Back in the day, an actual Chaos Dwarf army was way out of my league. Not to mention that all the
cool kids nerds played 40K, so that's what I did as well, since I was a
cool kid nerd as well
Seriously though; in my direct surroundings, there was nobody who actually played WHFB, so I never got into it, even though I really wanted to.
My first fancy were Wood Elves; I especially loved the Waywatchers. But I never got further than buying the army book. But then, through White Dwarf and exploring catalogues, display cabinets etc, I discovered Chaos Dwarfs, and I was sold.
I just loved the whole Sumerian/Assyrian/Babylonian style they had going, and I knew that would be the army for me.
Eventually
Because it took at least one more decade before I had the disposable income to actually start collecting the beginnings of an army. Sadly, that coincided with the whole Ebay Chaos Dwarf incident, so things got expensive extremely fast , which put a bit of a brake on the whole project again. This was around 2004-ish if I recall correctly.
For those that don't know about this, in short: Chaos Dwarf miniatures were hecka cheap back in those days. I'm talking about GBP1,- per metal miniature, sometimes, in large batches, even less. The plastic rank and file fillers were often just 50p a piece; they were just not a very popular army (never really were I understand, but why?)
So a couple of entrepeneurish type started buying up every last Chaos Dwarf miniature on Ebay. Shipping was still really cheap back in those days and customs tarifs were only there for large purchases, so they accumulated literal tons of Chaos Dwarfs, Hobgoblins etc for extremely cheap in a very short span. This probably took a year or so? Then they left a bleak, Chaos Dwarf-less Ebay landscape to simmer for a bit, before putting their stock up on Ebay at ridiculously inflated prices. They used multiple/many accounts for this and made an absolute killing.
See; other sellers would check going rates before putting up their auctions, and obviously followed suit, and this ensured that prices would remain that high, because nobody wanted to miss out on a huge profit of course.
They singlehandedly f*cked up a previously sensible and friendly market. It opened the door for recasters, scalpers and market-savvy types to use and abuse the marketplace, which has never been the same since. Because these practices were also tried on other ranges, be it a lot less succesful. Bottom line is that prices were inflated, and never dropped down to previous levels.
It cause quite the storm back in the day, but yeah; there it is. The reason I could not get started on my own CD army. But I kept my eyes open and when the occasional (relative) bargain came along, I scooped it up. And slowly, but surely, my stock grew to the point where I would be able to put together an actual army.
Which I obviously still haven't been able to accomplish due to butterfly syndrome
What I did do was paint up an initial goblin slave unit (a block of Skull Pass Night Goblins). And then another, and then another, until I realized I was now actually building a Night Goblin army
I do have a unit of Chaos Dwarf infantry in my cabinet of shame, started, but never finished. I should get cracking one of these days...
I really love what you've done with your printed army. Had the technology been available at the time, I would have gone that route too; quite a bit cheaper and lighter I reckon! The sculpts indeed fit almost seamlessly with the original ones. If I'm ever short on certain miniatures, I will check out this sculptor too.
I take it he's also active on Chaos Dwarfs Online?
Anyway; can't wait to see what you'll do with the larger units such as Bull Centaurs and the artillery train
16 December 2010, 07:29:29 AM