Little Army Challenge 1 - Introduction

the cover of White Dwarf #300

Sometimes, you just can't get enough of a good thing.

Hi. I'm writing to you from August, after my first Old World Army Challenge has wrapped up, and I'm feeling both accomplished and also a little sad that it's all over. Since I'll have to wait a whole four months until my next OWAC project, I thought I'd run a little challenge of my own to keep my engine running so to speak. This little army wont be the same size as an OWAC, since there are only so many hours in the day, and I'm doing this on a whim, but before I make excuses I should probably define my goals.

"...and they were roommates."

1. Make at least a 500 point army for Warhammer Fantasy Battle 6th Edition.

6th edition was my first wargame and as a kid, I could only muster forces for very small battles. While the games are quite swingy at this scale, I hold a certain belief that the game should be enjoyable at all sizes, and apparently someone felt the same because the warbands format existed. To me, it feels like the pauper format of Magic, or the new Spearhead format for Age Of Sigmar, and given my proclivity towards indexes, my inclination towards Ravening Hordes army lists should keep any game from getting too heady. For those intrigued, here's a handy string of words from Goonhammer on the subject.

That all said, I will include plans to go bigger than 500 in the event that my pace outmatches my initial aspirations. Additionally, I will experiment with the Codex for 6th Edition Dwarfs in addition to my "just the ravening hordes" bits, as in the "get you by" rules Rangers don't exist and Miners don't feel special. I have some big feelings about both of those units, and would love to have them represented should this project go far enough. In the event that I switch over to the codex, it turns out that New Recruit has a great listbuilder that covers 6th edition and more, so I might tinker with that between now and the future!

2. September, October, November, December, The End!

After this post, I'll have four months to wrap it up, and four posts with which to tell the tale. This should be plenty of time for three-to-five units, and the structure will keep me sharp for when OWAC is next afoot. This project will be just as much about honoring a bunch of minis as it will be about honing those skills of storytelling, and project management.

3. This is supposed to be fun.

If I can, I'll try to share how this project relates to me personally, and I'll try to give the army a proper game at some point before the new year. How feasible that is is beyond me, but we're feeling aspirational tonight, so dig deep and find some of that can-do attitude!

So with our goals outlined, let's look at what we're working with.

so many teensy tiny grudges to glue together.

In preparation for this project, I scoured the internet (after impulse buying the two Fireforge boxes at discount,) looking for further models to do this project with. Were I to take a true oldhammer route with the models of the 80s and 90s, they'd clash terribly with these contemporary kits, and also I'd be out hundreds of dollars for my folly. I really should have been buying old lead minis in 1995 instead of being four years old, but we all make choices we're not proud of, and that'll be my cross to bear.

At time of writing, a 10 man unit of metal dwarf slayers costs around 120 USD, and is definitively out of budget. This isn't a condemnation of the vibe, just an aknowledgement that there are fiscal barriers to doing the projects with models representitive of the oldhammer period, as seen in some of the glorious entries from OWAC's past, and on channels such as Nergling on Youtube. Oldhammer is terrific stuff, but I need access to make cool projects, and this foray would never get off the ground if I held my breath trying to collect era-appropriate minis.

So there, we have 54 bodies to make into our stouthearted souls, and also a stonelauncher I picked up in a toyshop some years ago.  

With all this plastic then, what can we build? The answer is likely "a lot of things," but for sake of brevity, here's a rough sketch of what I'm looking to do for this army.

DWARFS

thane (60) with heavy armor and great weapon (8) with sword of might (20)

10 thunderers with hand weapons, heavy armor, and handgunnes (120)

15 warriors with hand weapons, light armor, and shields (120) with bsb and musician (20)

10 Hammerers with hand weapons, great weapons, and heavy armor (130) with bsb and musician (20)

498/500pts

stone thrower with three crew (85) and rune of accuracy (25)

10 miners (100) with full command (30)

748/750pts 

10 slayers with additional hand weapons (110)

10 rangers with throwing axes (150) or 10 quarrelers (120) and give champions to the warriors and hammerers from the 500 point bracket.

998/1000pts

______________________________

Now you might say "Ben, that's more than 54 models," and you'd be right. I should be good with what I have up until the 750 point mark, but if I happn to get particularly bold or brave or something in the interim, I'm open to exploring the possibility of acquiring or making more minis for the cause.

Hey, I'm Blueskyin' Here!

For instance, you'll note that I offered some pretty hard figures for Dwarf Slayers earlier in this piece. I really want to have access to some of the archetypal units for this army (slayers, miners, rangers,) and so I did quite a bit of research to see how viable it would be to pull all of that together. Miners and Rangers aren't such an issue since I can just kitbash most of those with some greenstuff candles and tissue paper capes, but the Slayers look like a real issue. Due to the more truescale nature of the kits I have, there aren't really any mostly-naked dwarf models that match the vibe or proportion of the Fireforge or Northstar figs.

I think these are older GW sculpts, but I'm not sure. Maybe this article knows the truth?!

the link was dead, but it'd be a shame not to share them, even if I can't give proper credit.

these are from a company that went by Mars Ultor, now dead

Marauder Slayers, now these are old school!

I found these nains on French ebay, but have no clue where they came from.

Between Google and Ebay, I found plenty of examples of what Slayers could be. I wanted to avoid the overwrought sculpting that digital minis sometimes fall prey to, so all of my references are traditionally sculpted (to the best of my eye) and err on the comedic side of cartoonish instead of the overly suggestive. If I do end up getting to make myself a band of slayers, they'll have to be the same size and proportion as the rest of my dwarfs so that they don't stick out too wildly. I think cohesion is going to be important to me for this force, and so any pains I can take to strive towards that is more than worthwhile

Dwarfs, not Dwarves!

So why Dwarfs? I'll tell you now, its not for the faint of heart. It all begins with a little magazine called White Dwarf, where in issue 298 Nick Kyme begins the saga known as Bugman's Lament. This was a historical campaign revisiting the tragedy of Josef Bugman, a master ale-brewer turned vengeful ranger after his family brewery was razed by a goblin warlord named Git Guzzler. Between the craft tutorials, custom rules, and narrative stakes, I was hooked instantly and irrevocably. Clearly I'm not the only one who was inspired by this sensational serial, and so I have a little side aspiration within the project, where I someday hope to be able to play through the campaign. That means that down the road, I also hope to make some goblin hordes to challenge these stony champions, that they can shoot, punch, kick, kiss, kill in glorious war dolly battle.

There's also the matter of empathy, which is very goofy as miniatures are inanimate objects. That said, the two boxes with red stickers on them were kits that had been sitting on shelves for years, and I felt bad that they'd been passed over so many times. I can't say that I've been as kind to the mountain of models I keep in my closet for a "rainy day," but I look at these dwarf kits everyday whereas my closet door is shut most of the time to keep the ghosts out of my room.

But there are even more reasons than that! Here we go in shotgun order!

• Dwarfs would be terrific for a battlebox of underground wars! In addition to the Goblins who'll someday fight these half-pint heroes, another old world army I have been saving up for is Skaven. Between these three races, I'll have plenty of excuses to make stalagmite terrain, abandonned outposts, and minecart playsets for them all to skirmish over.
• I love my gnomes dearly, but having definitive rules for your armies does take a bit of pressure off. My biggest struggle during OWAC outside of life events, was keeping track of my progress with points values. I had bought the book for 5th and tried calculating for that, but couldn't find all the points values I needed, and then found out that magic was in a separate expansion alltogether. This led me to reverting back to my original system of 6th, but still having to make up a bunch of points, and while I'm capable and can negotiate my way around a table, sometimes you just want easy.
• My hobby hero had a dwarf army he played when I was coming up in the scene. He was a really important person to me, and I basically have his job now, even if its in a different store in a different city. This point is a little silly, but it feels like one of those full-circle things. 

So now you know the who, what, where, when, and why. The pins are all set up and its time to knock 'em down. I for one am looking forward to this little foray, and I hope you are too. Thanks for joining me, and I'll see you in the next one. Bye for now!