PAINTING: Mighty Empires pretty much done

With most of my Orks constructed I switched my focus back to my Mighty Empire tiles. I was tantalisingly close to finishing them but I just didn't feel like painting at all so I kept putting it off. This weekend I knuckled down and a few hours later I was done.


The main thing I did was tidy up the raised edges with Adeptus Battlegrey. I then painted some basic details on the city, mine and fortress pieces. I washed the Dheneb Stone rooftops with a Gryphonne Sepia wash and called them done. I had also planned to tidy up the flags, many of which I had previously washed too heavily, but decided against it, largely because I couldn't be bothered!


I have a hazy idea about adding numbers to each flag using decals and the dark wash will help the white numbers to stand out. Besides, the flags achieve their purpose which is to make it obvious which tiles belong to which faction.

Although the painting is done on my tiles I can't say this project is totally finished just yet. First up I could do with varnishing the tiles so that they will stand up to being slung into a box and then heavily handled. Once that is done I plan to add some snow flock to the tiles. I want to experiment with hairspray - a technique I read about in Imperial Armour: Model Masterclass vol I. I'll need a fair old block of time to practice and then apply the snow to the tiles, so it might be a week or two before I get such a window in my schedule.

In the meantime, I have another Meganob to construct and the extra pieces have arrived for my Killa Kans and Deff Dread.

PAINTING: Mighty Empires...eventually

While I'm in the midst of my eBay selling extravaganza, and between long-term projects, I thought I'd spend a few hours painting my Mighty Empires tiles. I've had them since July 2007 but never got around to doing anything with them. The release of Planetary Empires gave me the push I needed to pull them out and paint them.

I've decided to paint both sets in the same colours so I can combine them freely. This has given me a few headaches in trying to tie the 40k and Fantasy gameworlds together.

The obvious choice, and one I immediately discarded, was to paint the tiles green and call the 40k tiles an agri-world. Boring!

My WFB army is Warriors of Chaos and my main opponent plays Dark ELves so I thought a rocky, snowy tile would represent rugged Norsca and the blasted terrain of Naggaroth and would translate well into 40k where it could stand in for an irradiated, nuclear winter type Hive world, an isolated death/feral world or even just a temperate world in winter. I wanted a few patches of colour on there to break things up with some greens and browns. Over the top I wanted a dusting of snow to tie everything together.


So far I have drybrushed the the tiles with Charadon Granite followed by Astronomican Grey, then picked out the edges of the rivers and the roads with Scorched Brown followed by Bestial Brown. I also painted the woodland Catachan Green then added some Astronomican Grey and some Desert Yellow for a further drybrush. This is too light I think, so I'll wash all the woodland with Thraka Green to reintroduce a deeper green.

I plan to wash the whole board with Devlan Mud (what else?) and Badab Black to tie it all in together. Of course I also need to paint the details like the rivers and cultivated fields.

The whole project should take no longer than a fortnight, fingers crossed.

REVIEW: Mighty Empires

Mighty Empires is Games Workshop's latest campaign supplement for Warhamer Fantasy Battle. It costs £30. The box is minimalist indeed; it contains just six chunky sprues and a rules booklet. Each sprue holds eight tiles, making for 48 in total. They come in several varieties including mountains, rivers, forests, farmland and others. They are bigger than I expected at around 2.5" each. The tiles are double sided and are constructed with interlocking lugs, so that maps can be built and taken apart easily. Making the map itself is one of the most enjoyable things you can do with this set, regardless of playing games with it.

Each sprue also contains several markers. There are 72 pennant banners, 24 castle bits, 12 city bits and 12 mine bits. These are pegged into slots on the tiles so the map could conceivably be hung vertically on a wall.

All the bits come unpainted and would really benefit from a lick of paint. The booklet shows some suggested paint schemes which look quite tasty.

The booklet is somewhat disappointing. It looks promisingly thick but that is only because it is printed in several languages. The English version is only 5 pages long. Older gamers will go misty eyed at the memory of the original Mighty Empires game but most will agree that the campaign rules were a game in themselves and overshadowed the battles that they were supposed to support. At least this shorter version revolves around the battles. The basic idea is that you play games to gather empire points. These points can then be spent to capture tiles, build cities and expand and improve the empire. Events keep the players on their toes.

As I said, the rules are very short and simple but brevity is the soul of wit, so they say, and I'm willing to try them out before condemning them. Games Workshop have stated they want players to use Mighty Empires as a starting point for developing their own campaign rules. I'd like to give this a shot using my Chaos Horde against Gary's Dark Elves once I get the tiles painted. Hmm, which scheme to go for - Naggaroth or Norsca?

I give Mighty Empires a provisional 7 out of 10. I may revisit this score when I have painted the pieces and used the rules in a campaign.

Scores

All of my reviews end in a score out of ten for the product. The table below explains what that score means.

• 10/10 Perfect, absolutely nothing better
• 9/10 Excellent, highly recommended
• 8/10 Very good, recommended
• 7/10 Good
• 6/10 Above average, some problems
• 5/10 Average, some good points some bad points
• 4/10 Below average, some redeeming features
• 3/10 Poor, major flaws
• 2/10 Very poor, avoid if possible
• 1/10 Absolutely appalling