Beards... for a while!

I noticed that the tournament season is now here... and there is no hope that I will get my Chaos finished despite painting as much as possible. So while I will continue to paint them and hopefully get them finished within the year... well playable within the year, I will be using the Dwarves in play. Dwarves were almost the first army I collected. I say almost because it is hard to define when I finished collecting my goblins and when I finished collecting Dwarves. I wonder do we ever really stop collecting an army? I have never managed to have that first goblin army in a really playable state. Its gone through three iterations now and I really wonder if there will be a fourth! I have a huge box of goblins sitting under my painting desk and every now and then I get tempted to pull them out. This is the second attempt at Dwarves. I was much more succesful at painting these as I have a fully useable army with the older models and a useable army with the current ones. Sadly I went for completely diferent colour schemes so combining the two wouldn't look very nice!

These are warriors from the Battle for Skull Pass. I painted them quite a while ago and it shows a little. The interesting thing about these guys is that they are really really quick to paint. At least I can expand the regiments quickly I hope. I have most of the classic metal regiments too so I should actually consider buying a few more models to expand them before they are replaced with plastic alternatives. I think that Hammerers and Iron Breakers are more viable when around twenty five models with Clansmen being best around thirty. Miners would be another regiment that I consider best around thirty.

One of the things that has always found bad about the Dwarves is the low strength. As a combat army I would love to see them being a bit more combat orientated. While the high weapon skill is good the fact that a lot or armies have access to weapon skill four kind of cancels the benefit. Then in combination with a strengh of three is means that toe to toe you really are not getting much of a benefit over other combat troops such as Orcs and Elves. The armour helps for sure but still... I feel that Dwarves should be able to go up against Chaos Warriors pretty evenly though then the shooting would be a little too powerful! I am really stuck as to what direction to take the army for tournamwent play. The Anvil seems to be a must as not only does it bring some dispelling power to the table but it allows for the Dwarves to really threaten with their extra movement in the shooting phase. The elite infantry looks a little less attrractive due to the fact that their saves are now lowered. The better weapon skill and strengh though seems good and I really think I need to get some of the Iron Breakers in. I always loved those miniatures. They remind me of the Squat Hearthguard that were fantastic.

This is the Lord from the same boxed set. I am not sure why I put him on a rock. Maybe it looks better in person but in the shot it really looks terrible. I am not sure if I meant it to be an oathstone or something... I am currently designing a list without knowing exactly what I have in terms of models. The army is sitting at home on a shelf in Ireland and I really can't be one hundred percent sure whats in it. I was hoping that some of my old photographs might enlighten me but they rally are not much of a help! Anyway some educated guesswork should see me with a list I can use... though for some sneaky reason I do think most of my Clansmen are armed with great weapons... I hope not!