O-WHACK, or an Army in Six Months

In January, I announced that I'd be participating in the OLD WORLD ARMY CHALLENGE, a project wherein participants make a thousand point army (minimum) for an older Games Workshop ruleset. Longtime readers of this blog will recall that I got really into gnomes a few years back, which felt very oldhammery with their quaint scale and humble sculpts, so my choice to do gnomes again (but different) should come as no surprise. In gentler years, I collected a force of alpine gnomes from OLD SCHOOL MINIATURES and took the challenge as an opportunity to cross this army off my bucket list. While the Month-by-Month posting for this project can be found here, I wanted to bring a little bit of that journey over to my blog so that everyone can see the works and so that I can talk about the project with a little more candor.

Month 1

I was just getting over a move when the starter pistol sounded, and so I began with a modest offering. A single unit, and a few heroes isn't an overwrought project, but for someone who hadn't been able to paint for ages, it felt daunting. On top of getting some grease on my squeaky skills, I also had to decide then and there what sort of paint schemes and techniques I wanted to use for half a year. Usually I opt for games that have 4-15 minis a side, where experimentation is natural because of the (relatively) quick turnaround times.

Luckily, gnomish color schemes can be fairly intuitive when you call a no-brain shot; green and red are keen because that's what's in the garden, and that's where you find gnomes. I kept the color plan fairly simple with greens and earth tones, sticking within a zorn+ palette and using a simple non-metalic-metal to keep the overall look homogenous and cozy.

(As a side note, in writing this I realize that I don't tend use metallic paints because I once went to a paint night, and someone pressured me into using metallic paint on a mini. I was resistant to using the paint because I didn't personally own any metallics, and couldn't reliably get to paint night to use the shop's collection, and so I didn't want to start a project I couldn't finish on my own. The guy insisted, and so I acquiessed, and it left a bad taste in my mouth. Actually, I think this happened when I originally got the gnomes for this project, and this incident might have been why I'm only getting to them now. Being pressured into making a decision I didn't want to led to a false start, and so did my access needs not being respected, and so in summary, help is only help if the person you're helping thinks that that's what you're doing. Aside over.)

Month 2

I didn't have a whole lot of time this month, and so I used what the OWAC-ers called a WILD CARD MONTH. Supposidly its something of a mulligan, used for terrain or odd bits and bobs, but I did squeak out a giant and Bill, his goose friend. I'd been saving the geese for a special occassion, having gotten them from MIRILTON some time ago, and thought they'd add some extra charm and character to the force. Since I don't know how many armies like this I'll have in me (sometimes its hard to justify the labor without guarenteed play,) I wanted to use some of those bits that never found a home, so I'll be sneaking as many of those in as I can throughout the project. 

One thing that solidified for me this month was the basing scheme I wanted to follow. I really liked the goblin green with dirt brown and stone grey on top, and thought it looked charming with tufts and such on top. I didn't get too deep into the static grass tendencies of some hobbyist generations, but tufts became important to me with the Turnip28 scene, and they've kinda stuck in my process since. I'm not sure why the word wholesome comes to mind when I look at the bases, but they made me really happy, both in building them up and in reflection. Something about basing brings me peace, and at this stage in the game, any peace I can find is well worth the price.

Month 3

March saw the coming of some fox reiters, halberdiers, and an illusionist, who slotted into the ranks quite nicely. I really wanted to get some more color in there, even if my aesthetics leaned into low-saturation territory, and made a concerted effort to make things pop. The reiters got straight-from-the-tube crimson and blue so that I couldn't meddle and desaturate their colors, and honestly I think it turned out pretty good. The foxes are definitely eye-catching with their light orange drybrushed coats, and they all stand out from those bases I enjoyed so much. 

My unit of halberdiers was another story though; for some reason, I decided to put stripes on their uniforms, and that led to some laborious blending because I had let myself do mixing there, and it led to some great color gradients coming down the shoulders, but meant that I'd spend days getting the stripes to look correct. After the labors, I bottomed out a bit and made their flag something simple. Since the gnomes themselves are quite small, proportionally their flags would be too, and I didn't have the enthusiasm to freehand anything fancy. What would their mascot be anyhow, more stripes?

A funny note is that this army was costed using fifth edition points, and because my hayday was sixth edition, I had the faintest grasp of how my force should be organized. I'd gotten Byron's rules (the sculptor who did my army also composed rules for them in 3rd, 5th, and 6th edition,) and the core book for 5th ed. Warhammer Fantasy Battles, and tried to make heads and tails of it, and this led to some odd misconceptions that I've yet to clear up. One of which was "what does magic do," since 5e magic is in another book and also on cards that don't really exist anymore, so I ended up putting a few wizards into my list despite having no idea what they'd do if my army ever made it to a table.

On this subject, unit champions being something separate is a feature that half-returned in Warhammer 40k 10th edition, and for all the guff I give GW, that is so much cleaner than the half-remembered word of mouth answers I got about unit composition. I will likely never run a 5e game, but its at least been interesting looking in on the world of Herohammer, and seeing the ways that its descendants consider their inheritance.

Month 4

A cannon, an organ gun, and a pair of champions join the fray, and boy howdy, what a sharp addition to the army. In the comments on the corresponding post as seen on OWAC's blog, Shadespyre points out how the artillery shields are reminiscent of the faces of Thomas the Tank Engine and his friends, and that struck me dead in the nostalgia. As a kid I was a huge Thomas fan, and in those early programs much of the show was made using model train miniatures and techniques. It blows me over how early these hobbies get into your DNA, and how early the timeline would have had to split for me not to be the person I am today. Helluva epiphany, that.

Anyhow, its for this reason that the organ gun is now named Gordon the Organ (gun) and that the cannon is named Charlie Cannonballs. Since I had the mission to embellish with bits I'd never found homes for, Charlie got a pair of mushrooms glued to his base (for moral support,) and Gordon is accompanied by Jimothy the goose (who is a stalwart professional.) These units are obviously extra ranged support, and I find that tremendously helpful, considering the ten crossbows only can do so much, especially if I don't know how my illusionists work. At least I know I'll need some goofy (read; classic) templates to make the cannonballs do my bidding!

Oh, and also some more champions got made, because I realized that I'll likely be gnomed-out by the time my army's done. Even if I don't have plans for them, getting them based and painted while the iron's hot is likely the wisest course of action I could take. This turned out to be good timing, since I'd be down two wisdom teeth by next month's end, so I needed to squeeze out all the cleverness I could before extraction day.

Month 5

 

This took longer than a month, because I decided to batch paint them all together, and I'm not sure if you can tell, but that is a lot of pikegnomes. Thirty-five to be exact. I decided to polish them off the weekend that I had my wisdom teeth extracted and hot dog was that a choice.

I have mixed feelings about these pikegnomes because a) I accidentally painted them purple and b) I couldn't for the life of me remember how I'd decided their cost. During this project, my greatest struggle has been internalizing all of the information for Warhammer Fantasy Battle 5e, and the Gnome army list. I think this situation largely embodies the perils of indie creators who create more than they steward, and also how archival preservation in gaming is limited to word of mouth or subscription services. None of this is said to cast blame or shade for what its worth; these are simply issues I've noticed while being alive, and they are echoed in this part of the journey.

Month 6

In the final month, I spent very little time on the project as I'd set myself up with a handful of mostly finished minis that just needed details and skin tones before they could move to the finished tray. The only things I had to do from full stop were the baggage train, the gnomish crossbowmen I'd sculpted from scratch, and the little painted cantonical banner that the army rallies around. I really wanted that last one to pop, and since I'd gotten some very sweet comments about the faces on my artillery, I decided to tie it all together with a big blue grin.

The final total was 90 miniatures, clocking in at around 1111.5 points for fifth edition WHFB. I'm still uncertain about only charging 6.5 points per pikeman, but that's for Byron to worry about as the list designer, not me, the filthy casual who bought into the dream. Since no army is ever complete, I might as well say that there's a few more units I could think to add to round it out to a nice 1500. I would have to invest some time into double checking the 6th ed rules, since those are the ones I know best, and doing some of the list math myself of course, but given enough coffee I'm sure I'd be up for the challenge. In the future I'll likely add more fox cavalry to shore up my flanks, and maybe get more halberdiers or keebler guard unit to intercept charges or steal objectives.

Looking back on the half year, I can safely say that it was productive, and that having the structure of the challenge helped me accomplish this "small" feat. It wasn't easy, making the time to do this project (my last project of this scale was mid-pandemic shutdown, and so my responsibilities were different,) but the carrot-and-stick of positive attention or disqualification for failing to meet deadlines was enough to keep me on-task. Very little else got painted in this period and that makes me somewhat sad, but hopefully now that my desk is clear of gnomes (for now) something else will have time and space to congeal. 

 

That said, I should probably varnish these guys before I move on to anything else. I'd really like this army to stick around for a while after so much effort, and surprisingly or not, none of my models have ever been sealed, and so I've spent ages touching up figs that got chipped or scraped in the moves.

In reflection, I'd likely do the OLD WORLD ARMY CHALLENGE again, with a few little adjustments for my own sanity.

• Stick to the Plan, Stan - Stillmania is very cool to me, the making of an army and list for a certain points value, never modifying it for meta, and having each unit with its own personality and flair. I had a rough estimate of points and units, but nothing concrete since I was still fishing models out of boxes that I'd packed years ago, and so my experience became very exploratory. For a minute, I wasn't sure if I'd have enough minis to hit the 1k milestone, not just because I couldn't find them, but because keeping track of the rules for the game and the fan-written army was an absolute chore. I think the next time I'd really like to have my Stillmania list, and then if new things show up I can plan for a larger army. You live and learn.

• Clean Desk Policy - I let this project eat all of my hobby time and all of my hobby space, and that's perhaps too much for my heart to take. In the future, I need to be able to clear my space of all the OWAC things so that I can still enjoy my hobbies outside of the challenge.

• What are We Doing Here? - I think I almost got the boot one month for being tardy on a blog post. It was late by a day, and while that might not mean much to me, I'm sure that meant something to the organizers who are setting aside their time for the good of the participants. In this process I found that working several weeks ahead of schedule led to less stress as far as modelmaking went, and I suppose that's the sausage-making part of the game. I work on the inside of the industry in my daily life, and in trying to do this challenge, I sometimes forgot that I was still inside the baseball, and that I had to treat it the way I do my work. Going forward, and in effort to avoid disqualification, I'd likely stagger my efforts two weeks back so that I have a buffer in case the time gets away from me, and so that I respect everyone's time accordingly. Even you dear viewer!

And on those notes, my first OWAC experience comes to a close! Again, if you want to see the monthly throes, here's a handy link. I highly recommend reading it in chronological order, since I put so much effort into those blog posts. Even though you've gotten the distillation of those here, there was way too much to condense, and also there's a really lovely community on that blog that have some fun things to say. I wish I could port those comments over here, but c'est la vie. If you're here, I'm grateful, and if you go there, that's your grand reward. 

Have you ever done an OWAC? Did this account make you want to try the challenge?