A brave-hearted attempt to recreate the might of Albion

I'm one of those recalcitrant old codgers who believe that fantastical adventures should take place on square bases, with nary a Space Marine allegory in sight. One of the key advantages of this failure to believe that Sigmar is the Emperor's little brother is that I have something of a developmental sandbox. I know in the most literal sense that Games Workshop will not do any development for Warhammer Fantasy for a long time, if ever (recent behaviour has shown a more conciliatory attitude towards Warhammer fans, so perhaps in the fullness of time it will return as a specialist game, who knows). I'm lucky enough to be part of a small group of hobbyists who are eager to still develop the Warhammer Fantasy world. And something I always felt had more potential was the land of Albion.

We know a lot about the Gaels of Albion, from supplements such as Dark Shadows and older roleplay materials. We know that whilst obscure, the Gaels have an important effect on the world of Warhammer, having some nebulous connection to the Old Ones. There's a fair bit of artwork showing these wild looking tribesmen. But after all these years, we only ever got two giants, a druid, a Fenbeast and a Truthsayer (the Dark Emissary is more of a budget chaos sorcerer, what with being Bel'akor's minions). 

Queen Gwenlaen leads a Gael raiding party.

When looking for new models, the first thing I did was to research Picts. I was a little disappointed: Picts looked a lot more... well, civilised than I'd hoped. I quickly realised that I didn't want my Gaels to really look like Celts, but rather like Hollywood depictions of them: Braveheart, Centurion and King Arthur were the kind of things I was thinking about. I briefly considered using the 2002 Chaos Marauders, then quickly abandoned the idea. I think they can be made to look acceptable with some time and care, but they just don't look the part. 

In the end, I decided that if I was going to do it, I would do it properly. I had a very specific idea of what I wanted, and part-farming became the order of the day. 

The kilted legs came from Victoria Miniatures. The torsos are feral scout torsos from Spellcrow. The heads are the wilder looking heads from Empire Greatswords and Marauder horsemen. The arms took a bit of thought. For the shield arms, I used the arms of Ungors very specifically from the 2003 Beast Herd kit. Now, I have plenty of these, but I do intend to sort out a mould for them because they are a finite resource. Obviously, I removed the fur from them. The sword arms are the hand weapon arms of Marauder Horsemen. Their hand weapons have been removed and replaced with the sword hands from Empire Swordsmen. All of my Empire state troops are Halberdiers or Spearmen, so I had stacks of them about. 

To finish up, the shields are a mixture of Marauder and Marauder Horsemen shields, with the iconography filed away. The shield bosses are 'Small celtic Shields' from Scibor Miniatures. Be warned, there are two different packs of these and only one is right for this. 

Anyway, there we have it! The fierce people of Albion coming to Warhammer Fantasy battlefields - and it's pretty easy!

Coeddil the Damned, the Tree of Woe

And now for something completely different.

Working on my Death Guard recently made me think about this bloke who I made in 2017. He's part of my gaming group's Age of Rebuilding project, an alternative Warhammer Fantasy continuity where the world was saved and the Empire is busily trying to get itself back together. One of my early ideas was to have Coeddil (one of the three eldest treemen) return as a deranged chaos tree. GW touched briefly on this idea in the final End Times book, but as with most things in the End Times book, it wasn't terribly good.

Now, as to the conversion, this is a project which is very easy to explain but I'll warn you, pretty difficult to do, almost to the level of that bloody daemon prince but fairly work-intensive anyway.

The centre of the kit is a Maggoth's body. I put the torso and head together, but didn't attach arms or legs. Now, right from the off I wanted aspects of his Treeman heritage to show through, so I used the strangleroot and beard components from the Treeman kit as a tongue and... well... beard. I had to pin them and do a fair bit of filling.

Next came the legs. I was vaguely inspired by Lovecraft's Dark Young creatures. To this end, I a Citadel Wood which was sulking in my cupboard. I sawed the trees in half an used the bottom halves to create the three legs. This was very tough. I had to pin them in place and tack them with superglue whilst holding the body in order to get the whole affair stable enough to pour in some poly cement. When this was fully set, I had to do a lot of filling.

I arranged the top half of the trees around the top of his body, again gluing and pinning before filling some big gaps.

After this it was a case of finishing touches. I added an evil looking owl from the Dryads kit, a random Nurgling and a clawing Plaguebearer's arm on the base to be emerging from a pool on the base. The rags of flesh hanging in the branches are Woodland Scenics clump foliage painted to suit.

It was a lot of work, but worth it, I think. I use him for WFB, but he could serve equally as a Great Unclean One using the 'Garden of Nurgle' theme.