What are you doing today hobbywise?

They could work as Free Company, perhaps?

 

They might, but then they'd have to rank up. I do miss the army I bought all of them for. Back in Dogs of War times (6th edition's generic list) I was using them as Duelists - 2 units, one with paired pistols, the other with paired swords. Yes, I have enough of them to make 2 units of 10...

 

Funnily enough I would actually rate DOW as worse even than Vampire Counts. At least Vampire Counts have a consistent aesthetic and a dark theme, even if it's completely not my cup of tea.

Dogs of War on the other hand are just a jumble of random mercenary units, some of which prop up some of the worst lore in the whole of Warhammer Fantasy, that are better off just being taken by certain other armies (particularly the races they hail from) as part of their TOW Mercenaries allowance.

 

Somewhat ironically, I just had some Jade Warriors arrive in the mail to see how well they would work for a DOW idea I have. Right off the rip, I gotta say I hate the AOS style assembly. They do look like they will fit on 20mm bases, though it will be fiddly.

 

Well... I must admit that I did not see that one coming. Every once in a while you still shock and surprise me. I thought the Vampire Counts were your most hated army of all time.

 

Agree. DOW originally were limited in who they could fight for. Then GW decided that was restricting sales so they made them available to every race. Farcical. I mean the Kubla Khan's Hobgoblin wolf riders are never going to fight with High Elves etc.
I didn't mind the idea of them or even some of the units. I can see them being taken in very large point games but for games of lower points, you are hard pressed to include what you want from your own race, let alone some mercenaries.

 

To be fair, with GW's continuing obsession with releasing Vampire stuff, I've had a lot more of an opportunity to grumble about them Longbeard-fashion over the years, whereas Dogs of War have thankfully been dead and buried in terms of official support for yonks and they are much more rarely discussed, so of course everyone will come to the conclusion that I despise the Vampire Counts the most.

Not to mention that I've still always considered Vampire Counts to still be a valid army, whereas I've never considered Dogs of War to even be worthy of that accolade... so technically the original hypothesis still stands

 

The problem I have with Tilea, fluff-wise, is that we already have the Border Princes for the whole "feuding city-states" aspect, which is itself the pissing contest between the Provinces of the Empire ramped up to eleven (the Empire even at its most united still being a herd of wild cats rather than a unified nation). So having Tilea as arguing city-states, outside of giving players more lore-friendly reasons to just fight without worrying about whys, is just more of the same. If Tilea was unified under Fantasy-Romans but with some clockwork Renaissance flare, or a portion of the Border Princes was Fantasy Byzantine, we'd have more variety than "country where every city is feuding with every other city".

Devil's advocate: wargame first and foremost, so the state of affairs allows for battles without worrying about the whys. I get it. Still... I do get your dislike of the Dogs of War in this light.

 

Yeah, I can understand that as well. I ran the Dogs of War in 5th/6th wfb in part because as a History Major in college, I was kind of obsessed with reading about the Condotta movement in Renaissance Italy. Honestly, I would be happy if the Empire could just use pikemen, and would happily just convert stuff for them instead. Oh, and duelists, because the Empire really should have skirmishing noble youths who just want to stab people...

 

I remember a great diorama by Mike McVey (back in the early 90's) of a dogs of war unit exploring a lizardman temple. Very reminiscent of the Conquistadors and the Aztecs.

He also did a bloody fantastic Warhammer Quest diorama as well.

 

That was 1996 I believe. It was in the 5th edition Lizardmen army book.

https://classic40k.com/2016/08/13/mike-mcveys-lizardmen-vs-estalians-diorama/

 

Cripes, gaze upon the glory of the OG saurus boys there; the days before they were bestowed bone crests.

 

I built something for an unpopular army.

See the whole story here: https://lustria-online.com/threads/tkyapyks-modeling-attempts-scratchbashers-beware.22996/page-6

(last entry at the bottom)

 

To be fair, Empire did get these two little duellist vignette models when 8th Edition Fantasy came round... they just didn't get the rules for a unit of them.

 

100%. The Border Princes already capture the theme of loads of petty kingdoms fighting amongst themselves (even more than the City-States of the Empire), as well as offering significantly more options for creativity than Tilea given they're a mixture of exiles from all the different human factions. You could literally field any sort of historical European army from the Ancient era up to around the 17th Century and call it a Border Princes army because new states spring up pretty much every month as old ones disintegrate. Tilea, meanwhile, really needs a retcon to change it to something more interesting than 'Renaissance Italy but with even more backstabbing'.

That's exactly what I am planning for my Tilea retcon army list - a much more unified Roman theme with Roman engineering applied to some of the strange and fantastic Renaissance creations to standardise them as part of the army.

Note that the upcoming War of Settra's Fury campaign Arcane Journal includes a Border Princes Army of Infamy list, so your time for this project might well have arrived

 

Well, color me interested. I wonder what that Border Princes army will include? Might be fun to cobble together a force for that. Not that I NEED a third army for TOW, but if it lets me run my Marienburg minis...