Throwing spear as a weapon option is an interesting one. I have never used them myself so I can´t speak out of experince. A throwing spear has the range of only 4" and it strikes with the same strenght as the thrower. What is interesting is that if may be thrown when entering close combat both when charging or receiving a charge. This supersedes the normal stand and shoot rule. What is nice is that casualties inflicted this way are counted into close combat resolution. What is not that nice is the fact that to-hit-rolls for thrown spear used in this manner are done with -2 modifier. So you are rolling for 6´s to hit. Or worse. Being pretty heavy the throwing spear give a -1 armor save modifier. All that means is that for 1 point you get an extra S3 attack that hits on 6 or worse for the first round of combat. Not very effective in my opinion.
Any Forstjaeger unit may skirmish and for mobility that could be a good idea.
With maximum amount of 30 models and with minimum unit size of 5 you can field quite a many forstjaeger units if you wanted to. On a very forested battle field you could make pretty good use of them fielding small groups that set up traps and that way disencourage the enemy from using woods.
A C07 Ranger - John the trapper as seen on Oldenhammer in Toronto.
A perfect example of a forstjaeger.
So this is what makes foresters special. Foresters are the only troop type that is able to set up traps. If a unit of foresters stay still for a turn in woods they can set up traps that cause S4 hits to any model that moves within that wood on a D6 roll of 6. As there is no armor saving throw vs. wounds caused by traps they have the ability to do some damage. But are they worth staying put for a turn? Perhaps if you want to deny the enemy of the use of a forested area.
Once again the rules are somewhat unclear about setting traps. They do not tell you how big a forest can be trapped in one turn. There could be a very large wooded area in which the foresters are. Can they set up traps to whole of that area? Or should there be some kind of area template of something? Certainly some GMing is required for fair use.
Being skilled survivalists and expert woodsmen they can move through forests without penalty to movement. Reserve move however can´t be made within a wood.
All in all the foresters are an interesting troop type full of character. And Forstjaegers fit the empire army list nicely knowing the wast forests of that realm.
Sadly the foresters were discarded in the sleeklining known as 4th edition WFB and never returned. And to my knowledge traps too have not been seen since it the WFB world. Can someone confirm this? The Empire did have huntsmen unit in the 6th edition army book with new scouting rules and that unit stayed with WFB to 8th edition. Perhaps a slight nod into forstjaeger direction?
So in a nutshell for 4th edition the foresters were sucked into normal archer units but from 6th edition onwards they were renamed huntsmen, became scouts and lost the trap setting skill.
Perhaps the best line of classic Citadel models for forstjaegers would be C07 Rangers. Many many models there that represent survivalists, woodsmen, hunters etc. perfectly. In my opinion there are some models you could use from F2 and F4 series of fighters and men at arms as forstjaegers. Or you could pick some individuals from Marauder MM62 citizens.
An another from Oldenhammer in Toronto. Be sure to
visit that site if planning on getting a unit of forstjaegers -
so much inspirational stuff there.
A sort of edition 3.5 solution is to use Perry sculpted Empire archers that were presented in WD147 and in the green catalogue of 1992. These models are listed as archers but actually bear a marking of forstjaeger or bergjaeger in their slotta tab. This goes in line with the forstjaegers getting demoted to archers with the coming of 4th edition.
Forstjaegers and bergjaegers by LM
There are a few examples around the internet of people building units of forstjaeger (here, here and here) but very few painted models actually. Please let me know if you have or find some.
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This blog actually hit the 20 000 views mark a couple of weeks ago but the lottery I promised has not been done yet. I´ll try to get something painted and do the winner draw when posting about whatever gets painted next.
