More city guards!

Hello everyone,

I’ve finished a few new figures: three new members of the Malko City Guard.

Among them is Captain Erwin Moretti, the son of a descendant of those who were forced to flee Reikland with the first Lord of Malko, and a Tilean merchant’s daughter.

He has been leading the City Guard’s halberdiers for many years and attaches great importance to appropriate attire (and good food too, from what one hears...).

Somewhere in the Border Princes...

As I promised earlier, I’d like to establish a sort of overarching story or plot for all my future and past Warhammer projects. Hopefully, this will, on the one hand, motivate me to keep developing these projects, and on the other, give the units and heroes more character.

I’ve chosen the Border Princes as the setting because there’s still a fair bit of freedom there to ‘make things up’ or not have to take the existing lore entirely at face value. 

I don’t want to give everything away just yet, but a lot of it will revolve around the city of Malko, which lies a little north of the Black Gulf on the River Treblecz. 

 

In the official lore, the city is described as relatively large and well-fortified, though with wooden palisades, which I’m not too keen on. 
In my imagination, the city is a bit larger and has strong walls, a bit like a northern Italian town.

Given the Black Mountains to the north, I imagine the Tilean influence on the region to be stronger than that of the Empire, which will be reflected to some extent in the local buildings, customs and clothing. 

In the existing lore, there is also only a mayor as leader of the town; I’ll turn this into a baron or count whose ancestors were forced to flee the Empire long ago. Through marriage to a Tilean princess, the ties to Tilea are very strong, which will become important later on.

Malko is renowned for being the breadbasket of the Border Princes. It appears that the lands surrounding the city are very fertile, and the grain is exported far and wide across the Old World. Its relative proximity to the Old Silk Road further enhances the importance of trade and accounts for the city’s wealth. 
Malko’s wealth is arguably exceptional for the Border Princes and must be adequately protected.

Thanks to his connections with Tilea, the city’s lord has many mercenaries under contract. Furthermore, the city militia and the small standing army – some of whom have been trained by Tilean military personnel – are inspired by Tilea and represent a force to be reckoned with in the Border Princes.

Due to the frequent orc attacks, the city’s troops are experienced fighters led by outstanding officers. 

One of the troops’ most important tasks is to keep the River Treblecz clear to ensure the free trade in grain. 
Small outposts and watchtowers have been erected along the river, all the way to its mouth at the Black Gulf, to provide early warning of raids by Orcs, pirates or envious princes, and to hold out for a time until reinforcements arrive.

So far, so good – more to follow soon!
I plan to build the bulk of the army using standard Imperial miniatures, but capture that Tilean flavour through a few conversions and the colour schemes. I also have a few mercenary regiments that are finally due a paintjob!
 

And here’s a first test miniature. It’s a brave warrior from the Malko City Guard, which will form several units and are called upon to deploy relatively often.

I hope you enjoyed this little excursion; hopefully there’ll be more of the same soon!

Gotrek and Felix will also play an important role....

Gotrek and Felix - Finally done!

I know it’s hard to believe, but: Gotrek and Felix are finished!

It really has been a very long journey, almost as if I’d trudged all the way from Altdorf to the Chaos Wastes on my own, without an airship to take me there.

I started on sculpting Gotrek over a year ago and thought I’d be able to finish the project in a couple of weeks. We’d even planned to do a presentation with the figures at the Szenario Con 2026! That didn’t work out in the end, but at least the figures are finished now.

Gotrek was painted a bit quicker than Felix, there aren’t that many different colours on him. The skin and, above all, the hair were quite challenging, though! I hate painting hair. But with dwarves, there’s really no getting round it.

The tattoos weren’t exactly a walk in the park either, but it turned out all right in the end. Don’t look too closely – they’re not identical on the left and right arms! Maybe they’re supposed to be, but I’ve no idea :D

It also turned out that I’d sculpted the intricate decorations on the axe too finely, which made painting them almost impossible. I ended up just using loads of washes, and didn’t show that area very clearly in the photos! 

I have to say, these have been a few productive weeks. Lots of projects that I’d been dreading for months are now finished.

Next, I think I’ll spend a bit of time fine-tuning my next project, my Border Princes campaign. Watch this space!

Gotrek and Felix are currently staying at a rather nice coaching inn somewhere on the southern edge of the Vaults, with a bunch of shady characters nearby...

Felix Jaeger

Like I promised: after the Austrians and the Prince on Griffon, I’ve finally got round to work on Gotrek and Felix.

I started with Felix this week (and actually managed to finish him – with the current heat outside, there’s nothing else to do anyway but sit indoors..):

 

I really enjoyed painting him, probably the first ‘normal’ 28mm figure since my Steel Legion tests I did a while ago. 

It didn’t turn out perfectly; unfortunately, I much prefer the back of the cloak to the front (mainly because of the dirt), but what can you do! Now he’s finished, and I can get on with Gotrek.

It really has taken long enough for me to get round to painting these figures.

I’m currently sketching out a little backstory for all my current and future Warhammer projects by the way!

This much I can reveal: it’s set in the Border Princes. 

And Gotrek and Felix will, of course, play a crucial role…

Gotrek and Felix ready for painting

Here they are, the biggest heroes of the Empire:

Gotrek and Felix!

I finally manged to do the bases for these two, and print print them at a decent quality. I did a lot of changes to Felix a few weeks ago, like making the sword thicker, and some improvements on the cloth as well. 

Now they will sit at the back of my painting table and will only be painted once I have finished my Austrian army :D I hope this motivation works...

Of course I had to add some skulls to the bases... It's Warhammer after all!

Really looking forward to painting them, so I better start working on the last two Austrian units.

 

All the best

Lucas  

 

Gotrek and Felix

Over the last few months, I've delved deep into the world of Warhammer and listened to the first 13 Gotrek and Felix novels as audiobooks.

I didn't expect much at first, but the books truly captivated me, keeping my motivation for Warhammer at a very high level.

During this time, my good friend Marc and I considered creating a small Gotrek and Felix vs. Beastmen presentation for the Scenario Con 2026.

Since I couldn't get the books out of my head for months, I started 3D modeling the two titular heroes of the novels around the same time. The goal was to have relatively "modern" versions of the figures that would better match the current Beastmen models. I used the wonderful illustration by Johan Grenier as a template. His artwork adorned the first omnibus edition of the novels I bought. I did have to make a few small changes, though; the sword hilt and shoulder armor of Felix felt too far removed from the books for me.

I started with Gotrek months ago, but due to work and various other things, I couldn't dedicate much time to the figures each week, so the project took about 6 months in total. I was able to finish Felix a bit quicker, but I also dedicated an entire Saturday to him to speed things up.

The result is two figures that I am quite satisfied with! They're not truly perfect, and a lot could still be changed, but I think for the time I invested, they are good enough for now.

I will now print the two for testing and probably adjust the size and scaling a bit... Warhammer proportions are always quite difficult to nail down.

I hope you like them!