Dwarfs of Monte Trocchio (September 24th - assorted dwarfs completed)

[Luigi]

Thank you guys! I have unfortunately had a slow start this month, but sat down the other night and tried to catch up on some more batch painting.
I did the bases, basecoated the beards and the painted the first coat of green on the remaining quarrelers.


To help varying things up a bit I also did some more in depth painting on a handful of slayers and artillery crews.




I wanted to experiment with a "sketchier" style of paint because I figured it'd work better on models with so much exposed flesh.



Here's a close up on a couple of different ones, showing two slightly different approach to flesh tones. I might probably just do a mix of the two throughout the unit.


These are great miniatures and I will most definitely be buying more in the future, but boy would these guys benefit from sub assembly painting. The beards and arms really get in the way of the rest of the body.

[Luigi]

I decided to paint some more yesterday but I really wasn't in the mood for miniature,s so I decided to finally start tackling some of the ideas I have for my paper banners.
I started with one for my slayers.



I don't know if this counts as free hand. I kind of cheated by creating the banner outline and writing on my computer (and duplicating it a bunch of times in case I messed up). The die is free handed though. So that must count for something.

I created it to be the same size as the plastic banners from the warriors or the quarrelers kit. This ended up slightly larger though, and I still found it extremely small.  I really don't know how people manage actual portraits or freehand painting on shields and armour.

Alea Iacta Est is cheeky and self referential  enough to work in any miniature wargame but I find it particularly fitting for slayers. Now all is left to do is to find plastic (or metal) rods of the appropriate thickness and complete the banner pole before attaching it to a slayer.

[Pattus Magnus]

The banner looks good to me. I don’t consider it cheating to start with a printed image and then paint it in, there’s a long history of paper banners being offered in WFB books and White Dwarf magazines. Heck, just using a printed banner straight up is legitimate, companies sell them! Most of us aren’t freehand geniuses, so let’s use all the tools we can to put good looking armies on the table!

I like the variation in flesh painting on your slayers, too. It seems appropriate considering that each warrior would have his own collection of scars.

[Padrissimus]

Love the slayers and the banner, and the xbow look fantastic for monopose figures. Mine are way duller than yours.

[SgtSlag]

Love the slayers and the banner, and the xbow look fantastic for monopose figures. Mine are way duller than yours.

I have been following Gary Gygax's 1e AD&D Monster Manual descriptions for painting my figures...  He had a gift for skin colors, along with other color ideas, but some of his descriptions are bland, some are downright boring.  I have been trying to see his vision, in my models.  For the most part, I have really enjoyed it.

With Dwarves, however, he has them wearing drab, earthy colors.  This is a limited palette, of course.  Sadly, I agree with his take on their color and fashion choices.  They are not exciting to look at, and that is kind of Gary's point.   

Pick a vision for your Dwarves, and have fun with it.  Cheers!

[Luigi]

Thank you guys!
Padre, I saw these same sculpts in the last battle report against the Skaven, I'd say that in such a colorful and varied Reman army, having a contingent of austerely dressed dwarfs makes a lot of sense.
 
Fellow LAFers I haven’t posted or updated this thread in a while.
It’s been a particularly crappy summer with plenty of bad news to keep me busy and away from painting. And I suspect it’ll be like this at least until mid September.
I wasn’t completely inactive though.
In July I painted 18 more quarrelers, but I only took pictures of the last 12.


This brings me to 41 out of 50 done; here they are in all their monopose glory.


In my gaming group with started discussing the idea of an escalation league, starting at 500 pts and increasing it by 250pts every couple of months.

I decided that this would be the perfect excuse to both finish the remaining quarrelers AND to focus on new miniatures, something different I have not touched in a while.
So I went through my unpainted stuff (and the fact that back in April 2024 I spent hours organizing my pile of shame paid off big time) and wrote up a quick list.

I’ll have a block of Avatars of Wars warriors with sword and board. I don’t think I’ve ever used warriors with shields in 8th edition, and this challenge is a great excuse to try them out .
Also these models are something I’m really looking forward to paint.


assembling them was a bit of a pain and ranking them up is a b!@# but they look very cool.
I built 2 musicians and 2 standard bearers, thinking that I could use them in other units and replace them with other dwarfs to facilitate ranking up.


For the quarrelers I’ll have one of the metal crossbow fellows here be the champion;

I’m undecided on using the other one from Lund (which shares a nearly identical sculpt) or use the preslotta GW dwarf on the left. I’ll probably end up painting both. I might as well get them done

I also kitbashed a standard bearer using the body of a warrior, the head and arms from the thunderers and the standard from the miners’ kit.


I actually had so much fun kitbashing that I ended creating an other standard bearer (or possibly an engineer character) with an empire handgun. I also found an old Harlequin dwarf with a sword, spiffed up his shield and decided to  make him the general/thane. I also realized that I have something like 5 of the dwarf on the right… so I snipped his axe hand to replace his with a sword.
 
Finally, I decided to complete the bolt thrower I was playing around with last year; I used actual screws to put it together; which it sturdy but very asymmetrical. I tried to hide the unevenness with a couple of bits and by finally using the telescope? Monocle? Scope? (I call it cannocchiale regardless).




That shield and that axe do most of the heavy lifting in making it appear less lopsided than it actually is.

And here’s the army shot for the challenge. Technically it’s to be painted by  late September; but I’m not sure I’ll get them all done; I’m hoping to have at least the quarrelers + tray, the general and the artillery + crew painted.

[Luigi]

Another somewhat productive week.

I glued sand on all bases for the escalation league army, here shown in a particularly bad picture.



A couple of months ago I asked a friend if he had any bits he didn’t use that I could borrow. And he basically gave me ALL the bits from the Ogre Kingdom Stonehorn that aren’t strictly necessary for the base build.
One of the bits was that of an arm with birds legs perched on it, upon which once could assemble a vulture/condor.
It's supposed to look like this


I shaved the birds feet carefully and glued them to a kinder egg tree stump, assembled the vulture and painted it with leftover paint that spilled while finishing the quarrelers.
I’ll give it to my friend as a marker of some sort. My only regret is not having it based on a 40mm base so he could have used it as unit filler.




Still, it was fun to paint; and as my first ever non dwarf/non humanoid miniature ever painted; I think it came out alright.

In the background, ready to shoot it down you can see these guys.



These were the last 9 quarrelers from the EM4 batch; which brings the total to 50. I felt like I was getting sloppy but, despite liking identical miniatures, painting 50 of them does get a bit numbing.
I’ve also finished their movement tray; all I need now is to come up with a name for the unit to possibly paint over the shields,

[Pattus Magnus]

Great job all around, and I especially like the vulture, it came out looking quite sharp!

[LouieN]

I agree with above.  You did a great job on the Vulture.

[Tactalvanic]

Good kitbash, excellent reuse of kinder bit to.

PJ is very effective, +1 great job

[Luigi]

Thank you guys

I'm glad the vulture was a success, I'll probably be doing more fun tokens and similar in the future; to break up more routine painting

[Luigi]

Very quick update;

This guy came in a larger lot of dwarfs I picked up years ago. Badly damaged, with the left arm torn away and left arm broken above the elbow. I did a very rough conversion/salvaging job using a Frostgrave barbarian crossbow bit (kindly donated by Armchairgeneral) to turn him into a champion for my quarrelers.


The crossbow had the left hand sculpted on, so i had to do a bit of cutting and shaving, followed by a brushing of plastic glue to smooth out the shaving marks.
Again, it's a very rough job and the pose is a bit derpy, but converting and kitbashing is so much fun that I'm kind of glad the model was already damaged, forcing me adapt him into something else.

I don't know what to do with his left hand:

An axe or hammer - kind of lame and predictable
A shield - maybe? I'm not convinced it fits the crossbow look
A pointing hand or a fist - possibly the most fitting.
Hand holding a quarrel - this might work too.
I also have hands holding pipes or beer steins; I might give this a try.
I wish I had a hand holding a spyglass or some other tool, it'd make him very unique.



Also, I took some miniatures at work, then during lunch I went up the top of the stairwell on the last floor and primed them all. I wasn't very clever though, and I brought along my grey primer (which I usually use on metal models) so I cannot really see whether I missed any spot since it's the exact same colour as the original plastic 
I guess I'll find out once I start painting them. 

At the very least, this means that I can finally start working on the rest of the infantry for the escalation league. 

[pixelgeek]

I think the stein would be great for a champion 

[Luigi]

I think the stein would be great for a champion 

I think so too, actually, even if this guy doesn't get it I'm definitely going to get a few done; I have half a mind of creating a few non-combatant dwarfs in support roles (cooks, carriers, baggage train crew).

Howdy guys; August and particularly Septembers have been, so far, awful months due to things outside of the hobby. The time I was able/ had the will to dedicate to the hobby has thus suffered rather greatly.
There was SOME action though. I started basecoating all of the AoW warriors, then focused on an handful of miniatures.

here they are in various stages of completion


(Fully basecoated)


(first blue and green highlight)


(highlights almost done on the blues and greens)



And here finally completed.

I'm particularly happy about the two guys on the right, I wasn't sure how scale armour would look in a non metallic colour but I think it turned out good enough for me to replicate it to more models.
The guy on the very right is an old harlequin (?) sculpt I got from Black Tree design well over 10 years ago, he has a very classic D&D look; I can't remember the shield he came with but I liked the kite shield as it fitted his vaguely Norman appearance. I made the boss with a dwarf face charm cut off from the drummer's sticks.


I never say this of my models; but these truly look better in person, "good" pictures seem to be more of a result of chance than any skill on my part.
also I think it's time for me to replace my (almost finished) green wash, it has started drying glossy.

[Pattus Magnus]

Those turned out great! I agree about the Harlequin Miniatures figure on the right, he’s a cool model. I like his new shield boss, too, it helps him fit with your army and just looks right. All these new fellows will add some character to their units.

(My sympathies about the last couple months being slow times for hobby progress, I’m going through a similar period myself. No painting since mid-July, just some figure preparation and priming.    I expect to paint more over the winter, fewer outdoor distractions. Hopefully.)