Dwarfs of Karak-Mingol (Updated April 22nd; more scratchbuilt mortar WIP)

[Luigi]

Another update:
here's the first dry fit run of the banner


I went for chains because I wanted to try yet another thing I had never done. They were a bit of a pain in the ass to work with and I think they might have ended up a tiny bit too long.
They do, however, make it really easy to remove the banner for transport and storage (or I want to swap out for a different banner)

[Luigi]

Another update.
I finished the lettering on the banner.



As you can see the spacing had to be done differently since writing with a brush isn't as easy as with a pen or pencil.
It looks more balanced though, I don't mind.

Left to do now is to add the other smaller banner on the side and to decorate the pole, I was thinking something along these lines.



The decorations can be non- dwarven shields/weapons taken as trophy from winning games. Or dwarven shields from units that distinguish themselves somehow in a game.

The square legionnaire type shield at the bottom I just think looks cool and might be used for the dwarf actually acting as the SB.
For the smaller draping flag I'm unsure if I want to do a single colour, a gradient, or draw something on it, but something on that side would help in balancing the look of the banner.

I also have to decide on a miniature to be the thane that will hold the banner.
Since the banner Is that big, I had to settle on dwarfs without raised weapons or plumed helmets.
These two are perfect.



Now, I'm very partial to the first guy's belly, but the plate armoured is both one of my favourite miniatures,
he also has a very noble and portrait like pose, which works well for such a role.
At the end though both are going to get stripped and repainted and I'll get to use them both.

[Luigi]

Thank you GMwang.

Before my Saturday shift, this morning I did a bit of work. Nothing fancy.
first I finished these two guys.



I have a dozen or so of painted bodies rattling in a box, so I grabbed some painted arms and glued them,
The guy on the left is not really meant to hold a shield (he's a quarrelers and his left arm is molded to hold a rifle with both hands) but the shield itself hides the iffy joint.
I'm not in love with them but I'd rather have 2 extra completed models than an ever increasing pile of half touched miniatures.

I also finished my shieldwall/movement tray



I tried something I had never tried before and took a more abstract approach to painting it, hence the XXXX pattern. It works... alright-ish. There's a couple f very details to finish off but I'm calling it done.


As you can tell I didn't even bother with the inside of the shields.


And here's with some thunderers.

basically this allows me to have my shooting unit count as wielding a shield without actually having to glue a shield on them, it'll also help me remember the shieldwall rule. Plus I think it's a very dwarfy thing to do.

I love the concept though and will surely be making more. I have hundreds of shields coming in soon, so I'll probably be making a lot of these.

[LouieN]

A nice idea. 

[Luigi]

Thank you Louie

I gathered all the painted bodied I had lying around and assigned each one of them whatever bits that would fit on them.
i really dislike this generation of plastic dwarfs and painting them is never fun. But I cannot stand having half done miniatures so I decided to work through these before moving forward with other models.

This is what I had on my work space as of this Monday


a quick priming

and we should be good.

I finished 5 of them so far

they look ok, I'm just glad to be actually finishing models 

[Luigi]

and here's the latest update



5 more random dwarfs.

The 2 thunderers on the right were painted while holding my 5 months old in one hand so the details on the rifle are a bit wonky.

I made a mistake with some bits ending up with with the wrong body so the guy on the right is holding 2 hammers and he looks just as confused as I am about it; but I'm calling them done.

slow progress, but still progress

[LouieN]

Keep up the good work sir

[Luigi]

Thank you Louie, encouragement is always very helpful in keeping up with a project.

I've painted a bit more in the past few days but failed to take pictures of any sort.

I'll have something uploaded in the next 24 hours.

In the meanwhile I've been trying to come up with clever/punny names for the various units

[Old Hob]

The 2 thunderers on the right were painted while holding my 5 months old in one hand so the details on the rifle are a bit wonky.

Painting any minis at all with a 5 month old is impressive. I doff my cap.
The army is looking great so far. Love your commitment to the short lads and look forward to seeing more.

[Luigi]

Painting any minis at all with a 5 month old is impressive. I doff my cap.
The army is looking great so far. Love your commitment to the short lads and look forward to seeing more.

Thank you Old Hob, the hold is coming along nicely. Slowly but steadily.

it's been a bit more than the 24 hours promised but here's an update.


I finished 5 more random dwarfs: 2 musicians, 2 warriors and some sort of artillery crew member.


I particularly like the eyes on number 2 and 3.

I also prepped 3 EM4 dwarfs, one of each type, to see how they'll paint up.

(I have 147 more waiting to be rebased and cleaned up, something I'm not too keen on starting right away)

finally, I found this kinder egg toy in my bits box so I started working on a little treasure pile token.

[Luigi]

So, not much painting this week, but I did manage to still be somewhat productive.

I finished building 4 more shield wall movement trays for some of my thunderers (I reckon I'll probably be needing a around 18 or so once the whole army is done).




as some  people suggested on this forum, I don't need "shields" to make shields. any random flat round piece works just as well.




I've used lots of empty and smooth shields as I plan on using the space to actually have the name of the various units written on them.


And this last one is for a friend of mine who's also my main opponent, he'll be finishing it off with elven shields for his dark elves.


I also started making another terrain piece/objective out of a kinder egg toy.



and I made myself a priming stick with a piece of wood that came from who knows where and that had been taking up space for months.


Finally, I cleaned up my work/hobby space because it was an absolute disaster

[Ragsta]

I love the painting style and themes here - your project is looking really lovely! In a Dwarfish type way of course. I like the shield wall idea too.

[Luigi]

I love the painting style and themes here - your project is looking really lovely! In a Dwarfish type way of course. I like the shield wall idea too.

Thank you Ragsta, I'm glad you like my style and colour choice. Definitely the single project I managed to stick to the longest.


So.. 2 weeks have passed and I don't have too much of an update. I mean I painted but it's not going to be one of those cool updates. I also forgot to take pictures so I'll have to come back and add them later.

First I finished the 20 shields with the winged hammers you can see in my last post for my hammerers. It's unbelievable how long doing tiny shields takes. I forgot to take a picture, like I did of another dwarf I finished, just a regular standard bearer for a unit of warriors.
I did however take pictures of the banner.



The banner is a reference to a children song about a painter gnome (close enough to a dwarf for me) who falls in love with a mermaid that swims into the Po river and so he builds a paper boat to reach her. The boat then proceeds immediately to sink into the water; so maybe not the best luck for my dwarfs.
it's the first time I did free handing on something this small (that's a 20mmx40mm base, for reference), and while I'm really satisfied with the paper boat i am less than pleased with the lettering. I'm in the process of getting some small stencils made to try and sole this issue.

I also started painting the shield walls which are slowly getting to where I'd like them to be

I also decided to REALLY tackle part of my pile of shame. I fished out about 40 dwarfs from a batch of used miniatures I got years ago.
they're mostly thunderers and dwarfs with a shield.
There are three main problems that are really making me hate these.

1) they're already primed. And they're primed with a rather glossy black primer on which paint tends to bead and it makes me feel I'm fighting the paint at every step. they're also primed a bit too much with primer having pooled a bit in certain area.
 
This is not unsurmountable and since they'll most likely just end up as cannon fodder in the back ranks, I can definitely live with it. And from experience I know that after the first stage of block painting things start getting better

2) They're already based and the bases have already had lot of stuff glued on before being primed. Rather messily I'd add, with sand and dirt often encrusting the lower details of the models. The models are attached to the bases with plastic glue so I can't really remove them. Again, nothing too bad. Just an annoyance I have to put up with.

3) and this is the worst. The models are already assembled with plastic cement. Even worse they're assembled with extra details .Extra pouches, ammunition belts, buckler shields...
All things I avoid like the plague since they only slow down painting, the poses in which they're placed will make it an absolute nightmare to get details such as faces and boots.

Here you can see two progressive staged of my block painting.





This is definitely the part of the painting process I dislike the most, it doesn't look like any real progress is being made and every brushstroke actually seems to make the miniature look objectively worse.
The good thing is with so many miniatures all having the same colour scheme this is going to be quite an important jump in progress.
I'm hoping to be able to finish them in 3-4 weeks.
There's an upcoming tournament I'll be participating in late November and I'd like to field a list without any artillery, so I'm trying to get more miniatures to give myself more options.

[Luigi]

Here's another update. A big one this time.

While I did progress quite a bit on the batch painting from my previous post, this time is all about completed models. First of all this is my "army" as it currently stands. there are few things I'll re-tweak (we'll get to them later) but these models are otherwise finished and do not need any more painting.

First off




The dwarven hold of Karak Mingol.

This is all the models I have painted from late 2019 to today. I have probably 3 times as many painted from my earlier years, but they're waiting to be bathed in stripper and brought up to my new standard and then even more that are yet to be unboxed or primed.




here we have, at the front, 2 units of longbeards. One is made of the BoSP models and one is made of 6.5th edition models with shields. They're going to be increased in size. Eventually bringing them both to 40+ units, the unit on the left is called "Il vecchio conio" and a freehand banner is in the works.



here's a unit of thunderers. They're sitting behind a barricade/shieldwall. I like fielding my shooting units with shields and there's no better way to do so than a literal shieldwall.
this is the first one I made and I have to admit I went a bit overboard with the green/blue alternate colours on the shields. Still, a cool little project I like and will be making many more of in the future.
The unit lacks a standard bearer for now just because I'm yet to fish one out of my unpainted pile, but he's coming. eventually. The musician has to sit in the back rank because the drum won't let him sit flush against the shields.



another 10 thunderers, this time from BoSP (I have sooooo many models from multiple copies of that box).
The unit is named "Tuoni" and along two twin units named "Fulmini" and "Saette" they will all get a personalized shield wall with their name on it.



here's 6 (5) quarrelers. There are more (oh so many more) to come and technically the standard bearer was an artillery crew member with his clipboard of grudges. They too will be getting a shield wall.



this is a unit of warriors with great weapons. Not too fond of these models but they're serviceable enough. Like all my other melee unit this one will also get bigger as more models get stripped and painted.
you can also see the standard bearer I finished in my last update. He looks like he's holding a sign at a protest more than a standard and I think this is due to the fact that the banner is way too recangular and is lacking any "framing" elements at the top and/or sides.
the idea though is to put him in the middle of the unit and he does look a bit better as you can see here



also the guy left of the bagpiper looks like he's having a REALLY good day.




this is a blurry picture of a smaller unit of warrior with great weapons. this too will probably double up in size once all is said and done. You can see that some of the models don't have a painted base or have a brown base. this is one thing that will need to be fixed, but I doubt it'll take much. something to do for those days one really cannot get himself to paint anything.



This is a unit of 9 miners. The champion is on my workspace completely done, except for the eyes.
You can see some unfinished bases and also that the flames are not painted. That's because I have no yellow, red, or orange paint of any kind. The ones I had dried out years ago and they're not colours I really use in my army so I never bothered replacing them. (I tried a couple flames playing around with white, browns and the flesh colour but.. meh)



This is the unfinished BSB, the hero manning it is currently in an acetone bath and I'm having trouble with the left pennant, but you can still tell that it looks absolutely ridiculous inside a unit. Which is exactly what I wanted.
the motto, in Latin, says "comminus et eminus se defendit" I had not touched Latin since my years of high school in Italy 15+ years ago and it took me longer than I'd like to admit to translate the one I had thought of originally. (many thanks to my dear friend who's a professor of Linguistics and whose help has proven invaluable)





These guys here are my unit of hammerers, called "The green maul" they're 25 and will probably reach 50 once they're all painted. I decided to give them green hammerers and blue armours. one of their banners will read "Pacta sunt servanda" once I feel a bit more confident in my ability with lettering (or once I get some stencils)



All of them have a shield with a winged hammer rom the warrior kit. This is such an obvious and simple "conversion" yet it's one I've always been very proud of. Mostly because these shields take longer than they have any right to take to finish.


this is my artillery, beside my beloved bolt thrower I'm not too fond of these models. But you can't call a throng a throng without firepower. I have a lot more warmachines coming.
The crew members are a random assortment of minis pulled from the pile and painted, so many don't necessarily match the machine they're supposed to go with.



these are the heroes/character  painted so far plus a miniature from the board game Labyrinth. I might use him as runesmith; or maybe as my next DnD character.

Considerations:

first, there are a few things I need to touch up; mainly in terms of bases. Not only some models have an unpainted base, I want to base all of my artillery, as well as paint the movement trays. Certain models; (mostly the GW warriors) were an early experiment with multibasing. and they work, sort of, but they'll need to be removed and rearranged to allow better deployment.

Second; the army as of now is not particularly impressive, especially considering these are maybe 15% of my total models.
But I'm really proud of how they turned out and it's nice to see them all deployed to remind me that while the final goal might not be close, I've already covered quite some ground.

[Pattus Magnus]

You definitely should be proud of that force, they look good and you’re making progress!

I think putting time in to complete the bases will be a good investment. Bases are easy to overlook, but they make a big difference for pulling the figures together into a unified force. I think cohesive basing provides a sense of context for a collection (some of the collections by folks on LAF, such at Knight Commander Tyr and Koyote, among others, really show that - the basing is almost like a character of its own). It doesn’t have to be that detailed to work, though, just consistent across the army.

I’m looking forward to seeing how your army develops (that other 85% still to paint is intriguing)!