of models I can work towards.  Forth poczets and chorągiew husarska!

General of the Empire
Battle Wizard Lord

Captain of the Empire (BSB)
Battle Wizard
Battle Wizard
Captain of the Empire on Pegasus
Master Engineer
Warrior Priest

24 Swordsmen, Full Command
• 9 Archers
• 10 Crossbowmen
• 10 Handgunners
24 Swordsmen, Full Command
10 Empire Knights
10 Empire Knights
5 Empire Knights
5 Empire Knights with Great Weapons

19 Greatswords, Full Command
• 10 Halberdiers
• 9 Archers
• 10 Handgunners
25 Flagellants
3 Demigryph Knights
3 Demigryph Knights
Great Cannon
Great Cannon
5 Pistoliers
5 Pistoliers
5 Pistoliers

Helblaster Volley Gun

Oh I nearly forgot!

I also have a DRAGON

You know, for when my Wizard goes all a bit Transformation of Khadon.  It’s the old Wood Elf dragon which is now no longer available, but was largely the basis for the current Forest Dragon model.  It’s definitely my all time favourite GW Dragon model and looks great without all those elf maidens crawling all over it (not that there’s anything wrong with elf maidens crawling all over you!)

In the next (and last) update I’ll be showing off the painted 1000pts.  I’d better get my skates on.  I’ll also show you how I magnetised all the bases of this army for a bit of extra stability on the battlefield.

‘Til next time, trzymaj się!

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