WiP Wednesday 22/05/24: First Rank Fire, Second Rank Fire

This week (and next) is all about ranged infantry. Having finally finished up the Chaos Dwarf Infernal Guard that represented March’s slow grow target, I’m now looking at April and May’s commitments, which are actually identical.

For April, I wanted to do 10 handgunners for the Empire army and 10 blunderbusses for the Chaos Dwarfs. For May, I wanted to do 10 handgunners for the Empire army and 10 blunderbusses for the Chaos Dwarfs. Once again, all of these miniatures are from Titan Forge Miniatures.

There’s a slight bit of fiddliness in that I have actually printed 19 handgunners and a pair of engineers. I’m not going to be using engineers in the army, so intend to use these long-rifle-armed miniatures as champions in the units. Two will give me a champion for each unit of 10. An extra handgunner miniature will give me the option of taking one of the champions out and fielding a unit of 20.

They’re probably not going to be done for end of May, but with my Wizard and Seneschal already done for June, that month will be invaluable as a catchup month. Looking ahead to July, I’m not sure what I want to build. I was considering a unit of Flagellants for the Empire to fit in with the crusadery theme, or some “Demigryph Knights” that will actually be riding large bulls. I think it’s more likely that I’ll go for the Flagellants, but we’ll see. For the Chaos Dwarfs, I will likely either do some Bull Centaurs or an artillery piece. Eventually, I’d like to have both but I’ll likely go for the artillery first.

I’m also swithering over whether to paint up 10 Plague Censer Bearers for the Skaven. I’ve already printed them, but I know they’re going away in the new edition. I do wonder if this is a permanent change, or whether it’s just until the new models are released. They did, after all, say that Clanrats were going away, but that was just to get new models. We’ll see. Part of me wants to paint them just for the fun of it because the prints are quite nice. I could always use a couple of them as plague priests if required… though again the Plague Priest appears to be on the chopping block as well.