Progress on new units

I have gotten in some more painting time, and there are two units that are progessing nicely. 

They are: Dwarf Miners, 15 Dwarfs with musician and standard bearer. I'm not sure where I have them from, but I think they may have been bought on Ebay a long time ago.
My first unit of Miners that I painted many years ago got very dark, with the darkest of blue on their armor, so this time I wanted to do something a little lighter. I went for Death Guard Green, as it looks like a little muted color that I haven't used on any other dwarf units yet.
The chainmail is painted Leadbelcher instead of a more shiny metal color as the Miners wear their armor as much for protection in their daily work as for going to war. I hope to get some more painting done on them this weekend, as I am missing the hair, candles on top of their helmets (with flames on the candles) and some details (lanterns, leather pouches, golden medallions and so on).

The second unit I am working on is a unit I have started some time ago. That is my first unit of Longbeards, 10 Dwarfs with full command. The torsos have been "almost ready" for a while, but now I have primed the arms and heads and have started to paint the heads. My plan is to paint the beards before gluing the heads to the torsos so that I don't spill a lot of gray paint on to the already painted torsos. The arms and shoulderguards are being primed seperately, and I plan to keep them like that until they are painted and ready to be glued on to the torsos.
When this unit is done I can start to prime arms for my Thunderers as I don't have space for too many different small pieces on my table at the same time.

I also have an old metal Miner that I am painting up, and my plan is to have him standing by himself working on locating new oars to mine down in the lower level on my AoP board. The idea is to set him up so that he is visible from at least two sides when you look in to the board.
I think it's cool to see the difference between this old dwarf and the newer figures, as this metal figure has a much more outstanding nose that gives him a totally different character compared to the newer dwarfs that GW have produced. That is some of the beauty (hopefully people seeing my board will agree) of showing off models from different times and ages mixed up together. They are all legitimate GW figures, but some of them are just from a forgotten generation. I am sure the GW team will remember them, but not sure that the young people in the store have ever seen these old metal figures.

I have also sorted all my Chaos models, and placed them in tubs after what chaos god they worship. I didn't think I had that many Chaos Warriors, but almost all the tubs have 20 or 30 warriors in them. But then again, they are the models that introduced me to the Warhammer hobby so they have a special place in my heart.

There are four gods, but I only have figures to follow three of them.
I have a large goup of Chaos warriors that follow Khorne, and that tub also includealmost all the new Blood-something releases that came with the Age of Sigmar starter set and after. There are also some heavy cavalry, represented by 6 Scullcrushers (and I think I have more somewhere else)
The Nurgle tub have the largest model in my army, the Maggoth Lord Bloab Rotspawned, along with several relatively new Nurgle models from the end times releases. Also there are some Plaguebearers, Plague Drones, two sorcerers and the big unit of Chaos Warriros.
The third tray is dedicated to Slaanesh, and here I have a big unit of Chaos Warriors (seeing a pattern yet?) a Sorcerer, and when I find the box he is currently in, I will move Sigvald the Magnifient over to this box. Along with this gang I can field my Daemonettes, and a chariot but they are not in this box.
The last box have the units that doesn't have a Chaos mark, what used to be known as Chaos Undivided. These are Chaos Warriors that will have black armor  and in this box I also have a large chunk of Warriors, some Chosen ones, some Knights in all stages from just awaiting to be based to just been taken off the sprues and a lot of hounds that is only missing their bases.
When my dwarf army is ready for AoS I will try and spend some time painting and basing my Chaos army alongside building other Age of Sigmar sets and 40K stuff.

Progress on the dwarfs

Yesterday I assembled a unit of Dwarf Irondrakes for my slowly growing Dwarf army (or Duardin or Dispossessed as Games Workshop calls them now). The unit has 10 Irondrakes, but I am already thinking of making it twice as big, as I have several boxes of these tough little warriors.
For my Armies on Parade (AoP) board I might settle for 10, but for all other purposes I think I need at least a 20 strong unit. I know Age of Sigmar is often played with smaller units than the old Warhammer FB editions, but still it looks very impressive on the table. I'll check with my local Dwarf expert at GW if he is at wok on Saturday...
Anoter solution for the AoP board is to have a unit of 10 on its way down in the mines, and a bigger unit (or at least a same size unit) marching towards the gate. I'll see how much time it takes to paint this first box to the standard I would like and decide after that.

The Ironbreaker box will either make 10 Ironbreakers or Irondrakes. The difference between them is that the Ironbreakers have axes or hammers and shields while the Irondrakes have special guns (almost like miniature cannons).
My plan originally was to have some Irondrakes and some Ironbreakers, so I think I bought 3 or 4 boxes of these minis. But when I opened the first box I found that they look very different from the original metal Ironbreakers so they will not look good being in the same unit. I think these boxes was the first ones I bought after Games Workshop came out with their new design for the dwarf models.
I remember I was a little disappointed that they had a new look at the time, but not anymore. The new design is good, it just doesn't blend seamlessly with the old one. So the solution is to keep the old ones as Ironbreakers and the new ones as Irondrakes. That way they will be separate units, and the different appearance does not matter anymore.

The next step with the Irondrakes now are priming and painting. As most of the miniature will be silver, I plan to spray them with black primer, and when that is dry I will spray with Leadbeltcher to get the metal on them. Then I think I will try and drybrush them to get a more shiny metal as I usually use silver colors on my dwarfs. My old Ironbreakers was painted with Mithril Silver, but that color is no longer available in the paint range. They have a new paint called Stormhost Silver and for the metal Ironbreakers that I have from the huge Dwarf lot I got, I think this will work well to get them looking the same. For the Irondrakes I think a drybrush with Necron Compound might do the trick, if not I will try some highlighting with Stormhost Silver on them as well.

The nice things with all the different dwarfs is that the arms blend seemlessly between the boxes for most of the units, so it is easy to make units look apart from each other.
An easy swap to make some difference is switching between different banners and poles. And it is also possible to swap hands between units if the dwarf you want to make different is holding one handed weapons or tools.

Space Marines from both sides... and a little dwarf update too

There has been a while (again) since my last update, but from now on there is no excuses for not working with miniatures and updating the blog regularly.
Since my last blogpost I have moved to another house, and even though I still have to find out the best way to organize myself around my workplace, I am up and running.
I have the same sideboard/desk that I had before, but my storage facilites are a little different at the new house, so I am trying to find the best way to set up how I want to have my desk organized regarding building new models and painting existing ones.

Since the last blogpost I have finished assembling all miniatures in the Dark Imperium Startbox.
When I bought the box I didn't really plan to ever field the Death Guard traitor Marines, but when I built them I really got a liking to them so I have decided to field them in my Chaos army. They will probably be their own command, as my original Chaos army is not tainted by any of the Chaos Gods. They will probably field as allies, but I am leaning towards painting them all the same, but add rust and Nurgle Rot to the Death Guard minis. The regular Chaos Space Marines have Chaos Cultists fighting alongside them, and they will also keep their distance to the Poxwalkers fighting alongside the Death Gruard. A possible back story can be that The Knights of Oblivion have been fighting in two different warzones for a very long time and one of the forces has been lured to join Nurgle. I think I can make that work when it comes to fluff, and this will also add a little more backstory to the Chaos Marines.

I have also painted up a smaller starter set called "First Strike". This is a start set with a lot less figures than the Dark Imperuim box, and because of this it is also a lot cheaper. The miniatues in this set can also be bought in four separate boxes, but then they cost a lot more. There are six Primaris Marines in the box. Three Intercessors (the Primaris version of Tactical Marines) and three Reivers (mix between scouts and Assault Marines without jump packs). The box also includes three Death Guard Plague Marines and six Poxwalkers. These models are designed to just snap-fit together, but I glued them anyway as I don't plan to take them apart and I don't want them to loose bodyparts on the battlefield or in transit.

These figures comes in colored plastic, and the Primaris Marines are blue and the traitors green. They still need a good priming and painting though...

The Gatekeepers have also gotten some heavy fire support with a Primaris Redemptor Dreadnought. This Dreadnought is a lot bigger than the classic ones, and was a fun but frustrating build. There are several parts that are supposed to be moveable. Some I understand, others are getting glued together later in the building process anyway... I built mine ending up with one arm that can't rotate, but apart from that all moveable parts work as intended.

I will now take a small break from my Marines to work on my Dwarfs for Armies on Parade.
I assembled two cannons and crew these last days, and I plan on building some scenery for them as part of the Armies on Parade (AoP) board. One cannon is an Organ gun, and the other is a regular cannon.
I had originally planned to field them on top of the wall I have, but they are so wide they will have to go on the ground instead, and I will use two other cannons on the wall.

I hope to find a good place to stand and prime my models in the near future, so I can get started on the painting.