Bugman's Dwarf Rangers wait for no Elf!

So there I was, happily working on my Wood Elf army project, when a bunch of rather rowdy Dwarves popped up on the paint station. Obviously, I could've told them to wait but they had free beer with them...well I hope it was free, I don't want to see the bill otherwise. I guess I'll find out when they're back from defending their brewery from a Goblin invasion... 

There's only one thing better than gold, and that's the golden glow of Bugman's XXXXX.

Bugman's Dwarf Rangers have the distinct honor of being the first Regiment of Renown. The unit is listed first in the first list naming famous regiments. I found this rather interesting tidbit in an article on Medium. As I was typing the previous sentence, I realized I have completely authentic PDFs from the eighties at hand (quite a feat, considering the pdf-format was released in 1993). Going through them I can confirm that Bugman's is indeed the first unit listed. They appear in Forces of Fantasy, Volume 2. - Fighting Fantasy Battles. There is still a bit of mystery left in the world however, as I have two distinctly separate sets of completely authentic PDFs, both claiming to be 1983 versions of the Warhammer rulebook. One three volume set is called Forces of Fantasy (and marked Warhammer in the upper left corner of the cover). The other three volume set is called Warhammer The Mass Fantasy Roleplaying Game (someone was getting paid by the word there). This version does not name any interesting regiments and appears to have been published as a boxed set.

Dwarfs are basically beards with a bit of face and a lot of metal. Considering that: how long can it take to paint them?

Anyway enough allusions to alleged piracy on the digital waves (don't ask about the lead contents of this unit) and on to a bit more prattling about painting. I found myself in possession of fifteen awesome Dwarves and I wondered how fast I could paint the lot. Considering they're mostly metal, I assumed I could do the entire unit in one hour (I'm extremely bad at guessing the time required for projects). It took me two weekends worth of hobby time. One to do the painting, and one for the shields and banners. 

Beer, beer, beer, beer...or should that be Gold, gold, gold, gold? It's so hard to figure out what battle hymn to chant.

Here's a quick shot of the collective backs of the unit before I show some work in progress pictures I actually remembered to take this time. Insert wild cheering here. Before I forget to include it, I used this document to print a wonderful collection properly scaled classic Dwarf Banners. Here's how I went about painting the two in Bugman's unit.

Step 1: glob on a lot of PVA.

I wanted a printed example on paper to work from, but I can't quite get past my new-found enthusiasm for wine bottle banners, so I combined the techniques. I affixed the prints of the unit banner and Bugman's banner to wine bottle lead using PVA. I also covered the front of the paper with PVA to give it a bit more strength.

Step 2: add black lines (test the consistency of your paint on the banner's fixing points) 

Next I used black paint (airbrush ready paint as it flows so nicely from the brush) to reinforce all the lines on the print. It really helps keep if you blackline first and color in later (as opposed to miniatures that I tend to blackline last (if I get around to this step at all). 

Step 3: Try and make up a joke that references 'You've got red on you,' from Shaun of the Dead (and fail).

When the lines have dried, it is time to start adding color. Also never mind how badly I drew the top lines of the banners, they're mostly there to remind me not to cut out the banners without cutting extra bits to stick them to the banner poles with.

Step 4: Add yellow. I still prefer Averland Sunset yellow for base layers like these. It has a lot of pigment in it, giving it sticking power. 

I picked yellow as the second color to add because covering up yellow with blue is easy, while covering blue with yellow is a horror show (i.e. this allowed me to be a bit more sloppy with the yellow). 

Step 5: Add something blue, avoid something old, something new and something borrowed, a wedding might slow down the painting process. Also ignore the fact that I managed to miss my palette while adding black to it. 

Next up was the blue. I've cropped this picture slightly less so you can see I was using the pre-colored versions of the banners for reference. Quite helpful that...

Step 6: Highlight. It's quite tempting to call it a day, but adding a few highlights takes very little time and just makes it all look a lot better.

With all the basic colors brushed on, I added a bit of ivory colored paint to each of them to add some highlights. It's quite easy to do, and it makes everything look so much better. 

Step 7: Cut the banners loose, and attach them to their banner poles.

Finally I used a small pair of scissors and a scalpel to cut the banners out. I painted the back blue way ahead of this (without snapping a picture). As a final touch I applied another layer of PVA on the front of the banners. It toughens up the paper even more and it helped hide all the bits where the paper hadn't quite fully managed to stick to the wine lead. After all this had dried I carefully folded the banners around the banner poles and stuck them on with a very small drop of superglue. You shouldn't use superglue for this step (it eats away your paint). PVA is a better  option, but (as so often in the past) I was in no mood to wait for PVA to dry (and got away with it once more). I'll reuse a picture used above so you can see the result without scrolling back up. 

Step 8: reuse a picture to show the results.

After applying the banners, it was time to do the shields. For some odd reason I was convinced I could fully freehand the logo. How hard could it be? It's basically a trapezoid with a fat line above and another one below (and a bit of foam for the beer). After an hour of painting, I discovered it was rather challenging to keep all my trapezoids more or less the same size. It was time for plan b: printing transfers. I still had a few laser printer ready 'make your own transfers' sheets at hand and (quite important) I remembered I couldn't print white. I figured I'd add the foam by hand. Here's the WIP result of a printed transfer on a Prussian Blue shield (or was that French Blue?).

Step 9: turn a failed transfer experiment into a successful shortcut for freehanding.

Honestly, the shape of the beer stein is there, but enemies would have to get very close to make it out. I sighed, fixed the transfers to the shields, added matte varnish and then used them to freehand the final shape with paint. I think the end result is rather nice, because it does give it all that 'I freehand' look, while also making the freehanding that much easier. Let's reuse the other picture as well. 

Step 10: Reuse another picture.

I painted the shield in the same way I did the banners, outlining the beer steins with black paint and then filling in the colors inside the lines (and repairing a bit of the blue outside of them). 

The Dwarf looks so happy on his little cart, he reminds me of Friar Tuck in the Kevin Costner Robin Hood movie.

While working on Bugman's Rangers I also worked on (what I thought was) Bugman's Cart. As I was going through reference pictures on the internet, I discovered this isn't Bugman's Cart. Trying to find out what it was, made me realize I had no clue where I got this 3D-printable file from. 

Painting wood is easy with contrast paints and drybrushing.

It's quite a mystery, but it'll serve as a beer wagon for the unit nonetheless as I rather like the miniature. The wood may need a bit of special mention as I decided to try this slapchop everyone is talking about (or was talking about a while back, I have to admit I have a bit of a backlog when it comes to painting videos). 

I'm tempted to make a little 'Honk if you hate Goblins' bumper sticker. I suspect it wouldn't be human-readable though. 

It was quite easy and fun to just drybrush, splatter on a few contrast paints and mix on the model and then drybrush some more to repeat the process. I think it works too. I also think I should've painted the eyes on the driver, the mule and Bugman's command crew. I'll add that one to the to-do-maybe-list. 

I'll be complaining about the all-metal Cannons and Organ Gun models later on. I should've added this Miner's cart to that rant too. What a horrorshow to paint it was. 

Speaking of the to-do-maybe-list, I took out this old plastic Miner's cart that I've been planning to paint since (I have to pause here while I search my own blog) 2022...no hang on, I've found an older reference to my Dwarves in 2017! I really should get back to that Grudge of Drong project...let's add it to that other list. When it comes to long lists, Santa's got nothing on my hobby projects list :D.

I will not be making jokes about the size and shape of one's organ here. This is a respectable blog.

As I was recklessly splashing paint on models that had been languishing in the Dwarf bin, I decided to attempt this plastic Organ Gun as well. It's from the same design period the all-metal cannon is from, and it turned out to be deceptively hard to paint that thing. Forewarned of the relative difficulty I decided to keep the Organ Gun simple. Just dark metal with a bright metal highlight, gold trim and a bit of heat effect on the barrels to add some colors. I suspect that all-metal wheels attract quite a lot of mud. That gave me enough of an excuse to break up the monotony here by adding the texture paste from the base to them. I haven't added any tufts or flowers as the crew isn't quite finished yet. I'll add them later. 

And with that I've finally gotten around to another update. Holidays are all fun and games, but going on vacation does a hell of a job on my attempts at scheduling and the like. Next up there'll be more Wood Elves (probably).