Creating the Grudgebringers in Miniature

Ever since I first played Warhammer Dark Omen in the late 1990's I have planned to recreate the mercenary force; The Grudgebringers in miniature. 

I had previously created an Empire force, from Altdorf that was inspired by the game, and was based in Sudenburg in Southlands, whose arch enemies were the Tomb King force I collected. This never proved satisfactory for me, I still wanted to create the force in full. 

I had collected miniatures for Empire, from about 2004 but mostly used historical miniatures for the bulk of the forces I used from about 2010 to 2015. It took until Lockdown to begin for me to actually take action and begin to actually create the Grudgebringers.

I firstly created the Grudgebringer Crossbowmen as I already had the Marksmen of Mirigliano, I had to strip the miniatures from my Averland colour scheme, which I had painted a dark green on their robes. 

I repainted them in colours of Talabecland, maroon and yellow. They are led by corporal Wilhem Felcther, with the unit totaling 16 men in the regiment. This was a pretty straightforward unit to create for the tabletop. 

The next unit came with some ebay hunting to get some 6th edition state troops, as I had heard bad things about the 7th edition sculpts, (unfairly tbh now I've built many of them for Old World). These were more labour intensive as I had to repair and clean a variety of Ebay minis, and having left some minis to soak in cleaning alcohol for a long time I think i lost some of the details in the sculpts for when it came time to paint. I have a plan to replace these soon by kitbashing a unit of plastic greatswords with sword arms and shields. 

 I have cleaned up the bases since taking this picture as this was just having them dunked in the basing material, not too happy with the paint job but fine for the tabletop. Led by Lieutenant Gunther Schepke, (A Black Scorpion Miniature Mercenary) the 20 swordsmen are in the Stir River Patrol colours but with red trousers, with may be pushed to the back ranks for table tops in the future. 

The Grudgebringer cannon with Engineer, Wolfgang Schwartzkopf. I went for the scenic base rather than free basing it. The Engineer is a spare Steam Tank commander. I still need to do a free hand design for the banner (same for the Swordsmen and Crossbowmen actually.)

The final unit was the largest project was the Grudgebringer Cavalry and Commander Morgan Bernhardt. The Commander was the mounted part of Empire General kit sourced from Ebay at a much higher cost. With a head, flaming sword and shoulder guards from Anvil Industries.

The Cavalry are mostly pistolier parts with Anvil Industries Shoulder pads and state troop swords, to help them match the game aesthetic. 

With the new Renegade Crowns list it will be fun to run them as is, so Heavy Armour, Shields, no Barding. In competitive games I will probably go with straight Empire or Free State of Nuln, but these were never meant to be competitive. I've attached some more pictures of the force altogether. I have played two old world games with them and won both times. They add up to roughly 1250 with a level 2 wizard included, when being used as Empire. 15 Inner Circle Knights is a bit of a Sledgehammer unit on the charge. 

I'm glad I have created a force I had dreamed about creating since my childhood, and it only took 25 years to come into fruition. Anyways thanks for reading and never give up on those passion projects!

Life on the Marches - Hobby Background and History 1998-2023

Hello and Welcome!

I have started this blog to keep a track of my Hobby progress and love for the world of Warhammer fantasy.

I have always loved the Warhammer fantasy setting, from first learning to play at Beginners Sundays at Games Workshop Warrington, and playing Warhammer Dark Omen on my Dad's PC, still an absolute favourite! I love the world, the lore and the characters of this setting. Being mad on history, I found the grittiness and historically inspired factions brilliant. Encouraged by my Dad's love of Lord of the Rings, I dived into collecting High Elves and have never looked back! I began collecting the game when the Ravening Hordes splat book was being used as a stop gap between 5th and 6th editions and would write army lists for every faction, I would pour over the 5th Edition rulebooks and battle books and was gifted Black Library novels which I got to read whilst in the last year or two of primary school. 

This suddenly dropped off, when I fell out with my cousins who were my main opponents over some petty issue or the other. I got into World War 2 history and began to follow that path of building countless 1:72 scale tanks and boxes of Revel figures. I soon was using fantasy battle rules to play games with my WW2 minis and other strange things - I certainly remember having Lizardmen represent invading aliens for a massive WW2 game up in the loft which must have gone on for an entire summer Holiday. 

My association with Games Workshop returned with the launch of the Lord of the Rings game in 2001 I short sightedly gave away my High Elves to a good friend when I started collecting Lord of the Rings, as I saw this as the only game I would ever need from now on! Which was true until a few months after the movies finished, and Games Workshop slowed down the pace of releases. (Although the 2004 Shadow and Flame Book was absolutely brilliant!)

My first foray into the Empire began in 2004, having joined  my local club to play on a Saturday a few years before, and with the LOTR system losing its lustre |I soon returned to Warhammer Fantasy Battles 6th Edition.

Having always been a fan of the regular man in the fantastical setting, I landed on Empire as my faction of choice especially with the beautiful Artwork and story sections in the 6th Edition Rulebook. So armed with a copy of the Empire 6th Ed. army book also kindly donated by another friend, the Altdorf Expeditionary Force was created, with many of the core units disappearing to Facebook Market Place over the years, I am still happy to have kept some of these models for the last twenty years including a regiment of 18 Metal Greatswords, most of the Artillery and a few characters which are all currently awaiting repainting. This was a time of Floorhammer, massively lopsided battles that were started and rarely finished before parents came to pick people up. and the forming of long lasting friendships.

My late teens saw a drop off in the hobby, not after a foray into Tomb Kings and Dark Elves, again regrettably sold to fund other projects! Missing most of 7th Edition whilst at Sixth form and the first year of University was a shame, and ultimately I have little memory of the 7th Ed. ruleset. Meaning that I returned to the Hobby in time for 8th Edition, initially with my Dark Elves but soon returning to Empire with the release of the army book. I plan to do some separate posts about the differnt editions over time.  

 Being a student meant I could not afford the GW prices for the Hobby for the large units 8th Ed. required and I soon discovered Historical miniatures could fill the gap. Using a vast array of the Perry miniatures War of the Roses Mercenaries to fill out quite a sizeable Empire force from Averland. 

My Army Lore followed the story of the Count Gottfried Von Hochsleben, second son of the Graf Von Grenzstadt defenders of the Southern routes into the Empire during the Wars of the Three Emperors. My army totaled about 5,000 points of painted minis, from a variety of sellers and some GW centre price models. Along with a further 5,000  unpainted.  This time probably counted for my highest involvement in the Hobby between 2010 - 2015. I regularly played fantasy at the Wardens of the North Gaming club in Wigan (Which is still going, although I am no longer a member, they're great guys). As well as at Games Workshop Wigan for a time, with my Dark Elves. 

2015 saw the death of the Old World and unfortunately, a swift exodus of Warhammer Fantasy players who no longer held interest in playing an unsupported game. I did not transition to play Age of Sigmar, nor have I ever played 40K. I drifted towards Dungeons and Dragons for several years, and collected Bolt Action forces and other games for a time but never with the same passion as I had for Fantasy.

Necromunda was a game I always wanted to play and I started with the 2017 boxset, but found no uptake from my friendship group, I collected but never really played until Lockdown with my Partner. 

Lockdown and the announcement of Warhammer the Old World did help rekindle my passion for Fantasy and I slowly began piecing together an Empire force inspired by the Grudgebringer Mercenary force from the Warhammer Dark Omen Games, with the Initial Grudgebringer force of Morgan Bernhardt, 15 Grudgebringer Knights, 20 Grudgebringer Swordsmen, 16 Crossbowmen and the Grudgebringer Cannon being painted by 2023. I also began to collect opposing armies, in prepartaion for a long awaited recreation of the Warhammer Dark Omen game campaign on the table top (Watch this space!)

Just in time for the release of Old World... 

In my next post I will talk about my plans for my Old World Empire Force and the rebirth of my Grudgebringers force witht he new Renagde Crowns Army of Infamy!

Thanks for reading!

Cal