Hobby Update: KoM Pole-Arms and Bowmen

March wasn't great for priming weather, but there were around two workable days and I was able to make use of. I primed up and then continued hobbying through the Gripping Beast Late Roman Infantry boxes, hobbying up some more Bowmen and, finally, some converted Pole-Arms Blocks!

The Gripping Beast infantry box comes 44 models strong and has been surprisingly good. It contains a command sprue of two minis (an armored commander and unarmored bannerman/musician, each repeated once for four models total) and a troop sprue of five minis repeated eight times. The troop sprue is pretty rigid, so from a box you'll end up with 8 armored soldiers (spears or swords, with one pose) 16 cloth archers (two poses) and 16 cloth soldiers (spears or swords, two poses). 

The main sprue of the kit, for reference. Pretty limited poses overall.

I ended up with a few spare bodies for all the new unarmored troops. Not sure what I will do with those just yet. Additionally, with the exception of using one armored body for the Brigand, the rest of the armored dudes are untouched and unused. We'll see what they all end up being used for in the future.

This guy was a little MVP in Battle 002 by doing a surprising amount of work with his bow before tanking a horde of Snow Trolls by himself. He was painted up "good enough" for the game, and post-battle he got some washes and touchups to finish him off.

The Bowmen from the box were done up in two more troops, for flexibility building lists. I enjoyed the Outlaws formation in Battle 002, but really only for the Brigand. While I admittedly didn't use the units well, troops of Bowmen (and additional points for the formation buffs) just doesn't seem like a good use of points for most match-ups. Their stats just aren't good enough to warrant paying either the troop tax or for the additional formation rules. Still, I think the Bowmen are likely to see the table. A cheap unlocking regiment with a ranged attack seems like it could be fun to play around with. 

More Bowmen. The stats aren't great, but I think they have potential in a list as a Regiment.

The Pole-Arm Blocks are a long time coming. When I started Kings of War, I had my WHFB Empire army, with old halberds aplenty, and they were great. I have definitely missed them since switching into Warlord Games and the more classical / historical direction the Regnum has gone with its models. Kings of War kinda revolves around melee-phase for damage, and having Crushing Strength is just a great tool to have. I have since converted some Foot Guard and built some Fanatics, but the Pole-Arms (with their slightly worse stats) get me Crushing Strength at a discount. I am looking forward to trying these out!

Pole-Arms Block 1. The guy just to the left of the leader point has a GW halberd topper. It looks massively out of place, but I'll keep it for now. He's the leader and he definitely means business with his beard and huge blade.

Getting Pole-Arms Blocks for the Regnum took a long while because I was trying to be wysiwyg. The Warlord Games minis which I was leaning heavily on for the army really want that shield otherwise they look weird, and with the segmentata armor plus shield, they'd just look a little too sturdy for a Defense 3 unit. It works fine for the more elite and tankier Foot Guard, but less great for wimpy Pole-Arms Blocks. I could have chopped the shield arms off and tried to convert some two-handers... but that seemed like a ton of work, and unlikely to go well with my hobbying skills. Thankfully, I came across the Gripping Beast box, and a ton of extra bits, and this all came together.

Block #2. Going 4x4 worked out really well for these. 

The bodies, arms, and heads are all Gripping Beast. The spear heads were clipped off and replaced with axes and such from a variety of other kits. Like Warlord's range, the Gripping Beast bodies come with an immovable shield arm, which I tried to ignore early on, but just couldn't. Swinging one-handed just looked weird. The little buckler-like shields came from Fireforge's Byzantine Auxiliaries, and were just what I needed. The little shields give a uniformity with the rest of the army, and everything looks a little better with them. 

There are two poses for these minis, and with the first box, I had assembled everything "squared up" which, looks goofy with the more actively posed mini. Both poses look better the more the more their forward their left feet are. Rather than try and pop off and re-glue a number of heads, I tried to have a transition in the units, with the more aggressively-turned minis in front, and the more "squared-up at attention" poses in the back. For overwhelmingly just two body sculpts (I did sneak in a few of the banner-bearers from the box to get a third pose going) the units come across nicely varied with regards to posing. They don't look too "samey" so I am quite happy with how these turned out.

Painting was a bit rough though, and it took a few longer sessions to get through everything. Painting up so many minis at once, the gradient on the white tunics definitely suffered a bit. All these minis have belts with loops in the tunic, some shoulder straps/harnesses, and then these weird additional straps. too. They also have these weird circles on them, which I chose to treat as ornamentation. A lot of fiddily detail work for a very basic soldier. All in all, things could be a little tidier, but these are good enough for now and I am happy to have these ready for games.