Hello everyone, it is that time of the month again, for our Army of the Month. I first saw this army on the Kings of War Fanatics, and immediately knew if was perfect for this segment. Without further adieu, we will be featuring Louis Augustus’s amazing army, the Black Order! A big shout out of thanks to Louis for taking the time to make this article possible and for sharing his amazing army.
Louis was a 40k and Horus Heresy player for years, having never really ‘clicked’ with Warhammer Fantasy except for a brief foray into the Empire and Tomb Kings lists. I picked up a box of Fireforge Foot Sergeants one day, thinking to myself ‘I’ll just paint 10 of these guys in a really dark and gritty scheme’, and of course a month later I was sitting on 100+ fantasy miniatures I suddenly had to do something with. I was looking for a game to use these miniatures in, and Kings of War had rave reviews so I asked someone at the local club in London to show me the game…and the rest is history.
Although I’m originally from London (Darksphere is my home base); I live and work in Prague, Czech Republic, where the players of the local ‘Brotherhood’ gaming club, in Ogri Doupe, have taken me in, and taught me a lot about the way the game works. It’s by far the most rewarding wargame I’ve played – you really own your successes and failures more than most dice-based systems I’ve experienced.
Louis was inspired to create the Black Order by games like For Honor, Myth: The Fallen Lord, and the book series The Black Company by Glenn Cook. I wanted an army with a really dark story, one with the best bits of the medieval aesthetic, and heavily inspired by the stories I read as a kid.
I didn’t want an army of brave, chivalric, do-gooder knights in bright colours – I wanted an army where the knights get just as dirty and gritty as the commoners they fight alongside. In my lore, the Black Order are a group of knights formed after a brutal civil war between the remnants of an old feudal kingdom, that tore itself apart, due to natural and political cataclysm. They survived the cataclysm by slaughtering their rivals, in an ambush, at a place called Black Cross; a crossroads in the foothills beneath a dormant volcano, from this battle they ended up taking their name and emblem.
Initially, Louis chose the army list in Kings of War that seemed to fit the medieval knightly aesthetic best, The Brotherhood. Brotherhood never quite fit the image I’d had of the Black Order, as mountain-men-turned-knights, who perhaps didn’t include chivalry in their list of virtues!
In particular, I felt like the Order wouldn’t be well supplied enough to maintain enough horses to keep its knights mounted, and that it’d supplement its battle line with allies and auxiliaries wherever it could find them. When Mantic announced the Northern Alliance – a hodgepodge band of mercenaries, forlorn knights and nonhumans – it fit pretty well with what I had in mind for the Order. Until they get a list for Kings of War proper, I’m using the Varangur list to proxy them for the time being.
Every great army has really compelling and interesting characters, The Black Order is no different. Currently leading the forces is Knight-Captain Ludovic Tyr, though he is technically a subcommander in the Black Order; there is an overall Knight-Commander, who has yet to be modeled, and there’s probably a schism brewing between him and Tyr, but I’m not ready to build him yet.
Then there is Gunnlaug the Witchbreed, a daughter of the shaman tribes of the North, holds perhaps more influence in determining the Order’s actions than an outsider should; Sister-Militant Milana, one of the few females to hold a place in the Order’s battleline, also wields far more influence than her rank should permit, but unlike Gunnlaug she’s been fully accepted by the Order’s knights as one of their own.
Sister-Militant Milana
There’s also Knight-Marshal Selianin, who is one of the ‘new generation’ of knights in the Order, who came from a peasant background, and was elevated to knighthood for actions in the field. He’s responsible for a lot of the Order’s nastier actions against the civilian populations.
Balancing him out is Knight-Seneschal Gaheris, who carries the Order’s Madrigal Banner into battle (anyone who played Myth should get that reference) and is of the older school of knighthood – unlike Selianin, he firmly believes in the old code of chivalry, and is something of an outsider in the new generation as a result.
Louis said that his favorite piece in the army was always his next model LOL! However, answering more seriously, Knight-Captain Tyr, both foot and mounted. He really enjoyed kitbashing a miniature from four or five different manufacturers and making an already brilliant Mierce sculpt my own unique character.
If not Tyr himself, then probably his Knights-Warden, the knights he raised from the Order’s huntsmen and scouts to serve in equal parts as knights and rangers in the Order’s great march North to find a new home. Louis runs them as Fallen under the Varangur list to represent their role in ranging ahead of the main army and outflanking enemy forces.
The unit to give the most difficulty for Louis was probably the Order’s mounted knights. Painting cavalry can be a bit of a chore, and he sometimes regretted painting them early in the army’s history, as he has a much better idea now of how to make the Order’s mounted knights look unique. They’re pretty much straight Fireforge miniatures, with a few Gripping Beast and Conquest additions. Louis said if he were to do them again, he would give each knight much more individualized armor, tied together by a ‘scavenged’ look, to show how the Order’s supply lines are in tatters, and they really rely upon battlefield scrounging for the majority of their repairs.
One thing that stands out about Louis’ army is they are on individual bases, and yet still manage visually to create evocative stories with their basing. When I asked Louis about this decision he said, It sounds a little mercenary, but he wanted to be able to field these miniatures in as many game systems as possible. He tried multibasing, but it’s not for him. He is playing Kings of War, KoW: Vanguard, Saga, and possibly Warlords of Erehwon, with the Black Order, so it’s definitely paid off.
With individual basing he thinks the trick is to find a way to make each model look good by itself. He makes sure every soldier has extra equipment and supplies, on his person, so he looks like a believable soldier by himself – for example, Cruniac’s rangers all have an array of secondary (and tertiary) weapons on them, and the Spearmen of the Yursgrad militia all carry a second weapon, in addition to their spear and tower shield.
Louis had a few suggestions for readers also hoping to build amazing and fun armies of their own. He said to start with an aesthetic you like and go from there. If you want to build an army of fantasy Romans, with mythological creatures supporting them; for example (as I know a lot of people do already in the KoW community), build the miniatures to look cool first, and think about which army you’re going to use them as second. Louis thinks one of the biggest draws of Kings of War, is that you can build an amazing looking army, with a unique aesthetic, and match it to the army list you feel best represents the story you want to tell.
To continue the Roman example, there are people who’ve run them as Varangur, Basilea, Kingdoms of Men, and even Herd, and in Louis’ opinion they’re all equally valid. Some emphasize the Germanic, slightly wild nature of the later Roman legions with the Varangur list; others use more priests and mythological entities under the Basilean list, whilst others simply prefer to keep it in the realms of history, with the Kingdoms of Men list. As long as it’s fairly obvious what a model represents, and your army is aesthetically consistent, the army list you choose should reflect the way your army fights in the lore you’ve built around it.
With that final bit of advice we will end the segment with Gymir-Whose-Laugh-Stinks-Of-Killing, a big shout out of thanks to Louis again for agreeing to be on the segment. If you know someone who you want to see featured as an army of the month, comment on this article, or email me at editor@dash28.org.
