Feudal Fantasy Freefolk (FFF)

Hi,

as a follow up to yesterday's post of the general theme of the project, now a further detailing of the primary force. As said in the other post, the army started out as an army for Age of Sigmar, but I had in my mind all the time that I can use it for other stuff as well. Mainly it was a good excuse to paint some models that I had collected along the years without a proper home and some other models that I happened to like. Main body of the force are made from Perry plastics, that are some of my favourite kits ever produced by any company. The models are characterful, have nice details and realistic proportions. I'm not so interested on "button counting" historical wargaming so by fantasyfying them, I had the opportunity to use all of them, without spending too much energy on contemplating if something is wrong for the period.

The project was heavily inspired by the Dark Age of Sigmar community and the main theme on the force is to visualize ordinary folk living in a world which is so full of life that the plants literally start growing on the people themselves and the days of the peasants go in the endless cultivation and reeding of their crops to prevent them growing full. On the plus side it also means that the bounty is plentiful. Big inspiration are the peasants in the Monty Python and the Holy Grail.

The project started when I bought these guys in a whim while visiting the Warhammer store in Helsinki. The models were first "new style" plastic kits I had bought after the initial 3D sculpted stuff that left a bit of a sour taste to my mouth with their details. These on the other hand were fantastic models, even if the building guide was surely needed when doing them. They were also fun to paint, I airbrushed the base colour of browns and greens and then highlighted it by adding more ochre and ivory to the mixture. Then the models were heavily washed with dark green brown colour and the details picked out. I chose purple wash for the metal parts to make them look strange and made out of something else than steel.

These were done similarly and everything about the Kurnoth hunters applies to these as well. The spite revenant bits of the kit were also nice for other units. I someday have to get the Start collecting kit to add the treeman in to he mix and to have some dryads and the Branchwych to lead this unit and up the unit size to six for Dragon rampant. We are about to have a generic non-game dependent fantasy campaign in the start of next year at our club, so that'll be a likely timing for that.

These are examples of my common town guard. I have currently 30 pole-arm armed troops, 10 crossbowmen, 12 archers and 5 knights plus the hero bit lower. All models are based on the Perry plastics with some additional bits from my bitz box thrown in. There are few unlucky soldiers who have felt the kiss of life and have branches sticking out from their backs.

The Green Shaman has called the treefolk to defend the town. The Truthsayer was half painted since the Albion campaign and is suitably imposing along with the Perry models :)

The Assassin strikes from the shadows. The great model is unconverted from the Freebooter's fate range. 

The Duke is made from mixture of Perry and GW bitz. I gave him a black horse to gie nice contrast for the white armour. The pic is bit blurry, sorry for that.

The Briar Knight strikes quickly from the woods, only to disappear again. The model is from Mierce miniatures with some bits added from the Kurnoth sprues.

Here is a group photo, along with some Dwarven allies from nearby hills.

Some closer shots of the terrain, better presented in the overall shots in the last post.

An Elven lord from the mountaintops with his Eagle companion. Models that had been in a box at my shelf for ages. I have plans on getting a Dragon for the Elven lord and converting the foot version of the Mierce knight to a Griffon mounted human general as I really want a Dragon and I always play the elven lord as Freeguild general on Griffon in AoS due to army list reasons. I mostly play with The Living City from the Firestorm campaign book, and they don't get elves. Also the Freeguild general's abilities work better with the army as whole.

Newest addition have been these Valkyrians. Made from GW Sisters of Silence with hands/weapons and heads from Perry foot knights. I have 15 of them, with 5 of them armed with bows. They are naturally played as Stormcast Liberators/Judicators. They also look tiny next to the real Sigmarines, but suitably imposing along the Perry rank and file as in the photo below.

Next steps for this force is to build and paint more basic soldiers. I have plans on doing some mercenary pikemen using the Warlord 30 years war kits that I acquired recently very cheaply (60+ models for 10 euros). In addition to those, I am about to do some javelin armed winged elves mixing up Reaper bones angels and wardancers and then the aforementioned Dragon and Treefolk. These will have to wait a little though as I have other projects currently on hand (15mm 30yw, Finnish war 1808 skirmish and most importantly, The Lord of the Rings for which I'm painting a Rohan army for a tournament in the end of November. Also the timing is better after Christmas when/if we start the Fantasy map campaign as it's quite a good motivation to get stuff done.