the future of the Dwarf army

I have gone through my dwarfs and divided everything up into units. I have the two units that I have talked about before, armed with axes and shields and two-handed axes, and from the same boxes I will make 3 more units of 20, armed with long-guns, crossbows and warhammers and shields.They will all have the standard command unit with champion, musician and standard bearer and 17 regular warriors.

The next unit I'll make will have 14 figures on the sprues as I've already built 6 of tehm from the extra parts I found in the spruest, making it a total of 20. This will be a special unit armed with pistols and long-guns and they will be named The Rat-pack and will be specialists in fighting in sewers and catacombs againt the rats of the Skaven.

Some of the old miniatures that was in a drawer in my desk along with one sprue from the boxes used above will make up a unit with shields and axes, Here there will be different poses, but they all have the same type of armor.

I had a lot of old dwarfs armed with long-guns, but they had 3 different poses and none of them were enough to field as a single unit as the Cities of Sigmar rules says the minimum unit size is 10 minis. So I added them in to one big unit of 25. It will look a little weird, but I think it will come out good in the end if I place them a little strategic in the unit.

Another big unit will be the Hammerers. They are also 25 strong and they are also old metal minis. They will be the bodyguard of the Low King and surround him when he goes on the battlefield. Some of these minis are painted up quite nicely, but to make them my own I still need to repaint them. I will take inspiration from the old paintjob though. The Low King himself will be represented by the miniature of Thorgrim Grudgebearer sitting on his big throne with the Book of Grudges in front of him. The throne is carried by four dwarfs. This is a resin kit still on the sprues, so it will not be one of the first I build, but I will do it in due time.

I also have two units of Miners to go in the army. They are a mix of plastic and metal minis and one is 20 strong while the other ended up with 17. The miners look so different from the other units that I can't just modify them to make more, but who knows maybe I will find some on Ebay in the future. I also sthink I have some miners that I have built previously and if so I might include them and then I might be able to boost the units up to about 30 strong. 

All these units are the old traditional Dwarfs that you could see on the battlefields of Warhammer Fantasy. But I also have two units with newer miniatures. The first unit is Longberds made from two boxes of 10, and they will be armed with axes and shields as they make a great shield wall in the Cities of Sigmar rules, also their pose looks kind of cool.

The other unit is a unit of Ironbreakers (also 2 boxes of 10 each) but they look so different from the original Ironbreakers that I have decided to make them as Irondrakes, and that will be the only ones in the army.

And speaking of Ironbrakers, I also have 8 old-style Ironbrakers that I will add to the army some way. Hopefully I can add them to an Ironbreaker unit I have made previously.

I also have some heavier weapons for the army, and that is two regular cannons and an organgun cannons with full 3-man crew for each. I also have an organgun that is missing a wheel, but I am sure I can find a solution to that with either two new wheels or one identical wheel. Actually I belive I already have as I seem to remember seeing a small plastic bag with wheels in it in my bitz-collection.

I also have a big cannon that I originally was a flamecannon, but I have decided that it just will be a big cannon called Big Bertha as I am missing the tanks that contain the fluid that makes the flames and also some of the specialized looking crew. It is also missing a base so I need to figure something up for that but I am sure I can make some sort of frame with parts from other sets. I have found a crew to work on it, and because it is such a big gun I have decided the crew will consist of four men isteadd of the normal three.

Another special unit is a unit of rangers armed with crossbows and axes and a standard bearer with a pistol. This unit is 16 strong.

The final unit is a unit of 10 warriors armed with axes and shields. 

I also have one more incomplete unit with 7 various slayers. I originally thought about using Fyreslayers as slayers for my army but decided against it as they look too distinct. I might have to go on Ebay and see if I can find 3 more to make it in to a unit of 10 as that seems to be the "magical" number for Cities of Sigmar. I am quite sure they can be smaller units if I field them in the classic Dwarf army. 

Then there are several characters and single miniatures. One of them is actually a unit of 3 with a lord standing on a shield being carried by two other dwarfs. He was originally planned to be my general, but things evolve...

There are 3 engineers with handguns that will be part of the Engineering guild, 4 Thanes who are leaders of the Dwarf clans, 3 dwarfs with beer (one of them is an original metal Josef Bugman-figure), and 3 beautifully sculpted old metal figures that I don't know the origin for.

The final figure is a grudge-pony.

I also have some boxes still in storage that contain a small group of figures or a single figure. This is a mix of old metal figures like Malakin Makaisson and his Goblin hewer, Thorek Ironbrow and the Anvil of Doom and what I think is either a Grugde thrower or a Bolt thrower. There are also some blister packs with among other things White Dwarf subscription figures. Some of these might be possible to add to the army, while others like the birthday figure and the movie director will be just for display purposes but they will be made at a later time. 

More dwarfs

Like I have said many times before, my Cities of Sigmar army will have lots of Duardins in it. I will also use the same Duardins in my "classic" Dwarf army as the lore states that the Dwarf keep is close to the city where the Cities of Sigmar army is located.

This week I have armed (pun intended) my armless dwarf unit with axes and shields. I gave the unit a command with champion, musician and standard bearer. I have not glued on the shields, as they cover up a lot of the front of the miniature, but I will prime and paint them separately as I paint up the unit and flue them on in the end. I have decided the unit will be re-primed and painted again.

I have assembled a new unit of 20 dwarfs with command and armed with two-handed axes. I originally planned on having two-handed axes on my Longbeards, but after reading the rules for them in the Cities of Sigmar army I decided they would be better off with axes and shields, so I made this unit with two-handed axes instead.

I also brought with me the remining boxes of warriors from my storage and went through them to see what I had and what kind of units I can make. It turned out a few of the boxes were raided for parts from before and were not comlete. But I think I have managed to put together a good plan on what units to make. I also went through the minis I had in my workbench and set them together in units and the plan is to re-prime and paint them. 

Some of the minis in the drawer are really nicely painted so it sort of hurts me to prime over them, but I will try my best to paint them just as wonderful. This is probably the nicest of them all...

I could choose to not re-paint them, but I have a thing that I want all my minis to be painted by me. Thre are only two exceptions, and that is a Space Wolf Space Marine that I probably will never use on the battlefield as I don't field that chapter, and the fantastically painted Iperial Knight that one of the former staff members at the Warhammer store in Oslo painted. That one will be fielded on the battlefield, but I will make sure people know who painted it if they ask me, and I will not take credit for that paintjob. 

One funny thing with the dwarfs re that they were unchanged through severl revisions. I found three generations of boxes with the exactly same miniatures in them, the only difference was that the newest box had round bases instead of square. 

Update on Mangler Squigs

Here is a little update on my Loonboss on Mangler Squigs. I sat down this weekend and painted the saliva in a blueish tone with a Contrast paint. I also looked through the model and cleaned up the parts where I managed to get the the wrong colored paint on already painted areas. 

I then added Stirland Battlemire and Stirland Mud to the base. The bottles were a bit old so they had some dried paint in them but I think I managed to remove that from the base so it didn't end up on the finished base. 

What remains before I can call this big mini finished is drybrushing the base and painting the rim, trying to glue on the little goblin that broke off the top squig (decided that his leg is too thin to pin it in place) and then finaly glue the two mangler squigs together.

I really enjoyed this mini, and there is a chance I might add a second Mangler squig to my collection in the future, but then I will not put a loonboss on it use the other combination provided in the box.

Dwarfs or Cities of Sigmar...

I've had a unit of Dwarfs standing on my workbench for quite some time. This is not those dwarfs.
I started to paint that unit many years ago while I was working on my Dwarf keep for Armies on Parade. But I had too many Dwarfs so I decided that unit had to go. But before I got there I had started to paint their bodies so I decided to finish that. For some reson I decided to paint the arms separately, probably because I wanted to paint the unit to a high standard. But I've managed to misplace the bag or box of arms somehow, so last time I was at my storage room I decided to bring home a box I knew contained sprues hoping I could find the arms I need to finish the unit. I didn't though, but that is for later...

What I did find was some torsos that I hadn't assembled. I had many spare fronts, so I decided to make some Dwarfs. So far I have assembled four, but I have five more to assemble. I decided not to care about making a unit, so I just found some parts on the sprue and got started. I think what I have here is a command squad and a "gunner". I have found parts to make a couple more with guns and also some with crossbows.   

The first thing I found was an instrument. I love making weird instruments for my musicians, and when I was looking for the arms I found this head and decided it would be cool to use on the instrument since it had the right size. For his other hand I used a pistol, so I am thinking he is the musician for a unit of gunners.

The second one I made today had the same torso as the unit I haven't found the arms for. I had already glued him together, so I didn't want to pry him apart again and change the torso. So I found a hand holding a pipe and glued that to his left hand and like the musician he got a gun in his right. It is not easy to see in these pictures, but I promise it will be visible when he is painted up.

This is the gunner I made, He is a quite simple build really, but I found a nice head with a lot of bling.

Finally I made a standard bearer to complete the command unit. I had a few different standards to choose from but decided on this as this was the most special. I gave him a gun too, to tie him in with the other two command characters. At the moment I have no idea what kind of unit they are with, but I am quite sure it is a special unit of some sort and that it will come out sometime in the future... 

I mentioned earlier that I did not find the right arms to use on my armless unit, so as usual I have come up with a stupid plan. As far as I  remember there are two types of Dwarfs in the old range, it is the ones with axes and shields and it is the ones with guns or crossbows. My bet is that I have a box or two of the axe and shield units in my big box of Dwarfs, so if I take their arms and use them for my armless unit, I can replace their heads and chests with the ones that can be used with guns or crosbows and then I can convert them to that. But I will see what is in the box and no matter what I find I will make some more classic Dwarfs to use in my Cities of Sigmar army. I know I have some boxes of the newer Dwarfs and I plan to use them as Longbeards as they are a unit that still exit in the current rules. But I might leave them in the box in storage for a while though, as I have so many human units for Cities of Sigmar already at home. I also have a box of even older Dwarfs (the metal ones) that are built and painted by somebody esle, and I would love to prime them again and paint them my way. I don't know what will happen yet, but expect to see more Dwarfs here going forward.

Sons of Behemat, working on more models at the same time

Here are some more work in progress pictures of my Sons of Behemat Mancrushers. 

My idea is to get as many gargants with their skin and pants painted as possible as this is the biggest parts of the models. Then I plan to do the remaining details in bigger batches. The skin looks a little glossy here, but I have only added the base paint (Bugmans Glow) and then I will add a layer of Guilliman Flesh that is a contrast paint and that will give it a more natural looking skin tone and tak the gloss off.

I have also started to paint some of the wooden parts like the handles of the weapons. The barrels that most of the gargants carry in the back of their belt will be painted a lighter brown-tone later. This is done with contrast paint as I think that gives it the natural wood look.

The first gargant here is Elder Whitewash, he has Khorne red pants, and will have grey hair. I have not yet decided on what paint I want to use to achieve the gray hair, but I will look at some turorials and see if I can find a recommended method to use. He has a massive rock on his base, and the bird that has to be on all gargant miniatures is sitting on that rock. The rock is made from one half of the club that came with the new sprue to make the Sons of Behemat King and that other gargant that came from the same new sprues in that box.  

I just wanted to add this pic to show how I keep track on who is who. All bases are named like this so that I can easily see who is who without getting out my laptop and checking my Excel spreadsheet with information about the entire Sons of Behemat army.

The residue you see under the base is a reaction from the primer and the double sided tape that I stick them to the cardboard box with when priming the models and it will be scraped off before I paint the rim of the base when the model is fully painted.

Next gargant on the table is Ruddy Brittlegrill. I wanted to do something a little different with him, as he has a big shield with some spears behind it glued on his back. This is just a trophy, but sometimes the thin spears can come in handy to pin down pipsqueaks on the battlefield until he has time to come back and collect them for food. 

Because of the shield I couldn't add any barrels to him, so I placed one on the base instead, and put the bird on top of it. I also added a pitchfork that came with the Mancrusher sets, and I think they will appear elsewhere too. Either on other gargant bases, or with other armies as I have plenty of them in my bitz boxes after building 15 Mancrushers.

Ruddy is the gargant I talked about in an earlier post where the color of his pants really surprised me. This is quite a heavy coat of Sigvald Burgundy, and is quite purple and not the very dark red as I had thought from the name. But it is no problem as I really liked this purple, and the pants are not ment to be a unison color after all. Here I have also painted the top of the statue that is attatched to his "sling" hanging from his belt. This will be drybrushed with lighter grays later, and the straps will be painted either like leather or like some sort of canvas when it's done. 

For the last one for this update I didn't manage to get the best picture, but this is Ryddys brother (I think Ruddy is the older of them) Tardy Brittlegrill. There are a lot of brothers in this army, because there are so many fungus/mushroom names that share the same "last name".I do believe Tardy is the only left handed gargant in this army and possibly in the entire realm, so he is easy to recognize on the battlefield. With so many arm/hand options in the set I find it a little weird that GW didn't give us any left handed weapon options. I took a piece of club from the Mega-gargant box and glued it to an open hand. It is not as perfect fit as it would be if it was molded , but it is the best I could manage with that I had available. I didn't want to use greenstuff on it to make it fit better with the hand as I then would have to add greenstuff to the entire thing if I wanted it to look natural, and that would make the giant club even bigger and more out of proportion. 

I do believe I have one more gargant with the same club, but he holds it in his right hand, and there I used the same right hand Ruddy and Elder have and just cut the staff just a little above the hand so it looks like he has made a handle for his club. The club looks huge, and apart from the Space Marines I think this is the only army where you can use  such oversized weapons with no worries.

The club was painted before I settled on a standard way of painting wood, so I have not decided yet if I want to go back and prime it again with a brush and repaint the club with the new standard color or if I feel it will be ok. I will take a look at all the gargants that had their wooden details painted in this way and make a decision the next time I sit down to paint.  

He has green trousers, but I don't remember the name of the contrast paint right here but I will write it down next time I sit down to work so that I can report it correctly when I show him off when he is done.

That is all for this update, and in the next post I hope I have some updates on the Mangler Squig you see partially on the left side of this picture.

Sons of Behemat, base done

Like I mentioned in my previous post, I had to make a new base for my finished Mega-Gargant as I needed his tall base for King Urchin Earthfan, So now Beechmast Candlesnuff is placed on a flat base. 

I haven't taken taken any detail pictures to show off Beechmast himself as he has been presented before.

The base is made with a wall from an old Warhammer Fantasy scenery set that consisted of several wallpieces and a few signposts. Then the base is covered with a mix of Stirland Battlemire and Stirland Mud just to make a little variation. Most of the base is covered with Battlemire though. Then the base is drybrushed with three different greens. The fist is Death World Forest and that is also used on the rim of the base. Then I used Elysian Green that is a little lighter and brighter, and finally the much lighter Nurgling Green. originally I just used Nurgling gren on small areas, but here I used it almost s much as Elysian Green. I also glued on some grass tufts, and that color is called Mordian Corpsegrass.

Here is a closeup of the wall. At the base of the wall is a little row of grass,When i looked at this picture I noticed I had forgotten to pint the metal ring on the fencepost, so I need to do that the next time I sit down to paint and then I will paint it either Leadbelcher or Iron Hands Steel depending on what pot I find first, then I will drybrush it a little with Ryza Rust. 

I really like the closeup of his feet were you can see how his nails have been painted with Snakebite Leather, and this will be used for both fingernails and toenails for all the Giants.

Happy New Year and some progress

First of all, happy new year. We have made it to 2023 now...

I see so many people show off how many minis they have built, painted and so on at the end of a year or the beginning of a new one. So this year I have deided I want to try and track what I do. I don't think my numbers will be nearly as high as the people usually posting about this, but that doesn't matter. It is just to see how much I actually manage to do. I have also decided that a mini is a mini no matter the size or type.

Today has been the first day of painting in the new year, and I have started to work on my Sons of Behemat army that is all built but not painted, and also my Gloomspite Gitz army because I just love them.

First off is the Mega Gargant I had completed and put on a high base. Since Games Workshop released a King for the Sons of Behemat I needed the high base for him, so I had to put the finished one on a new lower base. This base is completely flat with a fence on it. The fence is from an ancient Warhammer Fantasy scenery set, and I have used parts of that for many of my bases. The new base needs to be drybrushed, and I need to paint the rim but this is what it looks like so far...

I will make a dedicated post about this one when all the work is done. I hope to get to finish the base tomorrow if nothing happens that will keep me from painting.

The next model I have started to paint for this army is a Mancrusher. I have decided on what colors to use on my Sons of Behemat after trying a few alternatives on my already painted models. One of the things I have found a way to paint is skin, and another is wood where I have one color for things like clubs and another preferred color for barrels. But one thing that I love to do is to try out new colors on the pants of my Mancrushers. I feel that is where I can make the army colorful and differenciate between the various models. For this Mancrusher I used a new Contrast paint I found called Sigvald Burgundy. I expected a dark redish color so I was quite suprised when it turned out it was purple. Still I like it a lot, and I am sure I will use it for other projects. This is what he looks like so far...

I also added a closeup showing how the wood looks. I will have to see what it looks like tomorrow, but right now I am thinking that with the Contrast paint I will not need to drybrush with other colors to make it look like actual wood like I need when using the tradtional paints.

The final model I am working on right now is for the Gloomspite Gitz and it is a Loonboss on Mangler Squig. I really like squigs, and while painting the first of my Boingrot Bounderz I decided on a lot of the colors I want to use on the army. I know there is a chance my army will look quite unison, but I hope I will find ways to work against that, and even if I don't it is a kind of army that would look weird if the colors were too different from unit to unit. There will be some differences in skintones as I have no intention of re-painting what already is done, but for my new models this is the way i intend to do it. The only thing I feel I might chnge is repinting squigs, as I want all of them to be red and I think I painted some blue back in the days. But that won't be a problem as those were squigs being herded so they do not have a rider.I think I also need to put them on new bases as I think they were made while bases was supposed to be square. One of the things I have done over time to break up the monotony of this army is to paint their hoods brown instead of black. Things I will do in the future is to add details on bases where there is room for that, like on the Squig hoppers and Boingrot Bounderz where I add a lot of plants that I plan to paint in bright colors and also details that is special for some characters. 

For this model I need to go over and do some touch-ups on some of the colors as I had some "accidents" when painting smaller areas. And there are a few more colors to add as well as making the base and doing some drybrushing.

The bottom mangler squig stands steady on his base with some smaller goblins trying to get out of the way. I need to decide on colors to use on the mushrooms on the base, that is one place where I can add some variation. Apart from that I have the colors pretty much decided. 

The top squig with the Loonboss riding on top of him will be glued in place when the painting is done. I still havent decided what color to use to paint the saliva from the tongue, I was thinking maybe nugle rot as that is sort of slimy, but I think I will need a ground color before I apply that.

I love the gobbo hanging on by his hands, as he is looking a bit like the Batman of the Goblins

As always when working on detailed projects things that is not supposed to happen, happens anyway. In this project a small goblin trying to jump away from the top mangler squig broke off. He looked really cool, so I plan to paint him up and then try to glue him back on somehow. Maybe I will have to try and add a pin to get him to stay on, but I'm not sure it will be possible to get a pin in to his thin leg. But i will see when he is painted up.

A separate post will be added for all the three projects I have shown here when they are done, showing them off with all their details. When it comes to the Mancrusher gargant I might show them off in pairs as I have quite a lot of them and they all have a lot of common details. And I work on many of them at the same time. I think I have 6 of them in various stages of painting not including the one in this post, and I have 7 more that is still only primed, making it 15 in total with the one who is finished.