The Empire; War Altar conversion
Yesterday, I went in search of some esteemed Empire commanders and found Ead Brown and Andy Keddie. They were both more than happy to have their miniatures photographed and to dispense some wisdom on how to win battles with the armies of the Empire.
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Greatswords are one of the Empire's hittier units. At Strength five they can chop through even well-armoured foes, and their high Weapon Skill means they'll land plenty of blows. Ead uses his Greatswords as a horde to allow all of them to fight. He's added a couple of characters to the unit to augment them further: the Warrior Priest allows them to re-roll missed Attacks and the Battle Standard Bearer carries the Griffon Standard, which doubles their rank bonus when calculating combat resolution. Ead never fields an Empire army without his unit of Greatswords.
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This Warrior Priest is the first model Andy has painted for his new Empire army (because of course a new version of Warhammer demanded a new army!). You'll notice he's painted it using the non-metallic metal technique, something he has been practising lately. The armour was basecoated with Codex Grey and then washed with Badab Black. Andy then highlighted it with Codex Grey, a 1:1 mix of Codex Grey and Fortress Grey and then Fortress Grey. He then created the 'sheen' effect by washing one half of it with Hawk Turquoise and the other with Liche Purple.
As Andy is just starting out with his Empire army, I asked him what he's thinking of adding next, and what he thinks would be good purchases for anyone else beginning an Empire force.
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Great Cannons have always been powerful; able to slay monsters and mow down entire units of elite cavalry. Now that you don't need to guess the range they're far more reliable. I'd suggest you include at least two in your army.
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An Empire army needs loads of infantry to win the day, so buying plenty of State Troops will always keep an Empire fan happy.
You'll have noticed that both Andy and Ead have Warrior Priests in their forces (Luthor Huss and the Arch Lector are basically beefed up Warrior Priests), which is because they're so useful. As Andy put it, 'they're the best of both worlds - both warriors and mages.' Warrior Priests are also really reliable - their prayers are easy to cast, which frees up power dice for your Battle Wizards. The other great thing about them is that they imbue any unit they join with Hatred - imagine how much more damage your Empire units will do when they can re-roll missed attacks! As Warrior Priests don't costs many point, you can include several in your army and make all of your key units more effective. And there are quite a few different Warrior Priest models available, so you needn't have the same one twice.