Unit Fillers, part two

A lot if images are used without permission here, if you're the creator and you dislike it, we can meet outside and take it there.

This is a short wrap up of Unit Fillers. It will mainly show some more concrete examples of fillers and their general types. As noted in the first part, this isn't exactly university-level, but I hope you can get something out of it.


Introduction of part two of Unit Fillers
Something I didn't care about when doing this formation...

... is the obvious difference in speed of the creatures. There's a wolf/warg, a wisp and a big bird present in the same formation as Wood Elves. It is unadviced to greatly mix two or more different unit types, for a obvious reason: It is difficult to tell exactly what the unit is supposed to be, rules-wise. I would, however, glady advice someone to mix different creatures like this:

The unit follows a theme (Narnia) and has understated bases. The rhino sits fine with a unit of centaurs, especially when the aesthetical circumstances are as calm as they are in this regiment. No matter how strange it sounds with rhinos and centaurs mixed, it still looks good - because of the theme, which we also will go through in the following text:

Unit Fillers, part two of two
So, when doing fillers, there is a great incentive to keep to a theme. I would even go as far as saying: If you do not have a theme, steer away from all other fillers than natural objects/terrain. This is a nice example of fleshing out a unit with some terrain that really suits the undead look:


If you don't have a theme, take it easy with the fillers, unless, of course, the image of the army lends itself to such a thing:


Broadly speaking, terrain and/or special command units are generally never wrong. But what if you just want to pluck down some crap and fill out a unit? Earlier, I noted that one can use a large monster. Fair enough. But these things cost money and if there aren't any money left after christmas, you do this:

Image stolen from the Warhammer Forum and part of a large army with a strong and somewhat unusual theme. But the idea is still very much usable for a filler. The traffic divider...

Traffic divider used to great effect: Not only does the unit look great, but if one were to fill a unit with other things than miniatures, this is the way to do it. Picture from Mantic's blog, unknown creator.

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Lastly, I would like to touch on diorama versus fillers. We have, hopefully, all seen the famous Ork army for WHFB - known from TWF and also known from Podhammer and probably other podcasts: The one with every regiment fighting within. This is a somewhat similar thing:

This Dark Elf army, done after the movie 300, have a really strong theme (and we will come back to this project in a future article called "Theme") and doesn't use fillers. Each regiment is almost a minidiorama, extremely dynamic... so, what can we take from this nice project to use as fillers? The movement. By taking some extra time by posing a few warriors a little more aggressive - like in the image above, but more spaced, you can fill the front or center of a formation quite easily and also get a nice little centerview for the unit. If you really think you're up to it, do a mini-diorama, but then it becomes something much more than a simple filler, and that's a whole other article.

Fillers are made for fun, in my opinion, they are not a decision forced by my wallet, and I think this is true for most of the adult readers here - we got jobs, don't we? That said, I am strangely enough equally proud of my Gondor army with its tidy ranks of soldiers and cavalry company, as I am of my Edheldu with its trees and Wargs and WHFB Huorns and dozens of rune stones...

Let's wrap this up with with some pictures that all have great filler potential, even if their original creators never meant it that way:

A Skaven regiment for WHFB. A barrel float in the toxic fluid. The creator have prepared holders for another five Skaven warriors in an area that would normally comprise of eight models and thusly saves three models.

Another great project, utilizing OSL, a filler, movement etc into a diorama. Lots of goodies to learn from this.

A bunch of corpses. The problems with things like this - as always is with static fillers, like the trees and all those stone heads on my Edheldu project - is it really looks stupid when you move the whole shabang :) but who cares, it looks kewl, doesn't it?



Thanks for reading and not just looking at the pictures. Next update is probably saturday. I wish you all a nice week on work with lots of bottom pinching.