Empire Chronopia painting log... sort of!

[Horned Owl]

For this weekend´s Empire game, I had drawn up a series of counters. Worked so well that I´m going to expand the armies I have now (Blackblood and Firstborn.) I´ve drawn and coloured a variety of troops, scanned them and mounted them on white foam card. I also drew banners for the units, glued them to sewing pins and stuck them into the leader element. 

The Blackblood are quite aggressive, so I opted for a red colour scheme to bring that aspect out. I also liked the bronzed armour on this man´s army (see below), so I included this in my "paint scheme". It went nicely with the red:





Orc warriors and their banner.


To indicate that the warriors are led by an Alchemist, I added a second banner with the Burning Star device.


Orc Kutara cavalry and their banner.


Orc archers and their banner. I included the Myrmadon tusks to have a curved visual element to correspond with the bows.


Enhancements: The Provincial Standard and Goblin Guides.

[Horned Owl]

The Firstborn are steadfast (I always associate them with the Roman Legions), but they are also a young and hopeful kingdom just testing its strength. I chose a blue and green scheme to show these qualities, with the tougher and sterner units (like the Iron Guard) tending more to blue, and the more impetuous units (like the Knights) having greenish cloaks.


Firstborn Mounted Knights and their Standard.


Firstborn Foot Knights and Standard. Note that I drew only the inside of their cloaks with the Firstborn hallmark checkerboard pattern – this is what I did to my Knights when I still painted miniatures. It saves a lot on paintwork and still has them sporting the characteristic checkers.
Those are swordsmen (as you might have noticed). I might one day draw alternative counters of macemen, so I can mix-and match. Just for the fun of it.
The standard is round and has the crenellated arch on a green field, matching the shield designs of a unit of Swordsmen.


Firstborn Crossbowmen with their standard. The intersected half-circle represents a crossbow, sort of.


Enhancements: Sanctified Iron, Nightwalkers, Iron Standard.


Leaders: Repulsar High Warden, Judge, Chronomancer, Firstborn Earl

[Horned Owl]

Sooo... more Blackbloods. The Goblins are slightly smaller than the Orcs.


Troll with banner. Note the four crescent moons, symbolising the four arms of a Troll.


Ripper Beast light cavalry. Their banner has a bird´s skull, which I found appropriate.
Empire Chronopia does not differentiate between lancers and archers, and the Ripper cavalry stands have both close combat and support capability, so I decided on a mix of the two. In all probability this was what was intended by the authors.


Crimson Blades and their banner. Their role in Empire is radically different from Chronopia – they are light skirmishers best suited to do support fire (support fire!) for other units. Their near-legendary ability to deal damage in Chronopia does not at all reflect in their stats in Empire. I thought long and hard, but in the end opted for the original Crimson Blade look, with their customary two-handed falchions.

[Horned Owl]

Iron Guard and Standard. Note the more bluish colour of their cloaks and standard. Those are the trusty and earnest types that offset the Knights´ usual overconfidence and impetuousness. 


Chronomancer with bodyguard and Standard. The fluff text does not mention if the four models per stand are all Chronomancers, but somewhere it says that Chronomancers take to the field of battle with their own retinue. I usually envision sorcerers as very rare and outstanding individuals, so I opted for a single Chronomancer per stand, filling in the rest with his personal minions – in this case, swordsmen knights.
To give the Chronomancers a more important and singular look, I coloured them red, standing out like a sore thumb in the overall blue-green army paint scheme.

[joshuaslater]

Looks great!!

[Horned Owl]

Ogre Myrmadon Bull cavalry with their banner. The standard on the right signifies that the unit is led by a Deathseeker. (Note the Deathseeker badge in the center.)

[Horned Owl]

Those are intended to be public domain, by the way. If you would like to use them for your own counters, be my guest!

[Horned Owl]

And this is how it looks like when the stands are mounted on foam board. The banners help with quick identification. They were a pain in the behind to cut out and glue to the pins, though. With hindsight, I should have stayed with simple rectangular shapes. Though they do look kind of neat.


A small regiment of Orc Warriors, showing the unit´s banner in the center, flanked by the Provincial Standard (on the viewer´s right) and the Alchemist´s personal standard (on the left).


Covering the flank is a unit of Ripper Beast cavalry, without enhancements or leader. Note the single regimental banner.


Four Ogre Myrmadon riders with their own standard. If they were led by an Ur-Khan, his personal standard would appear beside the regimental banner.

[Cirith]

These look great.. I love the banners.

[Horned Owl]

It kind of looks like Shogun: Total War screenshots with the banners... there, I said it.

[kvaerne]

simple and fantastic.
I have to print them.

[Horned Owl]

Thanks! I´ll try to keep up the stream.


Firstborn War Chariot. The cloaks are blue – I wanted them to be green originally, but reckoned that there would be too little contrast to the chariot itself and the grass. For the same reason I coloured the hafts of the halberds and the horses´ harnesses red.
In itself, the chariot looked rather static, so I added the wheel tracks to create the illusion of speed.

[Horned Owl]

Myrmadon Cannon Tower. Note the brass barrel – early cannon were made out of bronze for a long period of time; cast iron and steel cannon are a rather recent development.
While I (mostly) decided to forgo shadows in the smaller stands, the larger war machines needed shadows to appear three-dimensional. I remember that the Cannon Tower was the first piece where I had to ask myself which direction the light was coming from!


Myrmadon Archer Tower. In itself, the tower looked rather bland, so I added a balcony of archers, which instantly made the war machine appear more lively. I also tried some variation to the uniformly red onion of the Cannon Tower by having a bronze roof on the Archer Tower´s barbican dome.

It´s also painfully obvious that I drew the Archer Tower larger than its Cannon Tower counterpart and then had to resize it to fit a 6x6 base.

[Horned Owl]

Blackblood Rocket Platform with banner. I coloured the dome and banner turquoise to have a contrast to the red domes on the Myrmadons. To keep up the overall "paint scheme", almost everything else is red: cloaks, shields, axles, yoke and the firing tubes. With the teams of Kutaras drawing the platform, it looks a bit like a chariot. Note the egg-shaped dome: My hand is none too steady when drawing circles.

The brass star shape on the onion dome´s tip is an allusion to the Order of the Burning Star (whose symbol also appears on the banner´s top). It also hints at the explosive effect of the rockets...

[Horned Owl]

Obsidian House Archers with their banner. The red is darker than the tone I used on the Blackbloods (though that does not really come out well in the scans). I used green tones on their armour and shaded down to black to give it a polished obsidian sheen.

The Obsidian House´s serpent crest lends itself to a lot of variations. In this banner, I made a wavy shape that resembles a bow, crossed by an arrow shaft. The banner is a good example why, in real-life heraldry, green would never be put on red. It was a pain in the behind to get any sort of contrast between the device and the field.


Obsidian House Retainers. In the banner, I doubled the serpent´s tail below the Ouroboros ring to hint at the curved points of the oval spears carried by the Elves.