Duardin Auxillaries

These Duardin prove that I am unable to stick with a project for very long. I am not really sure why I started painting these but somehow I did. All I wanted to do was a sample model.



I have had these models for a very long time. I collected a Dwarf army for sixth that was composed primarily of these models. I kept all the enclosed helms and I had intended using them on a single regiment. They were by far the hest heads in the box and I wanted to make a really attractive unit out of them. I painted them up and then quickly replaced them once the next set of plastics for the Dwarves came out. Still for some reason they were never forgotten and on my last trip back to Ireland they wre retrived from the assortment of models there. I think the helmets are so evocative of Games Workshops Dwarves that I just had to update them. As to what I will paint next I am hoping I can continue with the Stormcast Eternals.

Gathering the Clansmen

Looking at the collection of Dwarves I have I noticed that I have a lot of regiments that I wouldn't consider finished. I have for instance thirty three Clansmen. So with the current thoughts about Dwarves I decided to finish off a few of these regiments. Here are three Clansmen. They are relatively quick to paint and as I only need seven to finish the regiment I jumped in and got them done over a few hours. They are originally from a Batlle for Skull Pass. They are really simple and thankfully easy to paint.

Dwarven Expeditionary Force

I am bizarrely interested again in my dwarves as I have mentioned a few times. I have quite a few other projects going at the moment from SAGA , Malifaux, Warhammer Ancient Battles to Muskets & Tomahawks. I am being really ill-disciplined at the moment and my desk is overrun with models from a variety of sources. Usually I do manage to produce some finished models from this chaos but I also tend to wallow in the slow progress doing a little here and a little there and never making much progress by the end of a painting session. However I really want to get my dwarves updated to the current edition and while I won’t be playing them anytime soon I would like to be able to at least. The delay in getting my models for the Tale of Malifaux bloggers has thrown my schedule awry. I have a backlog to get to there. I can at least leave my French for the moment as I need my opponent to get more of his stuff finished before we will play.

I would like to get a themed dwarf list together and so I took out my 6th edition book which had a few themes in the back. I don’t think I ever actually used them back when the book was valid but they were decent guidelines towards having a theme. I would really enjoy seeing a few more of these being officially printed and supported. I do know what I want at least. I would like to represent a trade caravan bringing goods from the hold to either a trading post or a nearby Imperial town. The theme that suits that best from the sixth edition book is a guild expedition. That really doesn’t represent what I want as it is based too heavily around the Engineers Guild and relies very heavily on warmachines and shooting. Enough dwarf lists are based around that already. I want to have some shooting alright but something light weight that you could envisage transporting around and being quickly ready to use. I also want to have some stalwart dwarves scouting ahead of the main force.

Therefore I have gone with two Bolt Throwers. They are suboptimal I think in the current edition but they work fine within my restrictions. The chances to hit are relatively low as they will most likely be firing at long range and therefore incurring a minus one penalty. I think that between the two of them shooting a turn I have a 44% chance of hitting with one of them at long range. To include them however there would have to be someone to repair them on the march and so an engineer is required. I will make the model up out of some plastics I have spare from the Organ Gun sprue. He will be kit-bashed but I think it will look fine in the end. I haven’t as yet absorbed all of the possible options he can take so I haven’t begun any work on him yet. By including him and using his ballistic skill on one of the Bolt Throwers I increase the chance to hit with at least one to 61%. I am tempted to include a Stone Thrower too. I have the excellent old model which is wheeled and made of wood but I don’t think it fits in the theme. The two Bolt Throwers should be enough and I guess I can rune them up a little bit to help with their chances to hit and wound. I don’t think any of the other Warmachines fit either. However a Gyrocopter definitely does. At least this way the force can effectively scout over the most difficult of terrain and also keep in contact with the Hold over long distances. It also keeps the engineer busy repairing the inevitable battle damage. I only have one model but if I got a second cheaply I would add it in. The new model is ridiculous and I am glad I have the 3rd edition version. I don’t really like the 6th edition model either but it is by far better than the new one.

Speaking of scouting I can’t leave out my Rangers. I probably won’t take anything else from the rare section and these guys really fit the theme. They are out in advance ensuring the path is clear. I have forty of the Bugmans Ranger models and I want to use them. They are really characterful in my opinion. I will endeavor to get a scouting hero included in the unit though I haven’t seen a rune that allows that yet. These will form a large block in the army but they won’t really be guarding the wagons. I guess that my other two infantry blocks will have to do that. I will include thirty five Clansmen. I have the models to do a regiment composed of forty but that entails a good bit of painting so thirty five is enough at this early stage. I could do two units of twenty with full command but I doubt that would fit in the twenty five percent allowance. Accompanying them are the veterans of the expedition, twenty five Longbeards. I have them armed with great weapons. I could also add in some shields but I doubt they are worth the cost. These are meant to be an effective offensive force. I would be very tempted to add the Strollaz rune but to be honest they would most likely end up too far ahead of the rest of the army and relatively unsupported if I did that. I guess the Lord and battle standard bearer will go into this unit. Having them in the unit serves to force my opponent to engage with them as they will probably be worth a large proportion of my points. I am tempted to fill them out to a slightly larger size as a unit of twenty eight doesn’t look right deployed on the table. I guess it is my obsessive nature but the ranks need to be full at the start of the battle.

Looking at the rest of the list I don’t know where to go. I have a few different characters I can add and I haven’t decided on their equipment yet. Other than the ones already mentioned above I will add a runesmith, a lord and probably another hero level character. I am very tempted to add a wandering Dragon Slayer to the force. The models look excellent and are a good contrast to the rest of the army. I would like to get another block of troops in but I don’t really see anything else suitable at the moment. Another sizeable unit of warriors would be very nice. Hammerers, Miners, Slayers and Ironbreakers don’t fit the theme. I have some Thunderers but I think I have enough shooting already to deal with larger creatures, albeit somewhat unreliably. The rangers have enough shots to worry the ablative skirmishers and light cavalry threatening the flanks of the rest of the army. I am very tempted to add some allies from the Empire army. I imagine some spearmen looking very nice ranked up with the Dwarves. They would be interested in protecting the trade also and so could fit in the theme nicely. I don’t know if I have the models. I will have to dig through my collection and see what I do actually have. I don’t really see any other allies fitting in.

Dwarf Longbeards revisited

You may recognise these models from a post a long time ago. Whatever the source of my current urge for Warhammer is I am unsure. However I took these models out of the cabinet and gave them some of the face masks that come on the sprue to make them destinctive from the standard warriors. I never really liked the idea of using them but now that I tried them out they are quite good. It should be enough, along with the white beards, to differentiate them for my opponent too. I like the new models but I don't fancy buying any. I have more than enough Dwarves to paint and I definitely don't need to add to the pile. So once again I have completed my Longbeards. I wonder will I update a few more models for the army?

Wayne Englands 4th edition Dwarves

Lord: Light Armour, Great Weapon, Crossbow, Magic Blade (50)	214
Hero: Light Armour, Shield, Magic Blade (25)	132
Hero: Heavy Armour, Shield	108
Master Runesmith:	178
Champion: Light Armour, Pistol	52
19 Longbeards: Full Command, Warbanner, shields.	370
19 Clansmen: Standard, Musician.	257
19 Warriors: Spears, Standard, Musician.	276
Bolt Thrower: Light Armour	60
Cannon: Light Armour	116
Flame Cannon: Light Armour	125

So I finally got some time to sit down and work out the list I mentioned in one of my previous posts. It has been a really long time since I had to make an army for fourth edition Warhammer. It took me a while to find out what the costs for command groups were and I had forgotten the fact that Champions were actually separate characters. So here is my fourth edition version of Wayne Englands Dwarves. I equated everything as much as I could. I swapped the Wizard for a Master Runesmith. This was rally the only change as Wwizards were dropped completely from the Dwarf fluff at this point, sadly in my opinion. I think there could still be a place for some low powered wizards in the list but restricted to something like the Lore of Metal. I am also unclear as to what the difference between Clansmen and Warriors are in 3rd edition. I assume it is more than just a different name. I was impressed that spears were possible still in fourth edition for Clansmen to take. I would love to have some spear armed Clansmen in this current edition. I also approximated the cost of the magic items as I don't know what they were in 3rd edition and I don't have the cards from fourth to hand to check what they are close to.

The points for the two lists came out fairly close with the 3rd edition being 1780 and fourth editions being just over a hundred points more at 1888. I am really eager to see how that translates into the next book an sixth edition. The army feels right for playing in fourth edition still and only lacks some ranged units I feel. I think though once I get around to the next three editions that the army is going to feel really small really quickly.

Ancient Dwarf Lord

It has been a busy week. Work has been overwhelming and I not only haven't been able to paint but I haven't been able to blog. However the dwarven urge has not left me and I pulled out one of my old unpainted models. This one definitely qualifies for Oldhammer as it is from 1991. It is really interesting to compare this model with the new characters. While this model is fine the new ones are really great. They are better detailed and more dynamic. Just look at Old Fogey's recent character. It not only sports a great paint job but the model is brilliant.

Wayne England's Dwarves

I think one of the main reasons I started collecting Dwarves was due to Wayne England's army previewed in White Dwarf 135 and 148. I could be wrong on the numbers but they are in the general area. The links will direct you to copies of the articles in question. I have had fairly strong memories of the article and when I seriously started collecting my Dwarves in about 1997 I even went as far to emulate the blue and white colour scheme. With the release of the new army book and the fact that all the Warhammer media are chatting about Dwarves at the moment I took out a few of the models I have in my large collection to look. There always has been a dwarf on my painting desk. It is never the same dwarf but I have never stopped painting the army. Infact I really have two armies. One in the blue and white scheme and one in a red and green scheme.I have been trying, over the last few months or maybe years, to decide if I have given up with Warhammer Fantasy or if I will continue playing. The Dwarves are my army and if I let this release go by, as I suspect I will, then I think I really have given up. Well by saying given up I refer to the playing rather than the painting. That would be sad as I really have had a lot of fun with good friends playing Warhammer over the years. I guess maybe as I am not in such good contact with these friends anymore that Warhammer has become the casualty of my move to Germany.I can't even say it is because the game is not good. It has never been good but that also never stopped me from enjoying playing it.

Today despite being sick I decided to paint something. That lone Dwarf on my desk was the target of my paintbrush. I snapped a quick photo with my phone of the gunner. It was a one hour paintjob and to be honest it came out pretty good. The model is a one piece affair though the detail is excellent. Once I had finished him I rummaged through my bits box and came up with another five to sit on my desk. I am very tempted to pull out a load of Dwarves and start painting them. I know I have huge amounts stockpiled somewhere. There are definitely about twenty more Bugman's Rangers somewhere and some of Colin Dixon's Miners too.

Listening to all the chats about Dwarves over the last few days returned an idea to me that might be an interesting exercise. I had intended to make a number of army lists that was the same in terms of content but came from each edition of Warhammer. I think it would be quite rewarding to start with Wayne Englands army and do that same list as it appeared in White Dwarf for each edition. I am really interested to see how it would work. Who knows maybe it can provide the spark to ignite my interest in the Dwarves again?

Three Dwarves

I don't often paint Warhammer stuff but I picked out a few Dwarves over the Christmas and decided to finally finish them off. These are three of the four incarnations of plastic GW Dwarves. I have only a few from the original fantasy regiment boxed set. I painted this one, the model on the far left to fit in with the current scheme of my Dwarves. I somehow swapped from a blue/white to a red/green colour scheme without noticing it. The model in the middle was the terrible 3rd edition plastic version. These were one piece models that could have a shield attached. I have added new shields to them all so that they fit in with the rest of the regiment. This version was actually way worse than the previous one. I really wonder why they didn't continue to produce them instead of these hideous things. Maybe due to the fact that the first ones were multi-piece kits and at this point GW had switched to their child centred policy. I still have a few of these Dwarves and I may paint them up eventually to inhabit the rear ranks of the regiments. With the current prices every miniatures is precious even when ugly. The last model on the right is the single piece Dwarf that came out with the seventh edition boxed set. This guy is an impressive improvement on the previous one, especially considering that the shield comes moulded on.

I have heard that the Dwarf book is coming out soon and I am trepidatious.The play style of the Dwarves is stale. While I would often play a more movement orientated force I still had to rely on shooting if I wanted to win. People ended up hating to play against Dwarves and in the end I wasn't having as much fun as I would have liked. I wonder what will come out for these guys? A zeppelin is probably too predictable. Iron Golems I could imagine. Though they start to step into the Warmachine imagery of theey go for steam powered large miniatures. They would of course look very different but comparisons will still be made. The Anvil of Doom will get a large kit thats for sure, I assume it will be able to make two models probably a Throne of Power. I wonder if Warhammer 9th edition will see buyable terrain. I could imagine the Dwarves getting some type of a fortification to buy in their army list. That could be a precursor of the changes coming soon. I am only really interested as Dwarves are probably the only army I will keep up to date for Warhammer Fantasy.

A Tale of Three Gamers - Month One

Hopefully there is no Mayan Dragon destroying the world today, if so I think you can ignore this post and see the more important issues! Anyway I haven't managed to get a post up on our Tale of Three Gamers for a while. Slow progress and being sick hasn't helped thats for sure. We all failed to meet the target but hopefully in Month two we can make up the short coming a little. Alan had too many holidays, lucky him. Gar damaged his wrist, unlucky him. I was too distracted, silly me!

Here is the progress I had made as of the deadline. The chariot was almost complete. I really under estimated how long it would take me to get everything done. I thought the model would be fairly simple. The chariot was really difficult to attach to the two hounds and took quite a lot of fur sculpting to get it done properly. I am still not 100% happy but it is better than the two Tuskgors. I would have liked to get a collar or harness sculpted on there but with the sheer volume of fur I assume that it would be next to invisible.I only had the two hounds to do and I will get them to match the hounds I have done before. I am pretty burned out on painting hounds but I have maybe twelve more to do for this army at some point so I had better get used to the idea that I am doing them soon. The crew were handy enough to paint. I followed the basic sample model I had painted before as far as the colour scheme. I am not sure about the red shoulder armour. The colour is nice and dark but I am not sure if it suits the green? I am not changing it now but I might not use it as extensively as I had intended. I wanted it for all the armour in the army, especially on the Bestigors. It would also be a nice colour on the banners but maybe the green suits that better? This month I will finish the chariot and then get into the meat of the army. I want to have at least one core unit done and therefore I have choosen to do some Ungors. I think 24 is a decent number to start with. I will eventually expand the regiment to at least thirty but that would be a bridge too far at the moment! To accompany them I will paint 12 Gors with additional hand weapons. That means I have two fieldable regiments and a good foundation to build upon in the following month.

Gareth will be catching up which is fair enough. Maybe next time he will watch his step on the stairs! So thats thirty clansmen for him. Alan has set a more ambitious target however. He is endeavouring, despite Christmas on the horizon, to get the Cavalry from last month, a wizard and a chariot done. Looks like chariots are popular! So stay tuned for a progress report and some photographs next week from us all!

A Tale of Three Gamers - Targets Set

So it is week one, the challenge has begun. All three of us have set their targets and only Gar was ambitious. I am setting myself a modest target of a Giant and a chariot. Al is aiming for five Chaos Knights and Gar is going for thirty Dwarves! I am being lazy. I have time at the moment to make a good dent in some of the core requirements but I don't want to commit deeply and lose motivation. I hate painting big regiments as forty or so models really take a long time to make progress on.
Here is what I have managed to get done on the giant so far this week. Just a base coat nothing special. I am keeping him in the warm brown tones that the test Ungor had. I am not sure if that is really going to work out for the flesh but hopefully it does! I was going to use him, with some conversions, as a Ghorgon but really I can't justify it. I don't think I would be able to convert him enough. Adding horns and weapons really wouldn't cut it I think. For the chariot I do plan some conversions. I hate the boars that are pulling the chariot and I think I would be able to use some Chaos Hounds instead. They are almost as big and they are much nicer models. I wouldn't have to do much either to add them under the yoke, just chopping and resculpting some of the fur on their napes. Lets just hope my eBay source is prompt in sending the chariot out to me.

Here is Gar's test model. He already has a few regiments done for this army but he is using this challenge to add more to the army. First up is some great weapon armed clansmen, a regiment I really am not looking forward to facing on the battlefield. Gar has used a nice contrasting dark blue and bright silver scheme for the Dwarves. The shields on the clansmen is done with GW Ice Blue to make them stand out a little stronger. Getting these done within a month is going to be tough.I always lose my motivation on bigger regiments. Especially when they reach above about fifteen models. I usually try to paint them in batches of five or six so that I don't have an endless line of thirty or so to do. When it takes a few hours to get something like the silver done thats when I really start to get annoyed. That is one of the benefits of Wwarmachine maximum units sizes are ten so you feel like you are making progress much more often.

Al is going to be holidaying this month (lucky him) so he is committing to a small regiment. So while we are slaving away for our corporate masters he is having cocktails on the beach. I still think it is a push to get these done as cavalry take a lot of time. There is a large surface area on those horses and painting them takes longer than expected. You can see here clearly a greek theme with hoplon shields and corinthian helmets. I have no idea on what the colour scheme is going to be yet, hopefully Al will make some WIP shots so that they can be put up here next week or so. I intend putting a post up every Thursday showing or at least discussing the progress made by each of us. I guess that will include quite often a lack of progress too! At the start of each month we will all present what we intend to do. It is going to be around 300pts in total though it will vary a little depending on what we select. The hope is that we will get 2400pts completed within eight months or so. We might even manage to get some terrain done along the way!


Month's Targets:
Al: Five Tzeentchian Chaos Knights
Phil: A Giant and a Chariot
Gar: Twenty Five Dwarven Clansmen


Tale of Three Gamers:
Test Colours
The Beginning

Avatar Shield

I always wonder why when it comes to the end of an evening I find my inspiration and motivation to paint! Really I spent the whole day yesterday doing some boring painting because I wasn't motivated. I took up some shields of my Dwarves and started doing them. I am a pretty lazy painter at times and I didn't bother doing the shields for my rangers originally. So now I am playing catch up. The shields are on the Dwarves backs so you can't really see them when ranked up. So due to my low motivation I decided to struggle through and get these done. Then by the end of the evening as I was slowly starting to get into the mood for painting I pulled out my new Knights Exemplar and got them undercoated, despite an annoying airbrush. I also got out some Warcasters, Kreoss and Severius, to paint. These got undercoated and hopefully over the coming weeks I can have a challenge to get five Warcasters done in five days... Finally as I was readying to finish I deecided to start on the Avatar or at least his shield. As you may have noticed I got a miscast shield. The top left corner is damaged. I actually like it as I want some battle damage. I haven't painted that area yet as I want the shield mounted befoe I do. However I got everything else done and I am pretty happy with that. There are a few areas I could make some improvements. I would like to have some 'dirt' collected under the rivets along the bottom of the shield. Anyway for now at least this part of the Avatar is done! Now I just need to sit and get the rest done too!

Here are the Dwarf shields I have been doing. I need about forty with the flying hammer design on them. I found a box of used sprues yesterday that should have enough for me to do the complete regiment with the same shield designs. I may be a few short. I generally try to keep the same shields throughout the regiment as I guess a lot of people do. I think it improves the regimented nature of the army and identifies each unit. I am not sure why I am painting Dwarves at the moment. Some warmachine crew were even painted over the weekend. Maybe my fingers are itching for a game of Warhammer sometime. Well it will be nice to have everything ready if the new book comes out anytime soon.

Bugman's somewhat lost rangers!

I managed to get my Dwarves finished for this weekend. It didn't take too much as a lot of the models had been started already. I was just getting them to a presentable stage so that I could finally field a proper painted warband! Thankfully it isn't such an undertaking at the Orc and Goblin Warband we have in the campaign. That one has seventeen models in it. That would take me far too long to do from scratch. However my painting laziness probably puts me at a disadvantage. I really won't be able to compete equally against a much bigger warband. I need to be lucky in my opening salvoes to even the numbers a little and then hope I won't be swamped by the remainders. I shall see how it goes over the course of the campaign. I have eighty gold to spend and I can invest that in another Thunderer or I can instead armour up my ather vulnerable leader... I am not really sure which direction to go.

Tonight I am giving some painting lessons so that should be fun. Some of the other Battletech players want to paint up some of their miniatures and I am happy to oblige them by letting them try it out with my equipment and hopefully pass on some tips while at it. At least it bodes well for the genreal committment to the game. If the players are showing enough enjoyment and dedication to want to actually paint their stuff then it would seem I can look forward to a goood few more games... nice!

Dwarven Rangers

Despite the fact that last weekend wasn't as action packed as the previous few I didn't make much progress on my painting projects. At the moment I am a little scattered and this means that while I might get a lot done I don't get a lot finished! I am working on Dwarves, Menoth, Battletech and Terrain! I got these five rangers done over the course of Sunday. I am playing Dwarves in Mordheim and I want, as far as possible, to use the Bugmans Rangers models. While I have enough done already to use them I felt it would be better to do the warband from fresh and then to add these to the Warhammer regiment as eventually I have to make that a little larger. I of course couldn't get these guys 100% finished, that would be too easy, as I ran out of Graveyard Earth to do the bases. So again this week I have to make a trip to the gamestore to pick up paint. It seems like a weekly event at this point.

Friday Showcase - Engineer

So I missed last Friday... I actually didn't have much to show to be honest.
A lot of the Dwarves I have left are in a state of semi completion. I have been painting Dwarves for far too long and it really is the army where I have a lot of half started projects and ideas that I never developed further. I have for instance a large amount of Iron Breakers painted but I never managed to complete all the custom shields for them that I wanted. Hopefully someday I can sit down and get a lot of these projects finished. I would have a fairly monstrous army then! I think I have everything for the Dwarf army, often in multiple copies and this is froma few editions of the miniatures too. This guy like the Ork from yesterday has been sitting on my desk for quite some while. I don't know when I built him, probably around this time last year or maybe a little later. I had wanted him to represent an Engineer but as I look at him now if is by far more of a standard crewman than anything else. I guess I needed some more embellishment to really get him to stand out as a character. The paint job was nice and quick. I again spent some time getting the flesh tones right. I didn't do anything fancy I just wanted him to fit in well with the other dwarves I have done. In fact this guy has inspired me to get some mroe progress made on the Dwarves especially the Bugmans Rangers I bought recently to bring that regiment up to a full compliment of forty rangers!

Friday Showcase - Longbeards

I am not sure if I have previewed my Longbeards here before? I know I showed them as WIP while preparing for Gorey last year but I don't think I have them here copleted before. Anyway here they are finally done. As you can see I used standard dwarven warriors with great weapons. The only thing I did to differentiate them was to paint the beards white... they are veterans after all. These were done in a rush as usual but I think they came out fine. The dark red and the gold ties them into the rest of the army. The banner ties in well with the army Standard Bearer too. Te grudge pony is a nice little unit filler that takes up eight spaces. That really helps to get regiments up to the current trend of thirty to forty models! It also splits in half so that means I can easily deal with casualties. I have used it in about three regiments so far and it saves me a lot of money!

I have tried and tried to get some of the old metal models on ebay but to no avail. They sell for incredibly good prices, usually twenty go for about €60 - €70. Thats a little above my budget. I keep my eyes peeled though because they are awesome models and I would dearly love to get a regiment of them together. It would complete my classic dwarf collection. So if any of you readers have any spare please let me know. I would gladly take them off your hands!

Friday Showcase - Stone Thrower

I am slowly running out of Dwarves to showcase here. I guess soon I will have to moe onto my Orks. Anyway here is my Stone Thrower. This is a pretty old model now but I love it. It is far superior to the current model. I had this in my collection for a long long time half painted. Thankfully the Gorey tournament last year gave me the impetus to actually get this model finished. The wood was the most annoying part but probably the most effective. The model doesn't have very sharp wood rain so painting it on was pretty much done free hand with a few lines for guidance.

The crew are really nice, I am not 100% sure if these are the actual crew members. Well I guess the guy carrying the stone is at least! However as I only have about six crew members painted from nearly ten machines I hae to do some substitutions! Sadly you can't get this model anymore. It is a true Dwarf classic!

Friday Showcase - Battle Standard Bearer

This is one of the most important miniatures in my collection. He has saved me on quite a few occasions for sure! The model is a limited edition one from a 'Skullz' promotion that was done by GW a few years back. The offer allowed you to get various rewards, the only one I came anywhere near having enough Skullz for was this miniature. I think it cost me twenty five of the tokens. It is a wonderful miniature, one of my favourite Dwarf sculpts. The Banner I got with the model was miscast but that wasn't too bad as I hadn't intended using it anyway. The banner comes from the Orc box with a few accoutrements from the then current Clansmen box. The paint job was annoying as hell as getting a flat white on that banner over Space Wolves grey was next to impossible. Even keeping the lines of the runes was impossible. I of course went with Vallaya's rune for the banner. It has always been the most expensive rune available and of course one that I would never take! Thats always the way I find. I had to update him to the gold scheme of my current force which was fine and gave me a good excuse to finish the model. I just need to finish the gems I think as looking at them now they seem unfinished.

Friday Showcase - The Oldest Dwarf

This guy is one of the oldest Dwarves I have had in my collection. I might have a few metal models that were made before this guy but he is the one I bought first. I used to have a good regiment (never painted) of these but over the years they have slowly vanished leaving me with this guy and a few others scattered around various boxes. It would be nice if I could scrounge up enough to make this regiment anew but they are very hard to come by now. They came from what I think was GW's first endeavour into plastic miniatures. The box was simply called Fantasy Regiments I think. It contained a good mixture of troops, ten Dwarves, ten Dark Elves, ten Skaven, ten Orcs, ten Goblins and I think ten Wood Elves. I could be wrong though as this was well back in the eighties.

Friday Showcase - Thunderers

Here is another of my Battle for Skull Pass regiments. I have a full metal regiment of these guys somewhere too but those were painted in my old blue and white colour scheme. These twenty doughty warriors were prepared for a tournament a long time ago and they have featured in almost every battle I have fought with my Dwarves since. For these I just went with red rather than the mixed red and green scheme I had been using. I guess this was due to the fact I had painted the Clansmen from Battle for Skull Pass fully in green. The strong gold helps tie them together well.

I made a funky movement tray for this regiment as I often found that I needed them deployed in a line rather than as a block. Having them in trays as you can see here let me quickly and relatively easily reform the regiment. Thankfully in eight edition I can now fire in two ranks so there is no need at all for me to use a really long thin line like I used to sometimes just to get all the shots I wanted/needed. I still cant decide if I should expand this regiment out to thirty guys or not. Eight edition suggests I should but I really haven't the desire to paint more...

Friday Showcase - Thane

I have to admit this isn't one of my best models, not by a long shot. I painted this guy just to say I had done him. I have maybe three of these models lying around and eventually I decided to do one. Some of the Battle for Skull Pass models are terrible and this guy is almost the worst. I can fogive the rank and file Dwarves some bad sculpts but this Thane and the Troll Slayer are just terrible. I also decided to put him on a massive, massive rock. He dwarves the other Dwarves around him! I did try out putting some designs on the rocks in an attempt to make it look more like an oathstone. It came out okay... I never attempted it again. I find a lot of models can benefit from the 'standing on rock' pose. However Dwarves don't. It really unbalances the model and puts them in general far to high up for it to be worth it. The same holds true for goblins I have noticed. I think I will reserve that pose for my Chaos Warriors. They at least are in scale enough that they don't look out of place on the rock.

As for the painting it was pretty basic. The highlights haven't really been picked up by the camera but then again they are nothing special either. The red for the cloak was a test for some red I was planning on my Quarrelers. The free hand I did on the sleeve isn't anything special either. This model doesn't see much game time at all and resides premanently on my shelf.