Wayne England's army strikes back

I know, I know, I've already written a post about Wayne England's dwarf army, but this month was particularly poor in terms of dwarf painting... moreover I've finally suceeded in making decent scans of my White Dwarfs. So, now, you can read these precious pages... and cry with me because you'll never see the "two more large units planned" and the "exciting conversion for the army general".


 I've also found some additional pictures of this army. Here against an Empire force (WD144):

And in WD148, an alliance with Mike McVey's Wood Elves (heresy!). You'll notice on the right that Mr England had painted an additional cannon... which made his total force 1855 points worth:

Here is a closer shot of this ultimate addition:

Next month, I'll show you some new warriors from the Marauder Miniatures range.

The Bad and the Ugly

For the ugly guy of my trio, the choice was obvious: I had a mutant dwarf that has been waiting for brushes for about 20 years (and for a very simple reason: I'm not fond of this model).
As for the bad guy, I've selected a heavily armoured Chaos dwarf and played with copper and steel NMMs. As my friend Haekel pointed out, I should have made shadows deeper, and I should have added some gray-green reflections from the ground on the lower parts of the armour... too late for this model, but I'll try to take his remarks into account for my next dwarfs...

Crossbowman #13: The Good

This dwarf adventurer is the first part of the trio I've painted for the Brush Slave League. It was a theme round about cinema. Not so easy when you still want to paint some dwarfs for your army!

At first, I wanted to make a remake of Fahrenheit 451, a novel by Ray Bradbury, but also a movie by François Truffaut: the firemen would have been replaced by my fire thrower team, and the burnt books would have been 'played' by the walking book familiar.

Since I wasn't very happy with the dwarfs, I changed my project for the final confrontation of a famous western: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. Here is the Good:


And soon will come the Bad and the Ugly...

Crossbowmen #11 and #12

I couldn't make up my mind about my next move... So, in parallel with the end of my axemen unit, I've started my second regiment of quarellers. For the moment, it only counts two models, one Citadel and one Marauder. Since it's a two year old painting job I've recently refreshed by improving (at least trying to) the contrasts on the metallic parts, I think they will stay in the second rank...

Dwarf warrior #11

And here is the bearer of the 'legendary' shield, an old Norsca dwarf. As you can see, I've tried to paint a new metal to change from the usual blue-grays... What do you think?

Clash of the shields

Now that my unit of warriors wielding two-handed axes is almost (OK half) completed, I have to think about my next problem: how to paint these damn' shields and standards... Fortunately, looking for inspiration gives me a perfect alibi to see fantasy movies, sometimes good, sometimes reaaaally bad. The last one was "Wrath of The Titans" (the sequel of "Clash of The Titans"), and believe it or not, I've found something!

OK, for those who haven't seen it, a brief summary: at the beginning, Perseus doesn't want to get involved in divine conflicts. It lasts about 15 minutes, then he gets very angry, kills a monster, rides Pegasus, defeats other monsters, then Ares, then a lava giant (Kronos), and (spoiler alert!) finally kisses the queen. End of story. So... shields...

Hmm... red and yellow. No thanks.


Cardboard shields. No thanks.


 My favorite sequence: the great greek army. "Beware Kronos, for we are Legion" ^_^

A closer view of the shields (they're supposed to protect from lava bursts.. you know, kind of magic shields):

Wait, the end already?

So, where was my find? Actually, right at the beginning: I should have stopped after 20 seconds, after seeing the logo of the producers, Legendary Pictures...

Now, the painting!


Soon, you'll see the owner of this "legendary" shield ;o)

The Dwarf Fire Thrower

56 points for a couple of dwarfs. At the beginning, painting this team seemed a good idea to achieve more quickly my 2013 objective of a 1000 points dwarf army... How wrong I was!

I had to paint the loader twice because I couldn't get a satisfying color for his coat: first white, then black, then a kind of orange (ugh) and finally red and white. And once the models were fixed on their base, I realized that the highlights on the helmets were not oriented exactly in the same direction... so I had to unglue them to rework the NMM parts on the gunner.

So, after too many hours for only two miniatures, here is the final result... I have brushed the base, the gunner and the cannon with black pigments to represent soot and I don't know if I'll get a better result with my second team (if I ever try to paint these models again!).

Dwarf warriors #8, 9 and 10

Here is my "ménage à trois", three dwarfs with similar poses I've painted for the third round of the Brush Slave League; the first two warriors are Citadel models (look, a lady dwarf!), and the last one is from the Maurauder Minatures range. I'm not totally happy with the result (should have spent more time on the blades for instance) but I hope it will do the job in a regiment... especially if I don't put them in the front rank!

Below, the fourth and third ranks of my fierce axemen...

 
I haven't decided yet if I finish the second half of this regiment, or if I start a new one (I still have to paint 10 additional crossbowmen to complete the mandatory shooting troops).