Weird and Wonderful Warbands

I’m still working on my one page skirmish rule set for the one page game jam, and a big part of that is playtesting, and so obviously I needed minis to playtest with.

Sticking with the same ‘grimcandy’ style I’ve been figuring out of late I’ve been kitbashing various 28mm plastic kits together:

A few commenters have asked where my kits are from and the warband above is made from Wargames Atlantic’s Grognards and Cannon Fodder, Frostgrave’s Demons and Cultists.

My opposing warband was built out of Games Workshops Hormagaunts, along with parts from their old Dark Eldar Warriors, Skulls box and a sprue of Mantic Games’ Lower Abyssals.

It’s probably my favourite part of the hobby alongside rules writing, to dig through a bits box and build figures from miscellaneous parts. Takes me back to building Mordheim, Necromunda and GorkaMorka warbands from whatever spare parts I could muster, the hobby budget doesn’t stretch all that far when you’re twelve years old. Unfortunately Games Workshop’s kits nowadays don’t kitbash as easily as they used to, the parts are too specific, the shapes and scaling are all different. Thankfully Northstar, Warlord Games, Wargames Atlantic, Oathmark, Fireforge Games and Mantic have filled that void!

My current force used Fireforge Games’ Berber infantry as a base, supplemented by Stargrave’s Mercenaries and Frostgrave’s Demons, some of Mantic’s Lower Abyssals slipped in and there’s even an EM4 Mech hanging around at the back!

The opposition is mostly building from Mantic’s Lower Abyssals with Stargrave Mercenary and Frostgrave Demon parts with Warlord Games Zouaves and a few GW parts filling gaps.

I think with this kind of extreme kitbash it’s a good idea to pick a ‘core’ kit to use and then build off of that to make things look more cohesive (that’s not to say you couldn’t just build a band of mercenaries). My latest warband about to hit the painting desk leans heavily on the Zouaves for example:

I can’t stress enough how great it is (for me at least) that we have all of these kits available to us in hard plastic! While I do love a good vinyl kit, it’s undeniable how much better these figures are especially for the converters and kitbashers among us (no plasticine or banana oil needed).