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!