Marienburg

[Crazy Harborc]

Two good group photos. Details abound, crisp, clean, IMHO pro level minies.

Um.....IF you ever tire of using them. I'll let you dump them at my doorstep.

[Airborne XO]

Love all these old Marauder minis...makes me feel about 13 again!

Cheers, Hal

[mousekiller]

023: You have a really great painting style, and I love all those older minis. The only paintjobs that you can find of them are really not well done compared to today's standards, so it is really nice to see a quality job done on them.

Can't wait to see more from this list.

[Gitt]

You can still get the old marauder ogres on the UK online store, not sure about other countries though.

Nice work so far by the way :-)

http://uk.games-workshop.com/storefr...orignav=301116

[ZeroTwentythree]

023: You have a really great painting style, and I love all those older minis. The only paintjobs that you can find of them are really not well done compared to today's standards, so it is really nice to see a quality job done on them.

I think that's the case with a lot of the older figures. As many people have pointed out, that old War Alter looks great now that it's been updated with some new paint at GW.

You can still get the old marauder ogres on the UK online store, not sure about other countries though.

Oh wow. Yeah, but that's about us$20 each + overseas shipping. I like them, but I think I can wait to see if I can pick them up in a trade or through someone looking to get rid of their old figures.

Still, the ogres are a bargain compared to:
http://uk.games-workshop.com/storefr...orignav=301116

[ZeroTwentythree]

Got a few more figures painted except the metalic bits and the bases. The light colors (mainly whites & yellows) seem to have gotten washed out in the photos. A shame, I was kind of pleased with the way the mage's staff came out. Actually, the GW purples I used seem really glossy as well, and have a bit of glare in the pic. :/

They are:

1 arty crew
8 spear
2 greatswords
1 mage

bringing the totals to..


25 handgunners, two with hochland long-rifles.
13 greatswords
18 spear
4 archers
2 ogres
4 artillery crew with mortar and cannon (both old metal ones)
4 characters (1 with great-weapon, 1 with pistols, 2 mages)


I want to start putting swordsmen together, and I want them to look like traditional sword & buckler men. I love the bucklers that come with the Mordheim/militia set, but I'm not sure how to go about getting enough of them. So I'm going to look into alternatives, like historicals. I believe OG has some, but I traded off all my OG historicals. :/ I wonder if they will sell some separately.

[mrtn]

Nice work!

I wouldn't mind bigger pictures, and neither would I mind if you could link to them with [IMG] tags rather than as attachments you have to click (I'm very lazy ).

[mousekiller]

Again a solid update. Nothing to really critique that you did not mention...

Love the barrel guy... probably my favorite of the bunch.

[lparigi34]

Nice... good Idea to have a Plog!

About your work, it is going to be a really nice army the one youll have when you finish this. I also see you moved away from the too-uniform-across-the-army color scheme, and I do like it, a lot.

As for my taste, just base the minis, not eventually, now. I've found amazing how good can a mini look with a couple of colors on it but a well done base and how unfinished they look, even if greatly painted but the base undone. After I learned this, the first thing I do when I paint my armies, after assembling, priming and base colors is the base itself, and I design it at the same time that I design the color scheme for my army.

How is the second wizard coming? Looked great in the first pic.

[Waltok]

Lovely minis!
I really like all the bright colours, exactly what I'd imagine a Marienburg army to look like.

[ZeroTwentythree]

Two of the figures I've worked on recently.

One is a dwarf greatsword conversion. It's an old Marauder handgunner. They come with a separate handgun with the hands cast on. This plugs into sockets at the wrists. I have a bunch of these, but I'm short two handguns. On the other hand, I want more dwarven greatswords (the other posted previously.) So I took an Empire militia greatsword with the arms on it, cut the arms at the wrist, then cut the two hands apart. I drilled a hole through the hands and into the base of the sword blade (I had to cut that off, too, so I could reposition it in relation to the hands) then pinned the whole thing together. I used greenstuff to fill in the sword handle between the hands. I'm not 100% happy with the way he's holding the sword, but his arms are cast attached to the body, so I was limited. (I'd prefer if his hands weren't so far apart.)

The second is the test model for my "Sea Elf" fast cav, representing the large sea elf community that is supposed to reside in Marienburg. I thought I'd try a blue-green and white color scheme for all of them, and I'm pretty happy with it. Again, I will use a DoW slot. Since they didn't add any "back of the book" lists in the new Empire book, and the old one was never really accepted as fully "official" anyway, this puts a bit of a strain on my army - I've got more DoW units I'd like to use than Rare slots. But I'm thinking I'll just rotate which DoW are used along with a basic "core" of empire troops.


Once again, the pics turned out a bit bright. It used to be that I couldn't get enough light, now they're all turning out over-bright.

[Luthien]

an elf!!! woooo
this log is really cool, makes me wanna start my own merchantile army. what list are you using Dow or empire ?

[ZeroTwentythree]

what list are you using Dow or empire ?

Yes.



Right now the idea is to use the Empire list, something like this:

Core
Spearmen
Swordsmen
Handgunners

Special
Greatswords
Cannon/Mortar

Rare
DoW Ogres
DoW Light Horse (sea elves)


I've contemplated using a straight DoW list, but I've got a bunch of handgunners, no crossbowmen, and want to keep the empire/lansknecht look. I do have a bunch of Foundry landsknecht pikemen that I could actually use as DoW pike in games where I don't have to use GW figures. (Conversely, I can probably use them as spearmen with really long spears.)

I think unless I can pull off saying "these handunners that count as crossbows," I'm stuck with Empire. I don't know, anyone care to give me feedback on whether or not this would be acceptable? My gut feeling is that I'd prefer not using the "count as crossbow" option.

[Wulf]

It is a great army you've got going there! Exellent painting.

It warms my heart to see some of the older models you’ve used and how well they blend in with the more current range. Also, the weapon swaps you’ve made works wonders.

Being very interested in landsknechts myself and being a member of a landsknecht re-enactment group I very much like your non-uniform approach. It also of course ties in very well with a Marienburg (ie Landsknechts in a fantasy setting) army. And it is well executed too. It would be great to see some Foundry pike men in the future.

In particular I like the eclectic style of your army. Every man, dwarf or ogre who can hold his or her own in a fight and is willing to fight anyone for the right amount of gold coins is invited. It looks great and gives a very cool feel to the army. I would consider mixing the light cavalry as well by using different riders - but I have no problem with going with your idea of an elven contigent.

I would totally recommend using the Empire list over DoW. Handguns are very characteristic for the landsknechts (crossbows are more common with the swiss reisläufer). The Empire list is also better, being able to use the detachment rule to great advantage. Myself, I play Empire with my pikemen as spearmen with very looong spears (and no shields) and it has never caused me any problems. Sure, pikemen have better stats but that is a tradeoff I’m willing to take. Empire spearmen are dirt cheap! It is also in my opinion more of a natural "count as" compared to having handguns as crossbows. If I am not mistaken you could use Ogres from the Ogre Kingdom list as special choices in an Empire army thereby freeing one of the rare slots for another DoW entry if you like.

Keep it comming - and don't let them rat-things distract you!

/Wulf

[ZeroTwentythree]

Thanks.

My opinions on which army and which troops to use are very similar to yours. I've contemplated using some pistoleers for human cavalry mercs. The sea elves are the one group I have considered as being "above" mingling with other races in units. I'm still working on what to do about halflings in the army. I want to mix some in, but they always look too tiny, especially the older figures.

The nice thing about the spearmen being cheap, as you pointed out, is that I can field twice as many as I would be able to if they were pikemen. Having just a few pikemen just looks wrong. That's one of my problems with the DoW list as well - pike armed troops are always shown in huge blocks - not the tiny little units you have to take in the DoW list.

Are there Ogres that count as special? I was assuming they are Rare. I don't actually have the Ogre book right now. It's one of those things I keep thinking about buying but always opt for more figures instead.

[Warboss Alex]

Hey Zero - your painting style rocks! Do you feel the crispness/brightness you achieve is down to using a white undercoat instead of the usual black? (newb question I know but we gotta start somewhere!)

[Wulf]

If I am not mistaken you could use Ogres from the Ogre Kingdom list as special choices in an Empire army thereby freeing one of the rare slots for another DoW entry if you like.

Turns out I was mistaken. Only as rare I'm afraid. Darn.

[ZeroTwentythree]

Hey Zero - your painting style rocks! Do you feel the crispness/brightness you achieve is down to using a white undercoat instead of the usual black? (newb question I know but we gotta start somewhere!)

Actually... I use a black undercoat. The rumored inability to get bright colors with a dark undercoat is misinformation spread by the Cult of the White Undercoat.

There are a couple things that I do. One is that I'll frequently paint a darker shade of the real "base" color, which helps step the brighness up. So, for example, on those red areas, I paint a very very dark red, followed by a medium red that probably coveres 95% of the area covered by the darker color. (Basically, leave the shadows & cracks showing), and then layer up to the really bright colors.

The paints are also important. Alot of the brighter warm colors - reds, yellows, oranges - are Vallejo. I just switched to Vallejo for a lot the blues and the blue green on those figures as well. They get better coverage than alot of the other paints I had tried. The greens and purples are mostly a mix of really old and newer GW. Whites, blacks, and half the browns are craft store paints, except for the use of GW or Coat d'Arms (when I can get it) "Flesh Wash". The remainder of the browns are mostly Coat d'Arms and one or two Reaper paints.

Another thing -- and this is just a personal preference, but I feel it keeps the figures looking "bright" -- is that I don't generally mix white into the highlights of bold colors. I work my way from darker colors to the brightest bottled paint color I can find. The white dilutes and lightens the color so that it will look faded or pastel, IMHO. So I try to avoid that except on colors that I feel it will be OK (like I'll mix a little white in the very last extreme highlight of yellows, for example.)

Honestly, as much as I prefer black (and sometimes brown) primer, I think it depends on personal technique and what each person is comfortable with. Try them all. I've been painting a long time and used white for years before switching to black. (I tried grey as well, but that's the only one I think isn't worth bothering with. It has all the bad sides of both black and white, without the advantages.) Since I like to paint both from the "inside" of the figure "outward" (starting in the most recessed areas first) and I like to paint from a dark base up to highlights, black works better for me. I think if I jumped around more in the areas I painted and/or if I used more washes, white might have some sort of advantage. But others may disagree.

OK, enough rambling from me for now...

[ZeroTwentythree]

I haven't had much time to work on the Marienburg army, but I'm hoping to get some hardcore painting done soon, so I can field 1k points ASAP (Nemesis events?)

I think my spear champion is going to be the little guy attached below. (He's one of the Marauder halflings, from the same range as the dwarves, ogres, etc.) He's tiny, but so serious looking. Sadly the rest of the halflings from the line are a little more goofy looking. I might tuck a few in the back rank if I run out of dwarves and humans. Or maybe in with some militia. Maybe I'll make a little 8-strong halfling militia detachment.

[Wulf]

Very cool! Love the halfling.

I'm quite familiar with most of the marauder range but have never seen it before. It has alot of character. And it's very nice that they've made them so small. I like the mixed feel that spearman unit has.

I'd use the other ones aswell, as you mentioned, in ranks further back or in other units. The more varied races and models the better in my opinion. They go very wall together anyway through clothes etc.

Hope that you stay on target and keep expanding your Marienburg army. It will look great indeed when finished.

/Wulf