Halfling Pike Regiment

Here are the newest recruits in Verezzo. These are made from the Wargames Atlantic boxed set, converted to make a regiment of 36 all carrying shouldered pikes and not just 8 + command. 8 more pikes were converted as on the sprue they are ‘charging’ pikes and I wanted all of them shouldered. 8 had a shouldered halberd, which was relatively easy to convert. I now have four left yet to be modelled and painted, which I will use for picture poses.

The modelling took AGES. I was so sick of them by the time I had done the modelling, I put them aside and worked on several other projects before I could find the motivation to paint them. Here you can see three of them, these all having their hands and arms chopped and re-positioned to shoulder pikes to in a manner similar to the shouldered pose provided on the sprue …

Here they are ranked up after modelling …

I used plastic brush-bristles for some pikes, shaved lances for others. I chopped spear tips off anything I could find in my bits box for the bristles!

I like the effect of them altogether, and was keen on the idea that they would be ‘unique’ – surely no-one else would be insane enough to attempt to convert them in this excruciating manner? (If I was richer I would have bought 4 boxes and just used the shouldered pike arms!)

I attempted a painting method I recently had some success with, but which now I am not sure I will use again. I wanted to avoid enamels for health reasons (35 years of breathing the white spirit I clean the brushes with is quite enough) so I white undercoated in acrylic the flesh-areas and washed watered down flesh on them, intending to highlight (etc) later. I thought this would add subtlety to the faces. It turned out I am not good at it, and it doesn’t. Then I undercoated the rest in black enamel, over which I painted everything else in ‘base coat’ acrylics to mirror my cartoon technique. This part seemed to work ok, the acrylics go on fine! Even, to my surprise, the yellow!

Here you can see some in the early blue and yellow stage.

Later, having grappled with them a lot to add various other colours (leather etc) I realised my big mistake. Previously, with enamels, and for 35 years, I just cleaned, undercoated with black, let it dry for a couple of days, then slapped the paint on. Occasionally, for some effect I undercoated in white. I never had to ‘prime’ – the undercoat was the primer. Now I realised, as chunks of acrylic paint were coming away on the flesh areas, why I should have primed when painting with acrylics!

So, I had to repair (with more white paint) and hope for the best with this regiment in the long term future. The fact that they will probably all die if they ever fight on my current campaign means they only have to survive one game (and a few posed story photos).

In terms of rules, I knew that they could not really be considered the same as normal pikes …

But luckily the Tilean campaign army list we use (based on the old ‘Treachery and Greed’ unnofficial online campaign list run by old members of the Warhammer Empire forum) has halfling pike using ‘dwarf pikes’, so all is ok.

I based them singly for the front rank, 2 pairs and 2 singles for the rear, while the middle 4 ranks are based on 2×2 squares. For convenience.

I have yet to flock the bases, have a spear tip yet to paint (I missed it until I saw the pics) and I want to do some corrective work on the commanders’ faces (I have very unsteady hands!) but here they are almost complete …

In column (I made drumming noises like a kid as I laid them out like this!)