I also pulled out some Soviet 15mm tanks for FoW.. some on that in the end of this post.
Ok, so in various pictures on the web and in other blogs, there has been this outstanding, unpainted "dwarf king" figure that has been lingering in a lot of photos, but never seems to get painted... well... I finally painted him! More on that later....
As I am finding, I still have about 20 or so more dwarves to paint, both heroes and rank and file troops. I mentioned elsewhere that I am going to see this through.... I need to "complete" this force. Well, this and the goblins.... I have about a dozen or so of them left to paint too!
Each painted figure however, brings me closer to this goal... my time is short due to family and such, but I am finding more time to paint.... instead of video games.
Just a recap... above is the last group I managed to finish over the Holiday weekend. 2 plastic dwarf warriors, a vault warden team (plastic) and my first ever lead dwarves from the GW LotR line. They were a blast to paint!Moving on...
Painted in the same style as the others.. more Blue Mountain dwarves! It just dawned upon me that I do not have any finished pics of this batch of three... these are both "works in progress" pictures. Again, I need to comment... as much as I do like them, the GW plastic dwarves are just lacking in details. They blend together and in some places just disappear all together so you are not sure if you are painting armor or tunic!
After these three were done, I moved on to a new batch. One of the lead dwarf kings and another lead model I like the pose of. One thing for sure is that the sculptors for GW have come up with a lot of really good poses for the figures, especially the lead ones. Included in this group was the dwarf ballista & crew and three plastic warrior archers. ALL of these figures, like the earlier ones I have recently posted about came in a great flea market find at one of the HMGS shows!
Not sure why the pictures uploaded in this order, but I am not one to try and rearrange them! Up first is the metal dwarf warrior. I have long toyed with the idea of having an "allied' dwarf force just create another paint scheme. I have finally come up with that scheme. The dwarf king and this figure below were the first to try out the new colors. I went with ITW steel, bronze, flesh and light grey, while the rest were GW paints... bleached bone then a couple of browns and greens.... I would love to remember the names, but they change so frequently I don't remember them! The warrior photos are a little out of focus, but I like the color scheme. The Nuln oil went on a little dark, so I had to go in and lighten it up with some dry-brushing. I believe that color used to be called goblin green.
I was much happier with the dwarven king paint and photos. The grey on the back that looks like it is stuck to his cloak actually is not. It is just a higher bit of flocking. They were both actually quick paint jobs and went fairly smoothly. They are better than "table top" quality, but still a far cry from collectors quality.
I wasn't sure which pictures were better, so I included both sets. I am actually pretty happy with how they turned out. The hard part now is to sit down with the rules and see how many models it is going to take to make a smallish warband under the new rules and then to paint enough dwarves in this color scheme to match up. One thing that crosse dmy mind many times while painting these dwarves was that I see a lot of folks painting the axe hafts "wooden". From what I could tell, all of these weapons were completely made of iron or steel.... gilded even. Evidence of this is in their "square" hafts, not round like wooden poles or hafts would be.... In the end, I opted to remain consistent... all of my dwarves would be hitting the table top with matching metal weapons!
Below are the beginnings of the next batch... I need to step away and decide how they need to be painted before I continue with the dwarven warrior archers. The new points system doesn't seem to be that much different than the old one for warriors, so I should be able to come up with warband points costs pretty quickly. Then I can move on to painting them the correct colors. One thing for certain though is that the ballista crew would be painted the blue of the Blue Mountain dwarves! This was a no brainer. I did however struggle for a moment or two with thinking of the new color scheme as the colors for the dwarven "engineering" guild... and I would have all siege and heavy weapons painted in the green and bleached bone color scheme. It was a passing thought....
I decided to pain the ballista first as it really would be a no brainer... I got carried away with the drybrushing and am considering going back and repainting it.... It is far form done though. The Nuln oil will help mute the highlights and also bring out more details, like the banded rope in the winding/firing mechanism. I also need to go back and clean up the sloppy drybrush work. Some of the brown found its way onto the steel colors.
Below you can see the ballista flocked. this is actually done with a smaller grade GW flock. Same material, just a different sized diameter.
Below are the beginnings of the troops.... I got basing material down and base coated in the Eshin grey... at least I remembered that name! I'll be adding a group shot of the new household and these figures once they get finished up.
Below is the infamous model railroad gravel flock I have been using for these figures... hindsight is always 20/20... had I been thinking clearer way back when I started these models... I would have gone with a finer grade flock. I have 2 smaller grits I use. I usually use them for heroes or smaller models like Flames of War. This larger type might be all I had access to 8 or so years ago. heck, when I started painting the LOTR figures I used what they had in the books... and back then it was the God awful green dyed saw dust... My original fellowship is still based with it... needless to say... basing technology has come a loooong way since 2000!
These models have been sitting around, built, but unprimed or base coated for over a year!! I am pretty sure that they are all Battlefront kits. I do own a lot of Plastic Soldier company plastic kits too. So, in between dwarves I'll be knocking out 2 SU 85's or 100's... not sure by looking at the barrel in the photo and 5 more T-34's to bring my field-able total to about 75! (I know.... they are just addicting to build).... There is actually a story behind why I wound up with so many.... I was buying all Battlefront kits, but then the Plastic Soldier Company came out with plastic box sets that were extremely cheap and worth it casting wise.... also, PSC came out with T-34's with 2 turrets!!! now, you could build a T-34 and use it for early or late war!!! How cool was that....? Battlefront caught on quickly... they then started releasing plastic and resin mix kits and even all plastics... their T-34's now came with both early and late war turrets and their other models came with multi-kits where you could build either-or of the model types enclosed... Anyway... as I am a whore when it comes to buying and using models from the company that actually created the rules.... when Battlefront finally went to plastic multi-turret kits.. I had already built like 20 PSC ones.... then I proceeded to buy Battlefront ones with the intention of selling off the PSC ones.... something I just haven't gotten to as of yet...
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