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Getting back into the hobby after many years out –– need a distraction from the grim darkness of the near future and all that. I used to have a gunnery college-themed Empire army circa 6-7th edition, (complete with that steam horse engineer and the rage-inducing metal steam tank). I sold that army years ago, but I always like the idea of gun-focused guys in a fantasy setting, so I’m working on a Freeguild Company / Ironweld Arsenal army for Age of Sigmar.




I’ll start with the unit that’s the furthest along –– my “Trencher” handgunners. Here are the regulars unpainted –– they have Bretonnian Man-at-Arms heads and bodies, Empire handgunner right arms and guns, IG backpacks (Catachans? I can’t remember –– I sold my armies, but my bits wells run deep) and slightly shoddy green stuff left arms. I realized after assembling them that I put all the backpacks with shovels on upside down, but they look more natural that way besides the grenade dangling upward so I’m not going to pull them apart.


Here are some of the regulars a little further along –– mostly basecoated (need to do some touch ups before I move on). I haven’t made progress in a day because I can’t decide if their gunpowder cannisters or whatever they have tied to their guns should stay bronze or need to be repainted gunmetal. Thoughts? I thought it would look more “steampunk” (ugh) to have a little bronze on there but they look too much like gold. Maybe it’ll look darker after being inked.


Here we have their command. I don’t want standard-bearers in every unit –– I think it looks goofy, especially in more of a skirmish-level game –– so these guys are going to go without. The musician is on the far right. His left hand is twice as big as his right because it's a bit from the old monopose hand gunners –– apparently hands have gotten smaller over the years. The first sergeant I made is the next one, but as you can see he’s in a dumb pose where he can’t escape the shadow his giant gun casts on his face, and it doesn’t even look like what a handgunner sergeant should have (it’s from the Outrider/Pistolier kit) so I made another sergeant from a Warmachine figure. The regulars on the left are just for comparison.


Next up are a kitbash of Greatsword legs and bodies with Outrider/Pistolier arms and weapons. I’m not sure what I’m going to field them as –– maybe Irondrakes?


These guys are human miners made from Catachan legs and torsos, State Troops heads, dwarf miner weapons and a variety of bare arms. Waiting on more Catachan legs to finish assembling the rest. (They have cargo pants in Age of Sigmar, right?)


This guy is the centerpiece –– a counts-as steam tank, the Iron Gargant. It’s a Contemptor Dreadnought with an Empire guy inside, some steam tank bits added and a very old cannon from the 6th edition starter set. At first I put larger shields on the legs but it looked weird so I replaced them with these lil' ones.


Now onto the characters. I have some Warmachine guys lying around that basically match the theme of the army. I might want to get GW doubles of whatever I’m going to field them as out of the pipe dream of taking these guys to an official GW tournament where PP figures are verbotten (do those even exist in America?), but I’ll probably use the guys on the far left as heavy weapon crew, the guy left of center as a witch hunter, the guy in the center as my captain/general, the guy right of center as an engineer, and the guys on the right as handgunner command.


Here ma wizards –– nothing too fancy. Used a greatsword head on one. I could use that head on almost all my characters. I only have one more.


This guy on the left might be my GW-non-union-equivalent of that Warmachine character with the pistols up above. I put him next to the sergeant from my Irondrakes or whatever to pose a question –– re: Age of Sigmar basing size guides I found, people are putting characters even of factions/races who usually go on 25mm bases on 32mm. Okay, some of them have more dynamic poses. GW doesn’t seem to be doing it across the board in the pictures but I didn’t want to raise anyone’s heckles and I’d rather have a consistent rule than adjust it to each model so I was going to do that. But when I contrast models like these it just looks wrong –– the character just isn’t a bigger model than the sergeant, the reverse in fact (maybe I picked a bad angle, but the cape from the outrider leader has a huge profile that goes way off the base). What should I do? What are other folks doing? I kind of regret using that massive cape on the sergeant, I should have saved it for a character. I could make a new sergeant from bits and rebase him as a general, but I kind of wanted my general to look less traditionally Empire-y and use a non-mustachio’d head (like the guy on the left).

In transit I’ve got an Empire General and bits for one Demigryph –– I want to make a mounted Demigryph character. Are there rules for fielding a character on one of those? Obviously it’s too small to count as a gryphon, so I’ll just count it as a horse if I have to. I didn’t really want horse cavalry in this army to set it apart from a standard Empire/Freeguild army but I have so much stuff leftover from the Outriders/Pistoliers that if I bought another box I could assemble a full set of each. I dunno. Down the road I’m eyeing a Helblaster gun, maybe some flagellants even though they don’t fit the army’s theme particularly because they’re just cool, and some rounding out my characters/heroes with GW models. When this army is actually done I’ll probably write up some fluff and name the characters and stuff. I’m eyeing a few other themed conversion armies but I’m not sure which one I’ll do next or if I’ll get burnt out.

P.S. Why are 25mm round GW bases from before and after a certain copyright (2013?) different heights? Infuriating when you're trying to source bases for AoS stuff that still comes with square bases!