I’ve always rather fancied an Empire army. All those stylish men with their smart jackets, enormous hats and silly moustaches standing firm in the name of civilisation with nothing but faith, cold steel, black-powder and ridiculous wizard-powered contraptions. I even painted up a couple of heroes for the Empire collection I almost started and, given that I’ve got Warhammer on the brain at the moment, now seemed like a very good time to show them off.First of all there’s this captain, just waiting for an army to command. Sadly as I’ve remained stubbornly focussed on the grim darkness of the far future he’s been waiting for a while, and it doesn’t look like his fortunes are going to change any time soon.
He’s not completely alone however, as I’ve also painted this Celestial Wizard. His crystal ball allows him to peer into the depths of space for suitable comets to drop on his enemies’ heads – or perhaps an Imperial Crusade Fleet, which might have seen to it that the End Times ended rather differently. I’d keep your head down Sonny-Jim – it’ll be the Black Ships for you if that ever happens.
They may not look like much but they still outnumber my Warriors of Chaos army two to one!
Convert or Die 
May 30th, 2016 at 7:14 am
Very nice mate. I don’t havef any Empire miniatures but have just and only just started to be interested in them. I’m always fashionably late though as GW is slowly phasing them out. The same thing happened with the Bretonnians. I managed to buy a couple of goodies though. I really like the appropriately flamboyant colours you’ve chosen. The Captain is my favourite.
May 30th, 2016 at 10:11 am
Aye, fashionably late is the order of the day for me with Warhammer. Never really saw the appeal until it went away. Never liked square based until they went over to round. Some might say I’m contrary…
May 30th, 2016 at 7:24 am
Awesome dude. You should base them on round bases, it looks better. I wonder where Empire (or Free People as they are called now) will go, how much will the look and feel change. I love this flamboyant look with feathers and stuff. I guess the priest from Silver Tower give some clues.
May 30th, 2016 at 10:26 am
Cheers! Yeah, it’ll be interesting to see how the Free People develops. The Empire always had a really distinct look to them that was almost unique in fantasy miniatures. They weren’t straight-forward knights, grubby peasants or religious fanatics, but their own culture. It’ll be a shame if they move away from that but I’ve generally liked what they’ve done with the other races they’ve explored in AoS (Stormcasts aren’t really my cup of tea, too generic, but there’s some real gems in there all the same). If the new Aelfs follow the theme set by the two in Silver Tower I’ll be very excited indeed.
As for the square bases vs round I’m really in two minds about it. Up until they went over to round bases I really disliked square but, possibly out of pure fickleness, I’m rather fond of them now. As I don’t play either game it doesn’t really matter (and if I did decide to bases don’t matter in AoS and some clever high-jinks with movement trays would allow round bases into WHFB – as daemon players have been doing for years). I really like the look of a Warhammer army neatly ranked up (even though it can be a real pain to achieve sometimes) but it does seem a little daft to pour effort into a nice model, getting it looking as good as possible, then hiding it in the middle of the back rank. At the moment I’m inclined towards square, mainly because I’m too lazy to start rebasing anyone but I might well change my mind!
May 30th, 2016 at 6:45 pm
I don’t now if I liked the Silver Tower priest really, a like bit too much Ancient Greece (not really but that was my first impression) and too little witch hunter cleric of 15-16th century central Europe. He felt off to me. But I’m sure that the range will look great once it drops. Just like Aelfs, they will probably be outstanding.
May 30th, 2016 at 8:45 pm
Until you said that I hadn’t really given him much thought, other than that for me he was the weak link in the silver tower. You’re right though, I think I was expecting something similar to the old warrior priests (which were awesome) and that’s not fair because that’s not what he is any more than the Fyreslayers are Slayers. In many ways he has much more in common with the Stormcasts than with an Empire state-trooper, which I suppose is deliberate. If they were just going to keep using the same imagery as they had in the Old World there wouldn’t have been much point in blowing it up. I suppose I’m confident and curious about the new lines that are coming, but I still wish I knew which old models are due to survive and which are still for the chop.
May 30th, 2016 at 8:50 am
Very nice – I love how dapper the Captain is looking, while the wizard manages to look quite sinister despite being a ‘goody’!
May 30th, 2016 at 10:30 am
Cheers mate – very much the vibe I was going for. I wanted the Captain to look like a real dandy (height of fashion meets aristo-ego) whereas the Wizard is an ordinary bloke who meddles with dark powers on a daily basis.
May 30th, 2016 at 3:14 pm
Ooo the blues are *very* pretty! Also I want a moustache 😦
May 30th, 2016 at 3:38 pm
And a feathery hat to go with it?
May 31st, 2016 at 5:05 pm
Nah, I have my own hats – they have flowers on and everything!