Ok, the black armor came out better than the former unit, so THIS is the Black Metal Heavy Dwarves unit.
Most of the faces were visible here, allowing for the corpse white faces, the blackened eye sockets, and blackened lips. The GW/Tolkein take on Dwarves is that they are vaguely Scottish, but another strong theme copies a Viking sensibility. So starting there, but trying a more paganistic angle, I aped the look of black and death metal bands. I'm more of a Thrash guy, but I have some fondness for the early progenitors of the genres that took off in Gothenburg and Norway. The metal armor here is black, so the only real color is denim sleeves and the surcoat, where it peeks out here and there, all with silver studs - a basic look for metalheads. The flag itself is a giveaway as to inspiration here - more on that below.
At least for the Dwarves, the "Hero" pack is the most armored of them all, so these are included below as well. The "Champions" seem to fit in with the regular Dwarf Infantry, and the Dwarf King, Wizard & Musician, I'll do when I get to the Light Infantry.
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| Easy to do the Black Metal face on the, er face. I probably should have done her hair black too, but I don't see that in musicians of this genre; they tend to wear their hair in natural colors. I have some small regrets about doing her ears in white. I think it's mostly just the face that is painted. Ah well. |
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| As with the hammer gal, I have one regret - I left the ears flesh colored, but I did his bald head all white too. I also see my brush tips are too blinkered to do fine scratches on the hammer head. |
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| Armor on everyone was done with ProAcryl Dark Silver, this was highlighted with Army Painter Plate Metal, THEN it was given a layer of Armor Wash from P3. For the first unit of heavy dwarves, I used the armor wash before all the highlighting. All gold was Glittering Gold from Two Thin coats. That is a magic paint, I tell you, very finely ground and just lovely in one coat. It's nice, bright, and punchy against all the darker colors here. |
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| This is the intended officer - a plastic mini, whereas the Heroes are metal. |
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There are three swordsmen among the rank and file, and I love the idea of swords being super bright which is more evident in real life than in this pic, but I gotta sing the praises of Vallejo Model Air - Silver. It is the brightest, smoothest silver I've ever used; I'll be using it wherever I can for final highlights on white metals. These particular swords had small mould lines along their lengths that I neglected to eliminate, marring the overall effect, but still: satisfactory.
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| If you don't know, the Little Big Men Studios, Shield and Banner set is not intended to work with the Heavy Dwarf set. Yes, the smaller gray banner fits on this flag pole, but the better one (the black one) is twice the height! Too bad, it really would have been perfect for this unit. Where did this flag come from? Google found me the goat on a black field, Google Gemini provided the "dwarfish runes, border and symbols." In Excel, I made three cells with a blue background, then pasted two flags side by side within the blue borders and printed, then cut it out and touched up the edges. Easy peasy! |
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| This is many times more effective than the Excel flag I made for the Perry Linebreakers in this picture. I really need to go back and redo that. I have transfers and stuff that can make this infinitely better. |
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| For this flag, here's what I started with. One prompt later: |
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| I wouldn't say these are Chaos dwarves, but they could also just be evil dwarves. Oathmark allows for strange allyships with the way the campaign map works, so these could easily be in alignment with an Undead Oathbreaker faction, or go against other dwarves in a civil war-type scenario. OR they could just be the strange toughs in an otherwise traditional Dwarf army. |
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| Here are all the heavies mopping up a unit of orc archers. Heh, behind those mountainous facades are the assembled, but unprimed knights from Wargames Atlantic I need to get to. |
Building plastic kits, or cleaning up models and priming them up, is fun and rewarding in and of itself. However, I have locked myself in with primed models everywhere, on this table, my former "main" painting table, on shelves, everywhere I look. So instead of not buying anything til I paint up something, I'm not going to build or prime anything new until I get some of this stuff completed and out of here. I've had a good run in 15mm last year and cleared off a lot of old projects, but it's time to get some of this 25/28mm stuff completed.
Anyone else read Bernard Corwell's Sharpe novels? I've read all but the two latest ones, but just completed Sharpe's Assassin, which has me itching to get some of this Peninsular War stuff into play. Yes, I've tended to focus on Russia, but I plan to do a comparable project for Napoleon's western front in Spain and Portugal. New Perry releases are also contributing to this mania with the brilliant Skirmish in a Box and now a new set of Guerrillas coming out as I type this.
I've daringly invested in more medievals, too. This is a project I never had much love for, but that early side that the Barons Wars era covers has got me in its clutches! I would love to assemble all this stuff from Victrix too, but I'd be forced to carry them around in my hands, having no surface on which to put them down! I need to build the rest of the orcs and dwarves too!
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