Archer's Chaos Dwarfs - Part of a massive modelling project

Chaos Dwarf Miniature Showcase
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Greetings all. I am a semi-regular poster over on Dakka Dakka (and Oz Tabletop Gaming) where I have been documenting my efforts to collect, paint and game with 2,000 point armies for both Warhammer and Warhammer 40k. I have been at it for eight years now and have finished off 13 armies in this time. I was recently invited by a user over on Dakka Dakka to explore this forum and so here I am.

So, most relevant to this site, I have recently started on the first of two Chaos Dwarf armies that I intend to collect, build, paint and get some games in (whether these are some form of Warhammer, 9th Age, KoW or AoS I am really not fussed).

In my existing blogs I document mainly finished models and my games (which are usually with the same group of people). But sometimes I have in progress shots. So if you will humor me, I will join your community and start showcasing the Chaos Dwarfs here as well.

First up, I am totally in the casual play camp and my armies are usually made with a story in mind first. Also to note is that I have come to the Chaos Dwarfs fairly late in the piece so all my collection is Forgeworld related. So I am talking Daemonsmiths, Infernal Guard and the like.

To that end, this first Chaos Dwarf army I sort of imagine as protectors of a Temple of Hashut rather than one that may be encountered out and about slaving and raiding. So at its centre is some Bull Centaurs supported by Infernal Guard, Daemonsmith and some K’Daai that I figure the Daemonsmith would summon and bind to protect the temple.

The other army that is still in the works for the future will be the “Slaver” group that will have lots of War Machines to tear down walls and Hobgoblins to do the dirty work (if and when I find a decent source of Hobgoblins). But I have waxed on enough so some photos of where I am up to…

This is the first model I painted for the army, a Bull Centaur Taur’uk, I also used him in an online painting comp on Oz Tabletop Gaming which I was pretty happy he ended up winning by a vote!

I really put the effort into this guy (not to say that I don’t always try, but he was special).

Being a Forgeworld model and never knowing what you will get from them I was concerned how hard he would be to assemble and what gaps I would be dealing with, but I was pleasantly surprised that it is an excellent kit.

He is also a truly enormous model, more in line with a Giant than a Chaos Dwarf.

Sort of reminds me of those WWII propaganda posters, Hashut needs You!

For scale, this is a Bretonnian Lord with the Questing Vow that I previously completed for his army. The Taur’uk is massive next to that horse.

I have been keen to see which one would actually come out on top in a fight…

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Next up I decided to continue with the Bull Centaur theme and turned my attention to assembling the unit of 6 Bull Centaurs I intend to run, again, massive models and the unit is pretty intimidating when ranked up.
But the kits were a little less clean in regard to assembly and I had a few areas that needed filling in. God bless liquid greenstuff, made the job so much easier.
I also had to solve the issue of a unit Champion, Standard and Musician. So, since I had two of each of the Forgeworld sculpts it was easy to decide that each would become one of the above roles. I just had to decide which pose most suited the role I needed. This is what I came up with:

For the Musician, I went with a drum, seemed the simplest to convert so removed the axe head and used some greenstuff to make a mallet head. The drum is a combination of searchlight off a tank and a round Goblin shield for the skin. The final photo shows the original sculpt next to the conversion.

The Standard Bearer was a simple fix, dug through my bits box for a suitable pole (came from a biro) and a horned skull thing and there you go, instant Standard Bearer. You can see the original sculpt for good measure next to him.

The Champion was actually the most difficult to figure out how to represent as how do you make him look different enough without undertaking some enormous sculpting effort? The solution is to have him display a heap of trophies and I decided that with the fairly drab, earthy tones I intend to use vibrantly painted shields of other races is the way to go. They should stand out and make him look like a real trophy hunter.

The unit ranked up, huge.

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Hey @Archer im not sure why but the system decided to block these posts. I’ve restored them now.

Welcome to CDO and thanks for sharing! That tauruk is amazing! Especially the red iris in each eye. Mad detail!

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My Bull Centaur progress was interrupted by another Painting Comp I decided to throw my hat in and decided that the Leaders of the army should make an appearance.


So I knocked out the Daemonsmith/Sorcerer Prophet (depending on game size…), I think of the three Leaders he came out the best, possibly because I enjoyed his sculpt the most.

This will be a Castellan, a beefy combat hero that with the right set up will be almost impossible to shift.

Finally my BSB. Not super happy with the Banner, it just isn’t big enough, but the guy carrying it is pretty small…

Here they are all together. Sadly, I didn’t win the comp, but they did ok. I think the Daemonsmith is the pick of the bunch and the Castellan didn’t photograph particularly well.

And for size comparison, the Bull Centaurs are truly enormous compared to their Chaos Dwarf counterpart. Almost a little too large. I am hoping that the K’Daai bridge the gap a little.

Next progress will be back onto the Bull Centaurs who are all up to the armor painting stage.

So, massive first post so I apologize for that. But thanks for reading. (If you are interested in my Dakka Dakka or Oz Tabletop blogs let me know and I will share the links).

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@Oxymandias Thanks for restoring them, I wonder if I posted too much too quickly? I was in the process of righting a post on the technical help page about the issue when you restored them.

Thanks for the Taur’uk compliments, I am pretty happy with him, but being such a large model it is easier to get at the detail. Although I regret fully assembling him before painting, should have done it in sub-assemblies!

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Great, new users creating several threads/posts quickly well need to be reviewed, same with links. To avoid spam/bots etc, but the system quickly bumps users to “safe” once active.

@Archer Great stuff! And welcome to the forum… :slight_smile:

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From me, too, a warm welcome here at CDO! :cd1980:

Very cool colour scheme you have chosen for the models. I’m looking forward to seeing more painted miniatures! :wink:

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Haha the Taur’ruk is telling that bretonian to March his puffy pants right around and go home to his lady…

Welcome @Archer, good to seen new people joining! Don’t hesitate to drown us in pictures, wip or otherwise. We’re all addicts here :sweat_smile:

Finally, lof the pain scheme you have going!

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Compliments and welcome on board!

Your minis are very nice, love them.

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Very nice! Love that drum and standard.

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Great to have you. The Tauruk is excellent, but I love the musician and standard bearer. I look forward to seeing them painted

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Thank you all for your kind words. Will hopefully get some progress back on the Bull Centaurs as I have been distracted by a couple of other projects just recently.

The colour scheme was suggested by my wife as she felt they beards in particular reminded her of ancient Babylon/Persia so have gone with a bit of that in mind.

Does anyone have a good suggestion for Hobgoblins on foot and on wolf? I was thinking about kitbashing some Gnoblar heads onto Goblin bodies, but I also saw a user on here using Skaven bodies that looked pretty cool. Although that would make the Wolf Riders trickier.

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I dont think gnobblar heads look remotely like hobgoblins. The old multipose goblins and night goblins are probably the closest match. I went for grenadier goblins as they are taller and thinner faces than gobbos and have hair. They do wolf riders too.

Ive been rethinking this though i think dark halflings would be more fun. So many cool halflings out there. Ill prob give it a go. Havent seen any1 else do it.

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Dark Halflings… so cool.

Will they have tusks too?

Or mohicans… dark punk halflings.

Actually now I am little concerned about what is in their pies and cookpots

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Horns would be good and helmets, and scary stuff…

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Skulls and spikes, can’t go wrong with them

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Great stuff. Your conversions on the Bull Centaur unit are well realized. Good incentive for me to paint faster too! Keep em coming!

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It’s not that I think Gnoblar’s look a lot like the old school Hobgoblins, its more they would be a way to make the unit distinctive from “regular” goblins.

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Do you have a 3d printer or a friend close by that has one? There are some good Hobgoblin stl files out there for free, @Fabelzel does some particularly nice ones and generously posts them for free on thingyverse

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So it has been an absolute age since I dropped by here. Partially life has been busy, partially my computer has been giving me all sorts of grief and finally I just haven’t had a lot of Chaos Dwarf related progress to show.

But that has changed in as I have had some time and worked on a unit of three K’Daai Fireborn.

Without further fanfare, onto some pictures…

Next up is back to the Chaos Dwarfs. Sort of. Here is the first of my K’Daai Fireborn. Now as I understand it, these are suits of Chaos Dwarf forged armour possessed by fire daemons. They won’t survive the battle ever as they start to take damage from turn 1 so are a real smash something quickly sort of unit.


Here is number 2. The models are packed with detail, but it is generally all flame and armour plate so I was struggling to add a little bit of interest to the models. Then it occurred to me that the armour is carved with a lot of tiny little runes and if I could highlight them it may add that little extra point of interest I felt they were missing. So I ended up going with green as it was quite a contrast to the other colours already used on the models.


The 3rd and final K’Daai. Probably my favorite pose as it looks threatening. Plus I like the helmet.


They rank up surprisingly well considering the strange poses they are in. Although I did keep it in mind when gluing them to their bases. So the only thing left is to do a movement tray for them, a coat of varnish and some magnets under the bases.

Overall pretty happy with the flames contrasting with the dark armour. I think the green runes (perhaps an unusual colour choice, but it ties nicely to the Green I used on the Heroes of the army).

Thanks for reading.

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