Roll forward twenty years and I thought that with the lull between 8th Edition and whatever is coming next I would just paint something, and I thought the War Wagon would make a really nice center piece to my Empire army. First of all though I needed to acquire one. After a few weeks of searching I managed to get a complete, unpainted but assembled one for under £30 (a real bargain I thought). The first thing I did was check it was the right model as it was really small! After I'd convinced myself it was I took the model apart so that I could clean it all. I then pinned and reassembled the wagon and drilled out the feet of the crew so they could be mounted on corks for painting. I also drilled out the barrels of all of the guns for a bit of added realism and undercoated it all brown.
The wagon and the characters are really good classical sculpts, but the original horses leave quite a bit to be desired. I decided to swap them out with the horses that come from the Celestial Hurricanum kit instead as these are really well detailed. Its a real shame that the Empire knights have not been redone as these horses show how good they could look.
I decided to paint the horses in contrasting lacquered armor. I felt like the red worked much better than the white for some reason, although at this point my Rakarth flesh which I use as a base for the white was a bit knackered and I was struggling to use it. I like this as a base as it gives a really nice creamy white finish. The red was the patented GW mix of Mephiston/Evil Sunz/Wild Rider/Tausept Ochre recipe with the wash and glaze mixed in. I kept the horses a fairly neutral brown. Probably the red tabard on the white horse is the part that I am least pleased with. It seemed an odd colour choice as I was painting it and I probably would have been better off changing it to white. However when the horses got attached to the wagon it balanced out the colour scheme a lot more.
The war wagon crew were really fun to paint. I just used the standard red and white colour scheme that is on all my empire, but I've varied a lot of the position to make it look interesting. I got seriously fed up painting the puffy sleeves and slitted leggings though! Its not something that I could rush! It was aces of fully painting and highlighting the interior colour and then painting in the outer garments. I used purple as the contrasting colour which I have used on all the troops in the army. One thing I will say is that I spent an awful lot of time on the trousers, which, as you'll see later was probably not really required...
The wagon was just drybrushed with Vallejo pale sand over the brown and then washed and shaded. The gold was done quite quickly too. Once again it is really noticeable how the detail on the old metals is not as detailed as the new plastics. I cant imagine how this model would look now, but I bet there would be more laurels, skulls and scrolls! The red and white panels are not as well defined as the newer plastics so can be challenging. One thing I did decide to do was weather the paint work and chip it using the sponge and some silver which I hoped would disguise the lack of neatness in the highlighting.
I was really pleased with how the War Wagon came out at the end. I may never get to use it now that Warhammer is changing, but no matter where it goes I think its gonna make a good centrepiece if the army is ever out on display. Oh, and if you look into the wagon you cant see any of the trousers at all, so I could have just left them basecoated!