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Ironically, although I've been an avid 40k and Fantasy player for going on 18 years, I've decided to make my first P&M blog focus on my WIP Mercenaries army. This decision came about mostly because of the relatively small number of miniatures required (that means I might actually keep up with this to the end) and also because...well...there just aren't too many examples of this kind of army fully converted and painted out on the inter-tubes.

The army is currently planned out to fifteen points (I won't be buying more until these are all finished):

Ashlynn D'Elyse
Mule
Amethyst Rose Gun Mages
Gun Mage Officer
Horgenhold Forge Guard (6)

The concept behind this force is a core of Llaelese patriots surrounded by the mercenaries that they've hired due to the practical concerns of troop numbers. I'm planning to really stress the dirty, guerrilla nature of this story, which means a lot of people in tattered finery. The Ashlynn model, in particular, doesn't really fit this life-in-the-field mold, so she's going to get some serious conversion work sent her way. That's just fine by me, because I think that model looks like an extra from a generic D&D game, not an awesome French Steampunk fencer.

So, with all this in mind, I scoured every FLGS and then put in an order with the Warstore so I could get the ball rolling.

Turns out, these are the only things that aren't out of stock throughout New England:



Sooo, thanks to the post-holiday rush, it looks like all the really exciting stuff gets to wait until later (which is fine, since it gives me more time to figure out how I want to approach Llael's colors) and, in the meantime, I get to put together some Steam Dwarves with Steam Hammers.

I've got the Forgeguard cleaned up and ready for basing. All that's left to do is a little bit of touch-up work with green stuff. Turns out the inside of the right leg on most of the models was a mangled mess, and the edges of the armor plates are going to need to be resculpted.



Each model has had its tab removed and pins attached to secure them to their bases.



In other good news, the backordered minis and the resin bases I'll be using are all winging their way toward my home.

Good to see some WarmaHordes in the P&M sections. Look forward to seeing how this progresses.

I've gotten a lot done in the last week, and actually have fallen behind on posting more than anything else.

Fun aside: I've put together, converted and painted more than my fair share of minis, but this is my first real attempt at going all-out on an army. Fancy bases, weathering, it's all on the table. It also means that I'll probably end up posting more than a few pictures of horrendous mistakes.

The Forgeguard are coming along nicely and have been attached to their bases and almost completely greenstuffed. There are a few little tweaks that I need to make to the greenstuff-ing, as well as some cleanup that I missed on the bases, but they're more or less ready for primer.

Here's the unit commander:



And the more interesting members of the unit:





Here you can see a pretty egregious mold line on the base that I completely missed until I was taking the picture:



And here you can see that focusing is for chumps:



The bases are all resin trench-themed bases from Micro-art Studios. Unfortunately, I've just about used at least one of each of the different types of 30mm base they offer in that style, so the remainder are going to need a little bit of work done to them to make them unique.

What's more exciting to me than the dwarves, though, is this:



The Amethyst Rose Gun Mages are assembled, cleaned up and (mostly) based. They still need to get some imperfections green-stuffed, and I need to pin the gun blasts to their guns (right now they're just glued--and that sure isn't going to work out in the long run.) Plus, these models are going to need to most basing shenanigans to set them apart from the Forgeguard. I'm still looking around for a good source of crates and sandbags in an appropriate size, but I've got plenty of other assembling to do in the meantime, so I'm not exactly in a rush.