Empire Plastics

(circa 6th Edition)

How to increase the variety in your Empire army.

You can do ANY empire infantry or cavalry with plastics, and many DOW units also.
Maybe you simply
want to fill out a regiment of figures and the current stuff just doesnt fit in right. For
instance, you have a small unit of metal spearmen from 5th edition, the new
spearmen, while they are really nice, just dont mix well with these. But if you do a
little converting, you can easily make figures that fit in with the look and feel of
most any unit. This also works with some of the older figures which dont currently
have a place in the army list, these can be converted into useful and unique figures.
Here is what you can do with some spare time and the current plastic figs and a lot
of plastic glue and greenstuff.
Kitz & Bitz Used:

Warhammer Basic set figures (6th ed.)

Solidiers of the Empire Box (swordsmen/halberds, 6 th ed.)
Boxes of Empire Militia (free company)
Mordhiem Accessory and Middenhiemer Sprues
Knightly Orders boxes (optional)
5th Ed Plastic Bretonnian Knights (optional)
5th Ed Plastic Bretonnian Archers (optional)
Zombie Boxes (optional)
Mordhiem Skaven Boxes (optional)

Between these sets you have access to 30 plus different empire heads, tons of
armored and unarmored torsos, legs, arms and too many weapons combinations for
my feeble brain to count.
Lets start with the most commonly available figures Warhammer Box Set
Spearmen, these can be used as:

Spears (duh!)
Halberds, cut the spearshaft off about an inch, add a spare halberd head from
the soldiers set
Pikemen, simply cut away spears, drill shaft away, and either add premade
pikes or make your own with plastic/wire, or another way that works if you

have enough of them is to simply cut part off of one figure and use it to
extend the other, the one you trimmed becomes a halberdier.
Warhammer Box Set Handgunners, can be used as:

Gunners (again, duh!)

Crossbows, depending on pose you can trim away the gun and splice in a
crossbow from the Mordhiem Accessory sprue or Militia sprue.

Soldiers of the Empire and Militia

These are best for: Swordsmen & Halberds of course, but also any state troop you
want.

Gunners, use blunderbusses from Militia sprues, its easy to snip front end and
add a suitable muzzle from cut sprue.
Crossbows, crossbow arms from the Militia box set, and any soldier or militia
body. (there are 10 sets of arms per box)
Archers, bow arms from Militia box set, and any soldier or Militia body, (there
are 10 sets of arms per box)
Spears, use the halberd arms and scratchbuild a spearhead, or use the
spearheads you trimmed from the box set figures.
Militia, any combo of arms, legs, torso and head work for Militia.

Knightly Orders

Heroes, mixing parts allows you to create a hero figure on foot or mounted
with and huge variety of armor and weapon types, this also includes the
leader figure from the command sprue. Also you can make Warrior Preists
using the hammers, armor, shields and maybe the book from the Mordhiem
sprue.
Greatswords, use 2 handed swords from Militia box,a plastic knights torso and
the thigh armor sections from the soldiers box, or the armored leader legs
from the command sprue, and a suitably fluffy feathered head from any set
these will mix well with both the old and new greatsword models (or a spare
plastic knights head can work well also).
Special Units, I am doing foot knights for my Knights Panther and Reiksguard,
I used soldier legs, knight torsos and heads, and arms from knights and the
Militia armored arms (ruleswise these are just well-dressed swordsmen).

Now what do I do with those leftover knights legs?:

Pistoliers , knights legs, any Militia torso and head, pistols and swords from Militia
sprue, and grab a unarmored horse from Mail Order or as I did, use Bretonnian
horses, that gives you room to paint fancy heraldry or simply use your city colors, (I

had the Bretonnian horses left after converting some Bretonnian knights to
Imperials, see below)
Do you have a bunch of the 5th Ed plastic Bretonnian knights? By using extra
Empire Knight parts like helms and lances you can easily convert Bretonnian bodies
to Empire Knightly Orders or the Middenhiemer sprue can convert them to White
Wolves.
For mine what I did was: I cut off the arms, trimmed and cleaned the torsos, added
tunics of putty, and used the Greatswords from the Militia sprue, and some plastic
Imperial knight helms, I use them as the Black Guard of Morr, using the White Wolf
rules, ie no shields, they use bastard swords (equal to the cavalry hammer).
How many of us grabbed up and used the plastic Bretonnian Archers from 5th
Edition?. Something that I did when I noticed I had lots of archer bodies and a stack
of crossbows from the Militia box, simply cut the arms off at the shoulder, add either
set of crossbow arms, swap a few heads, and if you want, use some putty to make
the sleeves look better. These can be wandering Tilean crossbowmen who served in
Bretonnia, or you can say they simply are backwoods types who dont pay attention
to modern battlefield fashions.
You can also strangley enough use them as archers!! For variety, simply swap some
arms with the Militia set, and a few head swaps and you are done.
Mordhiem Accessory Sprue
This sprue is a source of many items that allow for tailoring of characters, command
figures and units.

If you are doing command figures for a Gunners or Crossbow unit for
example, you can use the gun or crossbow to strap across their backs, also
useful for greatswords, archers or any unit you want.
Scrolls, satchels and books for your wizards and warrior priests.
Bucklers, pistols and throwing knives for your Duelists and Militia troops. Plus
bows, rope, and a spare greatsword are all available.
More Gunners, using the halberdier arms, trim away the halberd, drill the
shaft from out of the hands, add in the handgun or blunderbuss from this
sprue.
You can add cloaks to accent any special unit you wish this way, I used the
Skaven, Middenhiem (nonwolf cloak) and Knightly Orders cloaks on my
Knights Panther units.

Mordhiem Middenhiemer Sprue

For you Middenhiemers, you can do Hammerers, use the swordsmen rules but
give them hammers, beards, sheilds and lots of attitude.

You can also do the Tuetogen Guard with 2 handed hammers, follow the
greatswords listing above but make them suitably hairy (see the Cult of Ulric
list in the back of the book). You can also try using some of the halberd arms
for these guys, just transplant a hammer head for the halberd head.
Also anywhere I mention a head swap , take a look at this sprue.

DOW you can make from these sprues include:

Skirmishers: pistols, bucklers, weapons for either hand, and throwing knives
are all available.
Light Cav, as the pistoliers, simply pick any torso, add a bow or spear, and
knights legs or outrider legs.
Pikes, see above.
Norse Marauders, use the Middenheimer sprues and go crazy.
Crossbows of course, as fancy or as trashy as you want.
Not to mention the Paymasters dream, a chest of gold.

Other Random Ideas:

Flaggelants, I mixed Militia, Zombie and MH Skaven bits and added some greenstuff
to do some simple flaggelants, as several of the legs, arms and heads on the
zombie sprue are suitable for an underfed, flea bitten wanderer.
One figure I made used the cannon crewman's ramrod arms, I just swapped the end
for a halberd head, so I have a very dynamic halberdier thrusting straight out of the
front rank.
For a silly mix in your Free Company units, use any other figure you have laying
about. Plastic Heroquest figures, spare Elves (any variety), Dwarfs, Halfings and any
other single figs you want. My Free Company guys have Dwarfs (including a
Trollslayer), a Dark Elf Assassin, a Witch Elf, a Halfing, a High Elf and a Barbarian.
Just a quick mention, grab a box of the Heroquest wizards, you can cover most of
the colleges for under
$10 US, as opposed to Mail Order at $9 US each.

What about the older figures I cant use currently?

Well, I was lucky, the only figures I had like this were the old outriders, whch can
easily be used as mounted engineers. The problem is that I owned 6 of them, thats
a lot of engineers. To fix this problem I simply popped them in half at the waist,
attached plastic torsos and pistol arms to the legs and they became Pistoliers, the

Outrider torsos were added to infantry legs to become marksmen for my

Handgunner units.
If you own any of the Outriders with repeater pistols they are natural marksmen for
Pistolier units.
Of course many other players have metal figs they cant use, but they are still
usable. Ogres, Kislevite, Reiksguard and Halfings are the most common items
mentioned.
Kislevite Winged Lancers are of course available thru the DOW list, plus if you want,
you can put them on barded horses for a little more protection.
Reiksguard are easily used as Greatswords, since several have 2 handed weapons
or Heros.
Of course Ogres are on the DOW list, either normal or elite (Golgfags).
Halfing archers can be used as DOW Halfings, or as Empire Huntsmen. Halfing
spearmen can be regular spearmen on the Empire list, DOW Halfing spears, or if
long enough, call them pikemen, the spears are roughly three times thier body
length if I remember.
Also since the Dwarf spears were originally released by Marauder as Dwarf Pikes
under 3rd edition, so use them as pikes, just use them as human pikemen as far as
the rules are concerned. Especially if mixed with the Halfing spears, a very amusing
but still useful unit.
Currently the only 5th Ed unit that I can think of that is not in edition is the War
Wagon, and you can add the important parts of it to the old Steam tank you have as
a paper weight.