I didn’t think I was that into the Empire. But then, one Christmas in the mid-late 2000s, someone very generously got me an Empire Army box set for Christmas. Was that someone my then-manager at Oxford’s Warhammer store? Yes. Was his motivation primarily to get me excited about something that wasn’t Warhammer 40,000? Also yes. Not wanting to seem ungrateful, I rather noncommittally set about painting some Middenheimers. I’d painted a few Middenheimers for the shop’s army and liked the scheme well enough.
It turned out that Jason knew me better than I knew myself. Once I’d painted some regiments and played a few games, that was it: I’d taken the Count’s Shilling. Over fifteen years and 6,500 points later, I still haven’t stopped.
The Painter: Charlie Brassley
The Army: The Empire, Warhammer Fantasy Battle/The Old World
Points: Over 6.5k
Miniatures: Over 400
Collected: Since the mid-late 2000s
Instagram: @charliebrassley
I don’t work on the army all the time, just when the urge takes, but my love of the faction remains undimmed. Everything from their heraldry to their lore and play style is just as satisfying to me now as it ever was. This army contains some of my most ambitious conversions, and my most complex freehand painting efforts… largely in the hopes that sexy banners will draw the eye away from the rudimentary paint job the troops get.
Why the Empire?
What I love about the tone of the Old World’s Empire is that they provide good, muddy ground for the weirder fantasy elements to stand on. Their shingled houses and suspicious grimaces help sell the idea that the forests really are full of monsters waiting to devour them. Their blackpowder weapons place the world in an interesting historical time period compared to your classic early medieval fantasy. Clearly that makes a difference, because I have no urge whatsoever to collect Bretonnians (although clearly I should be suspicious of such disinclinations given how this army got started).
How Do They Play?
Any way you want. From a gameplay standpoint, the Empire enjoys one of the most flexible and diverse rosters in the Old World. Your troops can be cheap, elite, stabby, shooty, horsey, magickey, or zippy. Some people like to skew their list and go all-mounted, or gunline, and so on. At this point my army is big enough that I can write a skew list in most directions, any maybe that’s fine for a specific narrative scenario, but for the most part, the joy of this army lies in flexibility. You only need to see a pure shooting army in action once to see how earth-shatteringly boring it is for both players.
As shown above, one of the joys of having an army this big is occasionally (and I mean occasionally) getting to play some very large games. Fantasy scales up to big fights better than 40K, in general, and the game above was against my old foe Maisey and his giant Vampire Counts army. As far as my Boxing Days go, this was one of the best.
How to Paint Them
Fantasy Battle/Old World armies require shortcuts. The armies of the Old World are about mass visual impact; if I tried to lavish attention on every individual figure I’d go mad. Instead I’ve aimed at the bare minimum needed to make them look nice from two feet away, with pops of detail that make them look alright up close. Lords, Heroes and regimental standards all get love poured into them, whilst your basic soldier gets the old maxim of ‘faces and bases… and metal.’ Because metal is shiny, I find lazily painted metal draws the eye in a bad way. Skin and metal are therefore the only part of the mini that gets any highlighting, and I do also do a quick woodgrain technique on polearms. Once that’s done, all the fabric and leather areas are given a brown filth wash to make them look more downtrodden and introduce some tonal variation.
Prime with a brown spray.
It doesn’t really matter which brown you pick, and this army has regiments primed or all-over-basecoated in a variety of browns, but on balance I’ve come to like Colour Forge’s Hyrax Brown as a starting point.
Skin: Variety is good.
Great trading ports like Altdorf will be more varied than more isolated places like Middenheim, but even in a place where you’re expecting most of your soldiers to have a single ethnicity, human skin tones are incredibly varied. I tend to split the regiment into different batches, with half of them getting one tone, and then the two remaining quarters adding two more tones.
There are a bajillion skin painting recipes in this army, split over multiple generations of the Citadel, Vallejo and Army Painter paint ranges. Most of the minis have had the classic basecoat/highlight/shade experience using Citadel paints.
Here’s a quick tutorial of how I tend to do slightly more detailed faces on pale skin:
Leather & Cloth
Honestly all this stuff just gets a basecoat, and with a brown primer, you can be a bit sloppy with the leather areas in particular. These areas are saved by getting a watered down layer of The Army Painter’s Dirt Spatter once they’re done.
Mud is Good
I may have mentioned this immediately above, but: Mud. Filth. Dust. Not to be confused with a brown shade like Agrax Earthshade, a mud wash doesn’t just darken stuff, it should actively be adding a second (translucent!) colour. Without this shortcut, I wouldn’t have the patience to paint Empire soldiers.
The Army Painter’s Dirt Spatter is fantastic for this, but any mid or dark brown that gels well with your basing scheme is appropriate. Back in the day I used to make a watery mix of Graveyard Earth and Scorched Brown, and Dirt Spatter plus water is essentially that in a pot. I just water it down a bit, then slather the stuff all over the cloth and leather areas once the model’s basically finished; I don’t worry too much about making a mess. This prevents me doing a lot of highlighting. Empire State Troops are dripping with detail, and this is one thing that helps.
Metal
Citadel Leadbelcher is a great start. For the filthier regiments, Agrax Earthshade goes on next. They all then get a layer of the sadly discontinued Nuln Oil Gloss, but regular Nuln Oil will do fine. Finally, they get a highlight in Vallejo Air Steel, and this is what really helps things look sharp.
Wood
Basecoat in a mid-brown like Citadel Baneblade Brown or Vallejo Game Color Earth.
Water down a mustard yellow like Citadel Averland Sunset and apply very loose, sloppy streaks in the direction of the wood grain. Don’t worry about overlapping previous lines, just keep it loose.
Repeat the woodgrain lines with a watered down bone colour (I used The Army Painter’s Skeleton Bone). Don’t worry about following the yellow lines you already did – keep it random. Here’s how it looks when finished:
Varnished Wood
Follow the steps above, then apply a glaze of chestnut ink. Note, this does need to have the intensity and gloss of ink, but any red-brown ink should do. Sorry to use such a niche paint, but this is what works for me.
Basing & Movement Trays
This is your classic sand stuck to a base with PVA, painted brown, and drybrushed up before having some grass stuck to it. Those curious about rank and flank games may also be wondering about sourcing movement trays, which are functionally essential. If you’re in the UK, Warbases.co.uk will do you solid, pre-cut MDF movement trays of whatever size you want for a lot less money and time than buying and building the Citadel modular movement trays. If you’re using MDF trays, it’s a good idea to give them a primer spray so that the wood won’t absorb too much PVA glue when you’re applying texture.
How to Do Banners
Every time I come to do a banner for this army I am simultaneously nervous and excited, since each one is an opportunity to utterly f—ing send it. Is this how real banners look? No. Do I enjoy doing it anyway? Yes.
If you’re keen to try freehand painting but have no idea where to start, it was actually the subject of my first post for Goonhammer back in May 2020, featuring – among other things – a step by step tutorial on painting a banner from this very army.
The Hazards of Following Official Canon
The End Times books published in the runup to Age of Sigmar presented my gaming group with a problem. We had taken the narrative of the old Storm of Chaos supplement and Archaon’s mighty but ultimately unsuccessful invasion as canon, and built all our campaigns off the question what happened next? But then the End Times books arrived, and retconned all that.
We were all pretty used to following along with the official canon, participating in the gestalt community of Warhammer nerds, so splitting off into our own personal headcanon felt oddly disconnecting, even more so when the Old World was finally replaced by the Mortal Realms of Age of Sigmar. As more and more of the Old World’s miniatures were (quite understandably) retired to make way for newer sculpts that fit the Mortal Realms, the sense that it would be harder and harder to make new Fantasy Battle armies sapped my group’s enthusiasm.
Then came Warhammer: The Old World. Even just the announcement back in 2019 was a real shot in the arm. Objectively I realise this is ridiculous; it’s not that hard to get WFB miniatures, and our piles of shame/cairns of opportunity are well stocked. But even for a little gaming group like ours, the sense of being part of a wider community engaging in a living game seems to carry some emotional weight.
The announcement of The Old World coincided with my producing a campaign for the Border Princes and like the first shoots of spring in a Reikland meadow, our enthusiasm started coming back.
Then Covid happened. When we emerged on the other side, we were all terribly excited about playing Warhammer 40,000’s new Crusade mode, and Warhammer Fantasy Battle feel by the wayside for most of our group.
But with Warhammer: the Old World having finally released, some interest is rekindling. I suspect we’ll have another run at the Border Princes campaign, and depending on how happy I am with the campaign rules I wrote, you might just get updated rules here on Goonhammer.
The Army’s Campaigns
The Storm of Chaos Marathon
Possibly the stupidest event I’ve ever run or participated in. The Middenheim section of the army was all I had when I was working at the store, which was thematically perfect when we decided, in our finite wisdom, to celebrate Warhammer Fantasy Battle’s 25th anniversary by re-fighting the Storm of Chaos campaign in a single 25 hour session. I worked a full day, closed the shop, and then joined 12-15 players as we battled our way from Kislev to Middenheim. We battled through the night, we battled through the next working day as customers milled around asking why the shop was full of somnambulant zombies, and then when the store closed again, we met at the walls of Middenheim. Half of us battled while the weaker half collapsed on the floor.
While I’d like to say my favourite memory of that whole event was the thing itself, it was really the moment the night clubs kicked out their punters at three or four in the morning, and I had to explain to a drunk man and his posse why I wouldn’t let him into a venue containing kids.
Reconquering Hochland
This was the longest campaign in the army’s history. Back in 2012 when my gaming group first created thebeardbunker.com, we did so as a way to extol the joys of narrative gaming. To bake this in right at the ground floor we also kicked off a fantasy campaign, set in the Imperial State of Hochland, as it tried to rebuild after the Storm of Chaos. This wasn’t so much a formal campaign as a persistent storyworld. We’d discuss what the consequences of games would be, both before and after games, and adjust the map accordingly. Towns were razed, conquered, and rebuilt.
We all decided we’d start new armies as part of this, which gave me a chance to do something drastically different to my Middenheimers. Something greener. Orcs? Goblins? Wood Elves? No. The green-liveried and lean-slippered men of Hochland.
At first I’d use some of my Middenheim troops as allied auxiliaries, but as the Hochland force grew, I was eventually able to field nowt but locals. Some regiments, like the Heedenhof Greenleaves, have heraldry and origins directly tied to events in this campaign.
The campaign effectively ran from 2012 to 2019, when it had petered out sufficiently that we agreed to start the aforementioned campaign in the Border Princes.
But a story unconcluded is irksome, and while it made no sense to press on fighting over Hochland for the group as a whole, my own faction, my beloved Hochlanders, still had half their state to recapture, and Skaven to expel from Hergig. Thus in April 2022, I began a long-form roleplaying wargame campaign with two players, Drew and Jon, as a way of finding out how the story ends. This was essentially Sharpe in Hochland, so we inevitably called it Musket Bastards.
Musket Bastards began with Jon playing a haggard, drunken, down-on-his-luck regimental sergeant of the Schillings, a newly-recruited regiment of handgunners. Drew played a feisty young Bright Wizard on her first campaign. It became the Old World buddy cop drama content we didn’t know we needed.
As the campaign progressed over the next eighteen months, Drew and Jon could expand the regiment, level up their characters from unit champion stats up to heroes and eventually lords, and even recruit new regiments. This provided opportunities to paint new Empire miniatures, which of course was a real tragedy.
This campaign ended with the Siege of Hergig, a weekend-long cluster of scenarios played over a February weekend this year, twelve years after we first started battling over Hochland. The campaign had run more-or-less in real time, with characters ageing and changing (and, on occasion, dying).
It’s generally a bad idea to play a campaign with no specific end date; games should reach satisfying conclusions rather than fade away, but in this instance I will say I have enjoyed the sheer scope of what we’ve created in Hochland. It feels incredibly lived-in, and the slow march of time has made it feel more real, somehow. I can see returning to Hochland in the future, but in a far more self-contained way, and centred on a more limited geographical area, perhaps around a major town. That way we can have any narrative outcome without breaking the setting.
And who knows, with their state rebuilt, perhaps the army of Hochland will be sent out on campaign?
Unit Showcase
I won’t go through every unit, since… well, there’s a lot, and some are more interesting than others. This post is already significantly longer than my Cobalt Scions Space Marines showcase, although in fairness, this army is… somewhat larger.
Middenheim
This was the first section of the collection, painted with colours long since taken out of circulation. RIPigment, Scorched Brown.
Captain Lars Falkendorf
A knight of the Blazing Sun in his younger days, and now a tired old man forever telling his wife that he’s been asked to do just one more job by Count Todbringer. I f—ing love this model, even though it’s just a reasonably simple conversion: a bit of cutting and slicing to change the horse’s headdress, plus some kitbashing with the old state troops kit for the head, and arms from the knightly orders kit. The rearing horse has that ‘big damn hero’ energy, but he’s too tired for big grandiose arm movements, and his white beard hints at his age.
Knights of the Blazing Sun
A sod to paint back in the day. Liberator Gold is a game changer. This was one of my first proper forays into freehand painting, with a blazing sun on one side of the flag, and on the other side a Hoplite-adjacent figure representing warrior-goddess Myrmidia.
Great Cannon
Warhammer miniatures have, perhaps, an excess of characters pointing dramatically. There’s a pointing army in the Great Cannon kit, but not for the reasons the one might expect. This will be old news to many readers, but I love this detail nonetheless. The Perry twins had a hand in the older Empire minis, and their passion for historical accuracy means that, for once, the purpose of the pointing finger is to air seal the touch hole while the cannon is reloaded, helping to prevent the exact kind of premature ignition that cost Michael Perry his right hand.
Celestial Wizard Jadir El-Mudad
I rather assumed that an army of Middenheim would be tragically lacking in genetic diversity, but wizards travel far and wide. I imagine Jadir here has been all over the place in his search for esoteric knowledge.
This mini is one of the very few times I’ve experimented with object source lighting.
The Ulricsberg Stonewalls
There’s a few conversions in this meaty unit of greatswords. The comparatively simple one is the Vostroyan Imperial Guard banner bearer; it took some work to grind the Imperial Aquila off the back of the flag, and significantly less work to snip off his sword and replace it with one from the State Troops sprue. This guy, Kurt, is a relapsed knight and the estranged brother of Captain Falkendorf, guilt-tripped back from a pirate’s life on the coast of Araby to help defend his old home city and (perhaps more importantly) his ageing older brother. He serves as the battle standard bearer for my Middenheimers.
The only other detail of note with this unit is the unit champion, who I converted with a Flagellant head and Knightly Orders bitz to add a white fur cloak and greathammer, suggesting he’s a devotee of Ulric, the patron deity of the city.
Brother Marten
This converted Warrior Priest is cobbled together from various bitz. The head, torso and legs are from the Greatswords kit, but with a skirt and hoot sculpted from green stuff. The arms are from the Knightly Orders kit, with a shield from the State Troops box.
Nordland
The Salzenmund Chancers
After painting my original Middenheimers during 7th edition, I added these Nordlanders as reinforcements from a neighbouring state. I leant into the superstitious side of Imperial soldiery, with the sergeant’s shield painted as a large playing card, and an hourglass – often used to represent fate and death – holding symbols of luck within its two halves. On the reverse, I leaned into Nordland’s proud nautical heritage with a big f— off anchor and the regiment’s name.
Captain Stefan Rainer
I’ve always been happy with how this simple kitbash and its paintjob came out. Greatsword body and legs, Knightly Orders left arm, old State Troop head, and a right arm from the Pistoliers.
Maybe one day I’ll expand the Nordland contingent, but for now this remains a little isolated curio in a much bigger collection. Speaking of much bigger…
Hochland
The Powderkegs
This was one of the first regiments I made for the Hochlanders, and I was keen to inject plenty of character. Named for their inexperience with their own weapons, the crossbow bolts on their standard hint that, perhaps, the regiment has only recently switched from crossbows to handguns. So recently, in fact, that everyone else in Hochland’s state soldiery thinks of them as an utter liability. Chosen men? Hardly. Not that it stopped me giving them a sergeant with floppy blond hair. Regimental standard bearer and misfire survivor Blind Alfred serves to remind them all of the importance of keeping one’s gun in good working oder.
Putting a Warrior Priest in a missile regiment is stupid, but I did it anyway since I liked the look of these poor superstitious idiots wanting all the divine intervention they could get. On the upside, a Warrior Priest’s buffs can turn 20 missile mooks into a reasonable kicking when needed. It’s gotten me out of more scrapes than I expected. Not much more, but still. I regret nothing.
The Blades of Taal
As people from a mostly monotheistic culture, it’s easy for us to forget about all the Old World gods that aren’t Sigmar. With this regiment, I specifically wanted to call out Taal, the god of the wilds, with the deer skull on the banner. Keen to demonstrate they can venerate a god without cosplaying as them, the Blades are particularly well-dressed; the whole regiment is a kitbash of the Greatsword and State Troop kits, giving them an up-armoured and fancy look to contrast with the heraldry.
The Heedenhof Greenleaves
This regiment was founded during the Hochland campaign when the neighbouring town of Bergendorf was overrun by Emma’s Beastmen army. They had little steel and no red dye to hand, hence spears and purely green uniforms. For their banner, I depicted the bridge that joins the two towns, with the towns themselves represented by trees – one with foliage for Heedenhof, and one leafless to represent the sad fate of Bergendorf. On the flipside of the banner I painted crossed keys, with the keys suggesting city gates, and crossed because that’s a popular Hochland motif. Yes, indeed, I too own a copy of the lovely Uniforms & Heraldry of the Empire.
The Count’s Own/The Weissguard: one regiment, two command groups
As the campaign carried on, and Hochland rebuilt its army, I started painting extra command groups so that one blob of miniatures could represent different regiments. As an example, my greatswords have two command groups: one representing the Elector Count’s personal bodyguards, captained by his own cocksure daughter Rikke. With Hergig having fallen during Archaon’s invasion, Tussenhof became the acting capital, hence its name being on the banner. The alternate command group is for the Weissguard, the veteran defenders of Fort Schippel in the eastern Weiss Hills. With West and East thus covered, I could switch which regiment I was using depending on where the battle was taking place.
Flagellants
With half the state lying in ruins, doomsday cults seemed inevitable. Given their tendency to martyr themselves at the first opportunity, I wrote a random Sigmarite cult generator over on the Beard Bunker. Thanks to some dice rolls, this lot are the Reformed New Church of the End Times, whose leader believes himself to be Sigmar reborn.
The Hochland State Circus
Whimsy mode GO! This is just a detachment formed from the surviving company members of the circus that once drew the crowds in Hergig. There’s a bear with an eyepatch, a goblin jester, Puddings the Ogre, and absolutely no visible 1980s Citadel Ninjas.
The Order of the Silver Drake
This Order was almost wiped out during Archaon’s invasion, and I wanted this unit to represent all that was left: the Order’s de facto Inner Circle. I made each member unique, mixing in parts from the Greatswords kit. Since they’re in full plate, the sculpts are a little more androgynous than the rest of the Empire range, and I took the opportunity to have a Knightly Order than admits women into its ranks. The female heads are from Statuesque Miniatures.
Amelia von Lessing
I’ve done a number of Empire wizards over the years, and one day hope to have a wizard for each of the eight winds, but this is by far my most ambitious. Again, keen for ways to get women into the army, I saw the Dark Elf Sorceress miniature and decided, yeah, I can turn that into a tall human with some snipping and some green stuff. You can read a more detailed account of the conversion process, along with some tips on using green stuff, in this article on the Beard Bunker.
Count Aldebrand Ludenhof on Magrit the Griffon
This was a conversion that was half-done by my friend Maisey, who’d built a rider and lopped the High Elf off this Island of Blood Griffon. The original rider conversion was fine, but had a beefy face and a big old lance. I imagine Aldebrand Ludenhof – Hochland’s canonical count – to be a wiry man with an enthusiasm for falconry, so I re-converted the rider. Among the details I changed was taking the gaunt face from the Empire Battle Wizards kit and filing it down until it could fit in the spare helmet you get in the Greatswords box.
I put off painting this mini for years. I wanted to have some reasonably accurate plumage, but raptor plumage is intimidatingly complex. Eventually I adopted a looser style to get the mini done compared to my usual character paint jobs, since painted miniatures always look better than unpainted ones. You can see more angles and read more about the conversion and painting on the Beard Bunker.
Other Hochlanders
For the Emperor!
This army is almost old enough to vote, and I love it just as much now as I did at the beginning. When I look at them in the cabinet, I am immediately reminded of time spent with good friends, laughing at misfiring cannons, and revelling in the men and women of the Empire facing down the horrors of the Old World. If I’m very lucky, something in this post will have sparked an idea for someone reading this, and that idea might just grow into a stalwart band of superstitious, mildly terrified men huddled around a brightly coloured banner as the forces of darkness close in around them.
If you have questions about starting an Empire army of your own, or thoughts and feelings about flags, beards, and/or heraldry, drop a comment or email contact@goonhammer.com. If you’re one of our Patreon supporters, you can also @ me on the Goonhammer Discord server. Be well, my brothers and sisters in Sigmar.
