How do you start oldhammer - Leadplague style

Following the Whiskey Priest's brilliant article, I decided to give a go to starting from scratch an oldhammery war band start.

The rules are simple :

"I'm calling for volunteers!

This is the plan!

Let's put on a game. It can be small at first. Building to a campaign in time. The idea is all about showing what is possible without having to remortgage your house, lie to your wife about the amount of little brown packages and selling your soul.

We need some blokes (if there are women out there reading this then we need you too!) to commit.

We each make a warband - a tiny army - a posse, based in the Warhammer world. A maximum of 21 figures. Two units of 10 and a hero or any similar configuration. You are entirely free to do what you want!

The figures must be either a) insultingly cheap from ebay or b) easily bought from current manufacturer.

We open a thread on the Oldhammer Forum to show what we are doing, where we got our figs, WIP's and discussions of our fluff for our warbands. And then, when it's all ready!"

So, 2 units of 10 and a hero?

But what army to start with? Well, since I don't want to get caught in starting a new army I'll have to expand later (remember this article). So Chaos, Bretonnians or Undead it is then...

The other rule helped me make my choice : Dirt cheap

I've just happened to buy a Battlemasters complete box for 10€ (that's 8,2£ or 13,5$ to you ;) ). Considering there are about 100 models in the box, you can do the math but the price per model is the closest thing to dirt cheap I could come up with.

Though the previous paintjob had a certain retro appeal. I decided to dettol it to get something new.

I opted for the 10 chaos wariors and the 10 archer thugs of the box. The plan here is to add these to my chaos army if I will (filling empty slots in my army list in the process).

The chaos warriors haven't been converted much (just enough to get a standard bearer and champion actually) but I do plan on adding some details on the shields (following Nico's example) but nothing too time consumming. I removed the tabs of all warriors since it would have been impossble to rank them correctly. I took this opportunity to rank them on 4 different levels though being on just 2 actual ranks. I find this gives them a better depth and breaks the monotony of the "mono pose effect".

The archer thugs have all been altered but one who can keep his punk crest like those of the famous marauder range. I changed the heads for some bretonnian peasants' ones because I like how they look grotesque. It somehow reminds me of early John Blanche illustrations in the "sorcery" adventure books by Steve "Fantasy God" Jackson (More pics to be found to show what I mean).

Having just read some very old WD articles, I decided to use my Asgard lord of Chaos (recently bought from alternative armies with -20%) as a leader for this war band. Just look at fig 6 in page 46 HERE (or first picture above) and dare tell me Fraser Gray's sublime diorama doesn't make you  salivate...). This lord looks perfect to lead the warriors since they share the same kind of design and weapons. I'll try to do my best on this model to make it stand on the tabletop. 

This choice of leader is perfect for this occasion since he is as Oldhammer as it gets being an old Asgard reference AND he is still available and quite cheap actually (and sculpted by Jes Goodwin if I'm correct). I have to say I kinda impulse bought the lot and the details are just amazing considering the age of the range. A very lovely and cost-efficient buy...

The army so far before some GS work, basing and painting. I'm looking for speedpainting here (except for the lord of course). So I'll try to come up with quick and satisfying techniques.

For those worried for me after this article, rest assured the redemptionists issue has ben solved (by finding a complete redemptionists unit mislabeled as "inquisitor henchmen", MWAHAHA)

I guess we all agree they look better this way...

Some painted models to come soon, don't know if ot will be good ore veil which makes it first though...