Xander's original army idea...

The Northern Nomad raiders weren't my first 'army' idea.

A while ago I painted up these chaps, with the original splurge being "Mortal Engines: Pre-traction era Nothern Nomads - These figures are all flights of fancy. The figures with the Red-starred shields are 'Rus' (a people that only vague reference is made to, and no details given). The green painted helmets and red-star-on-green-background are both references, of course, to the USSR; as is the brown leather armour (although it is somewhat less obvious). I imagine that these will be low grade warriors, probably formed up into large units (and possible supported by a few arquebuses/muskets and crossbows as either integrated support - ECW style - or as separate units. I was thinking of using some of the new Empire plastic hand gunners to provide the firearms) and thrown against the enemy's warriors whilst the main power will be Druhuzina style heavy cavalry. Or something like that anyway. The chap with the carbine has been done as some sort of north-country trader/old-tech scavenger (hence the grenade), who will probably be used as a independent character."

I had planned to resurrect them for ATR: they'd be the soldiers of an aggressive neo-medieval city state, inspired by stories of the 'great red army'. They were still going to have the semi-uniformed pike and shot infantry, a light cannon and heavy foot knights with pistols (The T-brotherhood... hence I was going to be fielding brother T-34 and the mighty T-80, etc). They may even have had archers, to provide a rapid firing close-support. The rules have a range of 'combat doctrines', which can be applied to the army lists to help tailor the list and bring out the background of an army more. Thus this group was going to be using doctrines such as 'Yesterday's war'; which gives soldiers a bonus in melee and using primitive weapons (If I've remembered correctly?). 

It would have been a striking sight, but in the end I decided it had the potential to look far too much like I had simply rocked up with a WHFB Bretonnian army (as they were going to be the principle source of figures). As part of our aim is to pique people's curiosity when they glance at the table ("what are those thatched houses doing among the the ruined multi-stories? Are those mammoths?! And why have those guys on the other side got a machine gun?!?") we didn't want to give people the opportunity to dismiss it as just being 'Warhammer'....

-Xander