Hobby Update: Undead Mummy Troops

Up now are some Mummies for the Undead!

It has been a while since the original unit came together. I have been unable to secure a solitary sprue of the Fireforge Foot Knights, and unwilling to pick up a full box. Like other Fireforge boxes, its good value, but the box doesn’t have a ton of variability. Fireforge tends to reuse assets, and I already have a bunch of similar Fireforge bodies and shields and such, and I just couldn’t pull the trigger to increase the pile of shame by that much.

The finished units, as a regiment.

I did however pick up a box of Wargame Atlantic’s Baron’s War Foot Knight minis to try out, and using a sprue there as well as some of my older Fireforge bits, I kitbashed these units up. Wargames Atlantic has been on a tear the last few years, and with a very wide range of offerings, are definitely a company to check out no matter the game you play.

Separately, as troops.

The Wargames Atlantic knight minis are actually pretty unique: I don’t think I have ever seen shield straps featured this prominently in any other range! Additionally there are a number of more unique weapon options, like war picks and falchions. The minis come split at the waist, so despite several repeated offerings, you can actually build up a very dynamic group. Each sprue has 4 two-hander options, but only 2 available torsos for them, and that is probably my only real complaint. Overall, the box is very neat, and I won’t mind having some extra sprues around from it!

AOE2 DE's Teutonic Knight.

As mentioned, some additional Fireforge bodies and bits were utilized. I assembled the bodies, but left the capes and helmets off. Everything was primed and painted separately. Like the other regiment, these are intended as a bit of a homage to the Teutonic Knight from Age of Empires 2. However, I was in the zone when these were painted up, and I accidentally painted the tunics blue instead of white. 

I decided not to paint over the blue and make extra work for myself. The painted bodies were attached to the bases, the basing done (including fog effect), and then the last steps were gluing on the capes and helmets.

Troops of Mummies piqued my interest in a few different ways recently. 

Firstly, while hobbying up the recent Wraiths and then writing their post, I noticed for the first time that Wraiths and Mummies were priced very similarly. Writing about the Wraiths then got me thinking about the Mummies, and I think these fulfill similar roles as surprisingly sturdy roadblocks. The Mummies trade Def6 in to get better Nerve and Regen, but if either unit holds, you should have a good anchor for your line for the turn to be able to get flanking charges and/or surge charges. 

A troop of new Mummies.

Secondly, they appeared in a semi-recent Master Sight video. I am not a voracious devourer of content, but the algorithm served this up at an opportune time. His opponent’s list was very intriguing to me, running a few things I was interested in already while adding in a ton of troops. There was lots for me to think about in this game!

Thirdly, Mummies were a cost effective unit highlighted in Data and Dice’s Undead Army Review, which I had circled back to, looking for fun things to test out next.

A second troop of Mummies

Given all of the recent confluences, I wanted to hobby some more Mummies up right away, but it took me some time to clear space on the hobby desk to get to them.

When I hobbied up the first unit of Mummies, I defaulted to making them the regimental size, wanting to make use of the CS2 and greater staying power the regiment had to grind things out. I think that can be a valid use still, but again comparing to the Wraiths, neither unit gains much offensively by increasing to the regiment size, gaining just two attacks. I think both units could play similarly to the Abyssal’s Tortured Souls, which I have really liked, and it seems like astute players could get a lot of value out of the cheaper troops. We’ll try to get the Mummies (and the Wraiths!) on the table sometime soon and explore the Undead a bit more!