Huzzah! Airship progress!

 After a lot of work, I've finally managed to make some progress on the airship.

I know it's not the clearest of pictures (Ill try and get some better ones tomorrow), but as you can see, the prow of the ship is finished and the sides are pretty much done as well.

This means that the hull is nearly complete now, allowing me to to get to work on the detailing and the gas balloon.

I have to say, even getting to this stage is making me very happy indeed. This thing's been sitting half finished on my shelf for nearly two years now and seeing the progress I'm now making is a good feeling.

Hopefully I'll actually get it finished this time

1000pt Rifleman List

I've worked out a 1000pt list for my empire force, to get me by until
I can buy the models and bitz to finish up the other 1000 points, which
could take a while as i'm trying to find large quantities of the old-style
Handgunners after quickly getting sick and tired out the hunchbacked
new-style ones.

Anyhoo, here's what I've got for the first half of the list. Hopefully it's fairly
competitive. Perhaps any Empire players out there reading this could let me
know what they think of it

Engineer Markus - Long rifle, pigeon bombs

Golbert Golfunger - battle wizard with power stone, dragon bow

15 handgunners, marksman has repeater handgun

12 handgunners, marksman has hochland long rifle

8 outriders, champion has grenade blunderbuss

'the hellbringer'- helstorm rocket battery

'wrath of karen' - helblaster volley gun

Dwarf allies- 10 handgunners

Engineer-Seargent Lozorro

I originally bought and painted this guy to be an airship crew member, but after the winged contraption took several nose-dives off its flying standing due to the fact that he's metal, he got reassigned to the role of Marksman for my Nuln Ironsides unit.

The rest of the unit will follow when I get a chance to take pictures. Uni deadlines are closing in, meaning my world is currently a whirl of caffeine, late nights and library sessions.

Normality should hopefully be restored by the tenth of may. Hopefully. Either that or my sanity will finally give out, we shall see...

Engineer Markus and his not-so-Mechanical Steed

This is going to be my engineer on a mechanical steed, except the twist is that it's not as mechanical as most...

Looking at the rules for the clockwork horse, the only difference between it and a barded steed is the Brass Globe that somehow generates Impact Hits.

Now, seeing as i'm planning on using the official Mechanicl Steed model for a Clockwork Pegasus conversion later on in the project, i don't want to use the same model for two characters, so i figured an engineer who can't afford a mechanical steed would make do with the next best thing - strapping the impact hit-generating brass globe to a horses head!

I'm green-stuffing ballistic armour onto the horses flanks to represent the barding, seeing as having a horse covered in metal around lightning is a really bad idea for the poor horse and the even poorer rider (now i come to think of it, it's a really bad design flaw for the proper mechanical horse too).

Next post I'll hopefully be able to show you the Airship mounted on a base and my take on the new Nuln Ironsides unit from Warhammer Forge

Volley Gun and Dwarfs

Here's my first war machine for my Nuln army almost finished, complete with Dwarf advisor, who I'm sure will offer much grumbling and cursing about humans and the 'proper' way to operate a war machine (not even a full beard between them...grumble...).

I'm planning on having all my war machines have at least one Dwarf each for two reasons: 1. I have the models knockign around from Battle for Skull Pass, and 2. even the famed marksmen of the famous and celebrated Imperial Gunnery School can always benefit from advice from the race that developed the handguns before the Empire was even born.

I'm also planning to use these guys as a detachment for a much large Handgunner unit...



The weird thing in the musicians trumpets is going to be painted up as an experimental device that's being 'field tested' - counting as just a handgun. I figure dwarfs living away from their holds would be far more open to experimentation than the more old-fashoined Engineers in the mountains (this is probably the reason why they aren't still living in the mountains in the first place)

I'll have pics of my first full handgunner units very soon

Airship Pilot and gubbins

This is 'Skraggy' Thror (There's Cookies and Nerd points to anyone who can tell me where the name comes from), an Engineer assigned to Von Nearostaffens control, who's been convinced to become the test pilot for the flying machine.

He's been converted from the Helstorm/Helblaster crewmen and the Outrider kit.

The base he's on is a temporary thing. Eventually he's going to be mounted on the prow of the machine, bawling instructions to his subordinates.

Talking of the airship, here's how it's coming along...





As you can see the deck is coming along nicely and I've added a squat dwarfen cannon to the front to represent the steam cannon (I'm going to use the Steam Tank rules for it)

I've also started work on the gas bag, using artists gum tape around a drinks bottle to form the shape of it, then using green stuff to start creating the ropes and rigging that's going to tether it to the hull of the ship



and here's the base i'm creating for it, mid-paint. It's going to bethe job from hell trying to get the ship to stay on the flying stand but it'll be worth it




There'll be more Empire progress shown very soon guys, I just need more pictures

The Winged Contraption of Hedvig von Nearostaffen

Has anyone worked it out?





It's the start of a Steam Powered airship that I'm building for my planned Nuln-based Empire force, after being inspired by seeing this on Warseer (scroll down a bit to see it).

It'll be a very slow project due to my lack of funds until May (gods bless student loans), but i have a large supply of plasticard and no less than 12 bitz boxes to draw on, so i'm cobbling together what i can.

Anyway, turning our attention back to the Winged Contraption itself, my aim is to create a set of wings to propel it forward similar to Leonardo De Vinci's flying machine and having it held aloft by a Zeppelin-style gas bag. Hopefully it should turn out looking awesome, but I'll just have wait and see.

What do people think so far?