Part 1 – Introduction & Missile Infantry
Part 2 – Melee Infantry
Part 3 – Cavalry
Part 4 – Leaders & Special Characters
Part 5 – Artillery & Misc.
Part 6 – Using Discontinued Empire Units in AoS
Part 7 – How it Looks
Part 8 – Marienburg Painting Guide
Budget Bretonnia Project
After last post’s brief foray into the Empire’s crossbow and rifle equipped missile infantry, this post will look at the staunch line of spears (or halberds, swords, or bigger swords) which will stand fast, allowing your big guns (figurative and literal) to do their damage. The Empire has access to three different types of melee infantry, though Flagellants will be covered in a future post. Today I’ll go over budget alternatives for the basic Freeguild Guard (State Troops in classic Warhammer Fantasy), which come in three weapon varieties, and the elite Freeguild Greatswords. I’ll start with the Greatswords, then move on to the Guard, which may involve use of alternative bits.
Freeguild Greatswords
The Freeguild Greatswords are very clearly inspired by the historical Landsknecht Doppelsoldner (double-pay), the most elite of the Landsknecht troops, paid extra to fight in the front line, often armed with Zweihander two-handed swords. This allows us to easily use the Warlord Games Landsknechts with Zweihanders box to emulate the Greatsword’s look. Note that the Greatswords can come with a standard bearer and a horn player. As mentioned in the last post, these special miniatures will be covered in a future post.
As an alternative, if you wanted your Greatswords to have an even more elite feel, looking like dismounted members of one of the Empire’s knightly orders, you could use Perry Miniatures WR 50 Foot Knights 1450-1500. The Perry brothers, whose miniatures will appear in a few of my posts, are actually former GW sculpters, so their figures have a very old school GW look (since they sculpted a lot of old school GW minis). While not all of the weapons are swords, they’re all big, so they should get the “great” part of Greatswords across. Perry Miniatures also has another box, AO 60 Agincourt Foot Knights 1415-29, but these are of an earlier armor style and look a bit more Bretonnian than Empire. It can be a good source of extra arms and weapons, however, for more variety.
Freeguild Guard with Halberds
The Freeguild Guard in their halberd variation are also easy to replace with a budget version. In fact, the Warlord Games Landsknechts with Zweihanders box we used for the Freeguild Greatswords comes with 12 metal halberd arms. Easy peasy! The only downside is that each box (24 figures) only includes 12 halberds, so fielding more than a 10 figure unit will require multiple boxes (or maybe a very nice email to Warlord Games requesting a purchase of extra halberds – no promises, I haven’t tried this).
Freeguild Guard with Spears
The Freeguild Guard with spears is another simple budget swap. The Warlord Games Landsknechts Pikemen features… pikemen! Pikes are, essentially, really long spears, so you can either field your Guard with extra long spears or snip off some of the excess haft and then reattach the spearhead. Warlord Games also carries metal Landsknecht Pike Advancing and Landsknecht Pike Standing, for more model variety. The metal sculpts are more expensive, however, and will be harder to convert if you want to shorten the pikes.
Freeguild Guard with Swords and Shields
The last version of the Freeguild Guard is also the hardest to field without using bits from other kits, as Warlord Games doesn’t make Landsknecht with swords and shields. In order to match the Freeguild Guard with halberd or spear, my own Freeguild Guard with sword and shield use the same Warlord Games bodies and heads as the other Guard units, but arms and weapons from other boxes.
Depending on which set of arms, swords, and shields you prefer, I would recommend using either the North Star Figures OAKP401 – Oathmark Human Infantry or OAKP301 – Elf Infantry. The human arms have cloth sleeves with leather bracers and rectangular shields while the elves wear chainmail, gloves, and large kite shields. I personally recommend the human kit, since this will leave us with unused bodies and extra arms/bow & arrows for use in a future “counts-as” Empire archer unit, while still keeping the human/Empire theme. Also note that the Oathmark boxes, while the same scale as the Warlord Games Landsknecht figures, have heroic proportions, rather than Warlord’s more realistic heads and hands. I can personally attest, however, that the different kits mix well with only minor modifications.
You can, of course, use the Oathmark arms with shields from your bits box, which is what I am personally doing. One other option, though not quiet in the spirit of this budget project, is to buy a box of the Games Workshop Freeguild Guard. Each box includes 10 bodies, but 20 sets of arms: 10 spear/halberd and 10 sword and shield. You can use the GW bodies with the GW polearms, then use the extra GW sword and shield arms with the less expensive Warlord Games Landsknechts Pikemen bodies and heads. This will be more expensive than using the Oathmark boxes, but might look a little better.
Wrap Up
As mentioned early in the post, I’ve left the Flagellants out of this post, as I’ve had some trouble finding alternative budget models for them. If you have any suggestions for budget Flagellants, religious zealots armed with flails and clubs, please reach out and I’ll happily credit you in a future post.
The next post will look at the Empire’s cavalry, featuring the historically based Freeguild Pistoliers, quasi-historical Freeguild Outriders (with multi-barreled rifles and ye olde grenade launchers), and the difficult to replicate Demigryph Knights.
Please note that the photographs provided were not taken by the author, and no copyright is claimed.
Paint and Glory 
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