Khazukan Kazakit-ha! (Old World Dwarves on the warpath!)

Wow! 2024 seems to fly by with no time to spare for blogging. Luckily I have found time to paint and - as is the prerogative of  wargamers - switch projects :). My Bretonnians have been (temporarily I'm sure) pushed aside in favor of quickly finishing a Dwarven army. I used (a few days from) a week of vacation to finish a bunch of Stunties. Here's the result.

The heart is bold that looks on gold. The Dwarves no more shall suffer wrong.

The reason I switched to Dwarves is that I've already painted most of a Dwarven army over the past few years. I just never got around to slapping the throng onto a tabletop. Rebasing back to (slightly larger that in the old days) squares was all I needed to do to finish most of the army. That said I had to destroy quite a lot of rather nice bases to do that. I'll leave posting a few pictures of the entire throng as a future endeavor. Let's focus on these lads for now, starting with eight Longbeards not pictured above.

I dare you not to flee in fear at the sight of this baleful banner!

These eight grumbly Longbeards will be joined by Thorgrim Grudgebearer's uncle high king Alriksson (had to look that up (very) quickly, never got around to thinking up a new, older background for this lot  in the new Old World ;). I 3D-printed the Longbeards from STL files made by Kyoushuneko Miniatures. Ruleswise I gave the unit a Banner of Fear. I freehanded the Fear rune on left page of the book on top of the banner. I added the Karaz-a-Karak rune on the right page and then wrote a cheeky message in Dwarven runes on the banner itself, turning it into a true banner of fear (never throw out old Army Books, there's way too much fun content in them (like Dwarven Runes).

Adding color to ancient miniatures fills my heart with joy.

The second lot I painted where two old metal Dwarven Engineers and a Runesmith (I think). I'll be using the Dwarf holding a staff with a golden plate as banner bearer and the one with the two handed hammer as leader for a unit of Ironbreakers. The one waving his hammer about will be a Runesmith or Engineer (probably a Runesmith). The Dwarf in the yellow cape and the black armor was painted a while back and has only been rebased. He's from Die Hard Miniatures. They call him Sigvald the Terrible (a Chaos Dwarf). I call him the 'Black Prince of Karak-Wales' as a tribute to a rather famous English person. He'll be leading a throng of Dwarven Warriors on my tabletop. 

I spent way too much time highlighting the blue cloak seen here.

The three metal Dwarves are part of a whole bunch of old metal miniatures I've been meaning to paint, but never got around to. It is quite a joy to finally see them in reasonable quality coats of paint on them. It's also quite nice to add a few models that need some extra love and care to a batch painting session. Speaking of batch painting...

While sorting through my box of old second hand Dwarves, I decided to add a banner and musician to the throng of twenty (an extra hero can blend in with a larger unit). This gives me the option to go for a block of ten and a block of twelve Dwarves.

A few years back I had a 'no more than five at a time' golden rule*. These days I rather enjoy batch painting full units of twenty models or more. The trick is to get the color that's prevalent in most of the recesses out of the way first. In the case of Dwarves (and most fantasy models) that is steel colored metal. I airbrushed this lot with metallic paints (steel followed by silver). Instead of washes I followed up with a couple of strategic contrast paints (through the airbrush). I finished the basic metals by sponging gleaming metal on top of all that. It is highly unskilled, mindless and therefore a very pleasant part of painting (as far as I'm concerned).

* For miniature painting to be sure, get your mind out of the gutter!

The Dwarf in the back (on the left for the viewer), suffered from a broken hammer (or axe) during the paint stripping phase. I took advantage of the break to add a sword (from an Empire kit) to the collection of hammers and axes.

The next step was the flesh color. I've stopped using the 'flesh-wash-(high)lighter flesh'-approach and moved on to a Vallejo Calvary Brown base color that I highlight by slowly mixing in more of any light pinkish flesh tone I feel like adding to the mix. By alternating the pinkish flesh tone paint, I can get a bit of variance in the skin colors in my army. By building up from a brown-red I avoid the rather odd brownish look models with a (Reikland) flesh wash get. This really helps making fleshtones look better on close-up photos (I think).

One of the Dwarves in the above lot lost his entire foot and lower leg during the paint cleaning phase. I added a peg leg (that looked quite cool), unfortunately basing has hidden the lost leg from sight :).

With the skin painted, I divided my young Dwarves in groups of five to get a bit of variance in beard colors. Painting beards is very important to get a good looking Dwarven army (IMHO). After applying a base color, I play around with washes and (careful) drybrushing, to bring out the beards and moustaches. Here and there a touch-up for visible lower lips is warranted. With that done, all I needed to paint were alternate metal colors (gold and bronze). I 3D-printed new shields (a lot of them where missing) and went for a lazy blue color there. After a last highlight and shade on bits of metal (to get that 'gleaming oomph!'-look going) I varnished and based the lot. With that I have enough Dwarves to field a painted army (if you ignore the two Gyrocopters I need to finish). As Garven Dreis would say: "Almost there..."