Fist shaking

My main hobby project over the last year has been an ambitious one - to paint a large Crimson Fists army for 40K.  I think I've accomplished that as I've now got more than enough nicely painted Sons of Dorn to field a 3,000 point army.  As you can tell from the last few months of inactivity, however, things haven't gone as well as I'd hoped with them.  I still have enough Space Marines to add to the force to make a 2,000 point force on their own - and most of those are elements that are drastically needed to make the current force more combat effective.  Things such as Sternguard, Drop Pods, Terminators with thunder hammers in Landraiders... those kind of things.  The problem is my motivation has waned - and that's mainly because of how poorly both the army and my generalship have fared in recent games.  Rather than keep painting an army I'm not in the mood to complete, I've decided to put them on hold for the time being and return to them when I'm inclined to getting the rest of the force up and running.

With the Fists being put into storage, I felt I needed a change of pace to get my mojo back.  I know that in the new year, I'll be starting off a new Blood Bowl league at the Bunker so I will want to paint a new team to use for that - probably either Dark Elves or High Elves.  Twenty or so models for a team aren't a decent hobby project in my mind though - so I've opted for something totally different; something I've wanted to do for ages:

 

That's right - an Empire army for Warhammer Fantasy.

From the start, I should say that although I've not played Fantasy much, I've always like the background to the game and the style of the models.  I do have the start of a Tombs Kings army already but I've read on lots of forums that Tomb Kings aren't a great army in Warhammer 8th edition - so I didn't think they'd be a good army for me to learn to play with.  I've always wanted an Empire army though so, as I saw the old Empire Brigade set on sale in my local GW store, I decided to go for it  £100 for £160 worth of models plus there's enough diversity in Empire models to keep my interest up.  I'm looking at this army as more of a hobby project than a gaming exercise - these will give me a project to work on while I'm playing Blood Bowl at the club.  So - there we go.  My 2011 hobby project.  A Middenheim Empire army...