Hobby Update: Undead Teutonic Mummies

I make no secret of how much I love Age of Empires 2. One of the more iconic units from the game is the Teutonic Knight, a very slow infantry unit with a lot of armor and a lot of attack. Mobility and positioning is a huge part of that game too, so the Teutonic Knight doesn't see a lot of competitive play, but it's a fan favorite, and while working on some Hospitaller-inspired Revenant Cavalry with some very suitable great helms... I decided to keep hobbying on and try to recreate this beloved unit for fun.

The finished unit. I like my champion kitbash. 

The minis are from Fireforge. I picked up a box of Teutonic Infantry long ago, though the kit didn't have nearly enough helms or capes to make even this one unit. I got the helms from my Teutonic Knight (cavalry) boxes. Additionally, I was running a little shy on limbs, so I ended up picking up a single sprue of their Foot Knights, via SprueDude. The Infantry box was a bit useless, but all this together would let me kitbash a caped unit of soldiers in great helms and wielding large swords, which is what I was going for.

AOE2 DE's Teutonic Knight.

Everything was primed in grey, and then for this unit I really tried layering colors as some hobbying practice. I decided to make this unit red, a nod to the player color in the Barbarosa campaign that shipped with the original game. To get that, the cloaks got a brown base coat and then a red as a king of highlight. Tunics were khaki, then mostly off-white, then a bit of white on the highest parts. The helms were painted black (probably should have just primed them black to start; it was messy to paint them), then given a light drybrush for dark metallics, and then a dark yellow visor, all emulating the game's colors. 

Knowing I had basing and the fog effect to do, I painted the bodies, cloaks, and helms separately. I did plan out the positioning of the cloaks, so that everything could be billowing roughly behind them. The bodies got glued down, and I finished all of the basing, including the new fog effect, before going back and gluing on the cloaks and then heads. The cloaks are awkward, and this was the right call, despite the extra work. Having the cloaks all above the fog is a neat look as well.

Another picture of the finished dudes.

I must admit that they don't look very undead, but the basing scheme should tie them in with the rest of the undead collection. They fact that they are all covered up could suggest that they are well-preserved or something? That's the idea anyway.

Arguably, given that the kits used to make the recent Revenant Cavalry were used to make this unit too, it could make sense to run these as Revenant infantry. But I don't plan on doing that.  These look pretty unique compared to the rest of the collection, so I will be running these as Mummies for the foreseeable future! 

Mummies look like a fun unit for the Undead. They are shambling undead, so are only hitting on a 4+, but do have CS2. With only 12 attacks (normal for a regiment) they don't seem like hammers, but they should be able to land a few damage in most combats and thus utilize their Lifeleech 1 reliably. They look to be better on the defense though, with Defense 5, Regeneration 5+, and for a regiment they have a splendidly high -/18 for their Nerve. They'll still need support from other units to win combats in a timely fashion, but this unit seems pretty good for fighting in grinding combats. They should take a lot of effort for an opponent to remove, and as such, could pair nicely with all the surge tricks available to the army.

My Undead collection is somewhere north of 5000 points now, so I should be able to run a nice variety of decent lists. I'm juggling a fair number of armies already, so I am not sure just when the Undead will hit the table in a regular game, but it should be a good time when they do!