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Recently I've gotten into the habit of using unit filler, particularly in the large regiments of my empire army. I'll include fences, walls, trees, ogres, dogs, and even a the odd lion from the elf chariot kit. All of these filler pieces are tasteful, well constructed, etc. Particularly in large units of infantry, I'll tend to use 30-40% filler. So my question is how much, if any, of this kind of filler do you guys find appropriate?

-Jim

Depends on what the filler is.
Depends how big the unit is.

Personally, I'd say 30% would be my absolute limit.

I dont play fantasy, but for me the 40% is a great number for big units, where soldiers have the habit to die in bunches...

Im assuming the filler is nicely built

I haven't got a hard and fast rule for filler, proxies, etc. The better it looks, the more I like it.

However, with the avaialblility of affordable fantasy minis from Mantic, and uber cheapo from EM4, why not just paint up 50 or so of them so you'll at least have generic fantasy figs filling the ranks rather than fences walls and dogs.

Here's the link to the EM4 plastic minis.
http://www.em4miniatures.com/acatalog/Copy_of_Fantasy.html
They are mono-pose and fairly basic, but at 24 cents a piece, you could at least fill the ranks with figs that have a fantasy weapons and gear.
Here are two of the 6 versions available.




I imagine for the empire army, a bunch of the dwarves wouldn't be too visually jarring, especially if surrounded by other Empire figs. Also, there's always the historical plastics from Perry and others. Not as cheap, but they sure look nice.

Rule of cool. If it looks awesome or gives everyone a laugh, it's going to be a lot more likely to be ok.

So it really depends on what it is. I'll know the limit when I see it.

Don't have enough background in WFB to comment on the prevailing opinion, but I figure the Rule of Cool, tempered by practicality, is on your side. If they're modeled and painted to a high standard, especially if there's a touch of the epic/comic (whichever best suits your army or group), anything less than half allows you to place as many models as needed in the formation and should be allowable, if not necessarily encouraged. Having a large filler piece fronted by a single row of troops, however, might look a bit odd, so I wouldn't likely go above 40%, especially in smaller units.

Using the represented army in the filler piece, I imagine, would also aid your cause, even if it's one or two figures spread over two or three bases, each - a hedgerow is more flexible than a group of drinking dwarves or squigs devouring their goblin handlers, but is far less flavorful.

Thanks for the input guys. If my standard is the rule of cool, I should be fine. My filler is good enough to justify the 30-40% I have going, especially in the bigger units.


-Jim