With the release of Warhammer: The Old World, I have turned my attention to two of my more contemporary armies; Chaos Dwarfs; and the Tomb Kings. Now leaving aside the Tomb Kings for a while, my focus for the last few weeks has been the Chaos Dwarfs.
Basing was the first port of call. The new Warhammer has most of the infantry mounted on 25mm bases. I love this as I have thought that most miniature look better on 25mm bases. I always consider the 25mm round bases were a slightly cheating way of basing miniature on what I considered a better sized base. Anyway, now 25mm square bases are the norm, I was faced with re-basing the Chaos Dwarfs from the rounds with square. I didn't need to do this, but I like it better, and they look a lot better on them in my opinion, with more room to pose them.
Other items which required re-basing were the Bull Centaurs, which now have 50mm x 75mm, and the various artillery. The 1990s Bull Centaurs look a little small on the bigger bases, but with a little bases debris I'm not too worried. The Rocket Launchers are meant to be on 50mm x 75mm, with crew separate crew, but I just put them on the base together as it looks better to me. There is also an option for tinkering with the base sizes to make little dioramas, so I did this with the Earth Shaker and Hell Cannon, basing them on 120mm x 100mm.
Aesthetically, I built up the bases a little with milliput, and many of them have a varying degree of GW skulls or watch parts added. I have done this to suggest the industrial wasteland of The Dark Lands around Zharr Naggrund and the plain of Zharr. In the painting of the Chaos Dwarfs I have kept to the colour scheme I chose when I first looked at this project a few years ago. I chose a rusty, industrial looking scheme. I think this fits with the evil industrial background of the Chaos Dwarfs, and it's quite unusual. I have tested it out on the Iron Daemons and it makes them look heavy. Finally, I have change the Chaos Dwarfs flesh colour from the green I originally used, to a more pallid Caucasian tone.
Enjoy :)
I will do proper updates on these a little later.
The Sorcerer on a Lammasu was started ages ago, but I have never finished him. I quite like the 'newer' Daemon Smith miniatures.
I started the General on a Taurus but didn't like it and paint stripped him.
The chap on the right is going to be the Army Standard Bearer and is converted from a broken standard Bearer.
These are a core bulk of the army, and were really quite quick to paint. I have used spare 1990s Undead shields for several of the unit to differentiate them from each other.
These will be normal Axemen/ Infernal Guard but equipped with Blackshard armour.
I have used Warplock Bronze for the armour as it's meant to be more magical, and not really rusty.
I have organised these into regiments of 15. These were already largely completed some years ago. I have however re-based them, repainted the flesh tome, and given them a Nuln Oil wash since.
As can be seen, I have two regiments of 5, a Bull Centaur Taur'ruk, and Shar'Tor the Executioner.
I have painted a test model front row, second from the left.
In the Legacy Army List these can mounted on a steam carriage, as per the later Forge World model, or not, as per the 1990s models. There is no base size for these, so I used the bases size closest to the Forge World model footprint, 120mm x 100mm.
In the new list you can also add an ogre loader. I saw someone on the Chaos Dwarf Facebook site who used the early 1990s Marauder Miniatures ogre with scale armour as he fitted the look and era of the miniatures. I used this idea for one, and used another Marauder Miniatures ogre from that time for the other.
I love this miniature, and didn't realise how much of a beast of a miniature it was until I bought one second hand from e-bay. My one was missing the crew, and the securing chains, so I have just added 1990s Blood Bowl Chaos Dwarfs as crew. I didn't add the chaos stars to the wheels as I didn't want it to obscure the wheel details, and I didn't think they really needed to be on there.
Officer: "Well, where is it!? Where's it gone!?"
First Crewman: "I don't know, it was here when we broke for lunch"
Second Crewman: (shrugging) "Don't ask me, I have no idea. Lets just follow the trail of destruction and screams".
The far launcher was missing its wheels so I added some spare solid wheels.
I have gone with the rusty look for these as with the rest of the army. I think that the Typhus Corrosion paint really gives them a heavy metallic feel.
I have two regiments of 20 Hobgoblin Warriors, one regiment of 20 Hobgoblin Archers, 20 Sneaky Gits, and a Bolt Thrower.
I shall probably split these into two units of 5 and use them to ride around harassing particular targets.
These need repainting. I might just use these as normal Hobgoblin Wolf riders rather than Dogs of War.
Despite working from the Legacy Army list, and painting the Chaos Dwarfs rusty rather than than 1990s red, it is always great to refer back to this book for fun.
