Fantasy alternatives

Now that I'm following with interest the Oldhammer community, I have to confess that in the early nineties, I did everything NOT to play Warhammer. I've bought and shortly tested Nick Lund's game 'Fantasy Warriors' then Gary Chalk and Ian Bailey's 'Fanstasy Warlord', with mitigated success in both cases, since I've only played two battles.

If the models produced by Grenadier for 'Fantasy Warriors' were quite good (understandable with sculptors such as Nick Lund, Mark Copplestone or Bob Naismith), I've waited for a long time to see decent dwarves for 'Fantasy Warlord'. Unfortunately, if the illustrator was one of the best you can expect (Gary Chalk for God's sake!), the few miniatures produced for the game were quite disappointing.

See for instance this dwarf wizard: unsurprisingly, I didn't buy it :(


The other illustrations still expect a 3D-translation, since the 'Fantasy Warlord' adventure ended in 1992. Too bad considering the potential of Gary Chalk's work:

The funny thing is that I've recently realised that most of the dwarf miniatures shown in the rulebook were in fact Citadel models! Below some nice pictures of a dwarf army:

OK, these dwarfs are correct, but the humans shown in the rulebook are really great; again, I think most of (all?) the models are from the Citadel range.

 

Great inspiration for a bretonnian army, isn't it?

Hammerer #3

I bought and painted this dwarf 20 years ago (because he was part of Wayne England's army) and it's still a great model. I particularly like the hammer: with all these little pikes, must be really painful  :o)

Anyway, here is the result of my second painting job on this guy...

Hammerer #2

Definitely not my favorite model, but since this dwarf served as a  model for David Gallagher to represent hammerers in the Warhammer 3rd edition army book, I had to include it in my regiment!


As you can see, nothing new with the color scheme: the tabards will stay white with a black stripe in the middle when it is not hidden by the beard.

The only thing I've changed is the receipe for the grey beard:

• basecoat in GW Fortress Grey,
• shadows with a mix of Fortress Grey + GW Adeptus Battlegrey, then Adeptus Battlegrey  + GW Graveyard Earth,
• highlights with Fortress Grey + Graveyard Earth, then Fortress Grey + Graveyard Earth + P3 Menoth White Highlight (a kind of ivory), then pure Menoth White Highlight,
• and finally, some washes of GW Devlan Mud to deepen the shadows.

Yeah, I know, totally useless if you haven't made any stock of old Citadel references :op

Hammerer #1

With this dwarf adventurer, I start a new unit of... hammerers! (and yes, the crossbowmen will wait).


Although I love the Marauder Miniatures hammerers, I've decided not to use them here, because their look doesn't fit with the rest of the army. So, my elite warriors will mainly include Citadel Imperial and Norse Dwarfs with a few Marauders: basically any warrior holding a two-handed hammer will do the job... which makes me think that I miss some Marauder Miniatures I've already used in this unit:

So, if you have any spare of these guys, let me know!

One crossbowman and many warriors...

Not much to show for the moment, except this crossbowman (this third unit is really hard to complete):


Now that the Brush Slave League is finished, I had to find another excuse to make me paint more dwarfs. The Bugman's Brewery forum gave me an excellent opportunity to start a new regiment: for the 3rd unit painting challenge, you have to paint at least 10 models including a standard bearer before the end of September... seems feasible with some holidays.

Here are the models I intend to present (well, at least 10 of them)... 

Dwarf knight #3

Last member of my trio painted for the 8th round of the Brush Slave League, I've slightly modified the helmet by adding a little flag from a bretonnian plastic sprue. As for the painting, I think I could have spent two or three times more hours on the armour (the NMM still lacks 'smoothness' on some parts). Fortunately, I had to stop to meet the BSL deadline :op

Now I'm considering changing his mace for a cavalry lance because for the best place for the musician is the right flank of the unit...

The Brush Slave League

I just wanted to thank Clam for organising the second edition of the Brush Slave League on Chaos Dwarf Online. I'm really happy to have entered this contest, first, because it gave me the opportunity to paint 25 dwarfs in 8 months, and second, because I won! On top of that, Clam has commissioned John Pickford for designing a very nice trophee, the Mad Painter... I'm looking forward to painting this model!

So here is a summary in 8 pictures of what I've painted for the Brush Slave League: dwarfs again and again, and except the ugly mutant, they've been all recruited for my crusader army :o)

Round 1: Brewer, Dimbo and Number 8

Round 2: The Jolly Wood Choppers

Round 3: Ménage à trois

Round 4 (cinema theme): The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

Round 5: Three Marauders

Round 6: On my command!

Round 7: Who did shoot Snow White?

Round 8 (cavalry theme): Three Knights of the Red Beard Order

Thanks again Clam! And you painters, do not miss the third season this autumn: it's really fun and encourages you to paint even more minis!

Dwarf knight #2

Second dwarf of my unit, I've simply swapped his lance for a plastic one from the box of bretonnian knights.

Initially, I was planning to post a step by step on the painting of this model, but I ran out of time and stopped taking pictures: so, here is the beginning of the NMM work on the armour.


A few days later...