writes:The plan is that the staff editors will learn about wargaming through playing Mighty Armies (Rebel Minis). Since we play the games using Skype (much cheaper than flying the editors to my house!), and since I want the editors to get hands-on experience with actual miniatures, this means providing each staff editor with two armies: their army and an enemy army.
For simplicity, I decided that everyone would get the same enemy army: a Border Dwarves Army. And to allow some variety in the games, each army will at least be equivalent to two of the boxed sets – large enough to field some different line-ups.
Going through my unpainted hoard, checking with all my friends, and trolling on eBay, I managed to collect about five boxed sets' worth of unpainted Border Dwarf minis. (Some of the collections I acquired were incomplete armies.) That was enough for two more staff editors' armies.
I sent this mound of minis off to our friends at Fernando Enterprises, and they painted them up for TMP.
I took half the painted miniatures and based them up for our 
Editor Dianna 
, where they will be the greedy aggressors against her Amazons. They will soon be shipped to the Philippines.
Here are the four basic stands: command, warriors, crossbow, and rangers:
The complete army consists of 2 leader stands, 12 warrior stands, 5 crossbow stands, 8 ranger stands, and 2 slayer stands. I've gone with three figures per stand.
Leader Stand
In regular games, only one leader is needed; in larger games, you can have extra leaders. The stands can be distinguished by the standards: one has silver swords, one has golden swords.
Warrior Stand
This time, I had the painters do the shield design (rather than doing them myself).
Crossbow Stand
Speaking as a Dwarf player who is directing his troops over Skype, it's important to be able to tell your crossbows from your rangers. The crossbows are in chainmail, so there's not a lot of discretion there…
Ranger Stand
…but the rangers' capes give some leeway for practical gaming. 'Forest green' is the logical color for rangers, but it looks dark on camera and is easily confused for chainmail, so I went with gray this time. And gray is a good Dwarf color, right?
One change made for this army, which I mentioned previously, is that the bases were 'color coded' to make it easier for a newbie to tell Dwarves from Amazons: the Dwarves have gold-colored bases. (It kind of looks like they are mounted on gold bars…)
I also asked the painters to go for a 'browner' skin tone this time, reflecting the spirit of the hills and mountains.
That meant I had to go back to the Slayer stands that were done earlier, and apply a brown wash to darken their skin tone.
By the time you read this, the army will be in the mail to the Philippines!