After quite a long break (wow! about two and a half months) I’m glad to say, I return to my CD projekt - Chaos Dwarf Army (three armies at once)…
I still want to build an army I can use with the forgeworld rules and alternatively with the rules for vanilla dwarfs or chaos warriors.
So far I made two deamonsmiths, an army standard bearer and two units of warriors.
What will be next? I noticed it to be quite difficult to find further units, which fit in all three army books. Blunderbusses? Not with chaos warriors… bull centaurs? not with vanilla dwarfs…
hmm…
A good unit for all three armies is the earthshaker cannon. I can use the model as an earthshaker (obviously) or as an grudge thrower catapult or as an hellcannon… I don’t have any metal miniatures in my army and I want to keep it this way. And I like converting. So I took inspiration from Bolg and I will try to make a cannon from a KINDER Egg. More on this later.
And what else can I do? I’d really like to do hobgoblins, but you can’t take them with vanilla dwarfs. Or do you?
Ok, it need some explanation (which is not good for stand-in-Units, it should be more obvious, but it is a possibility).
Imagine an unit of sneaky gits… they have only minimal armor and two hand weapons. The weapons are poisoned.
Now add a kind of overseer, giving them drugs… The drugs make them fearless and a bit harder to wound. And a bit slower (reducing Initiative and Movement…)
Now you have an unit with two hand weapons, always wounding on 4+ (at least), never fleeing, immune to psychology, Toughness 4, Initiative 2 and Movement 3…
I want to use my hobgoblins in a vanilla dwarf list as slayers!
The weapon skill of 4 is a bit high, but all the other stats are ok for drugged sneaky gits with mulitiple hand weapons.
Ok, I heard, slayers are not very good, the explanation is a bit far fetched… but at least it is an option with vanilla dwarfs.
In a chaos warrior army I can use sneaky gits simply as marauders. I don’t have the cw army book, I guess an additional hand weapon is no option. But I can give them an mark of khorne, so they get the second attack (and frenzy… so we are back to drugged sneaky gits).
For modelling hobgoblins I searched for a long time for a good method to build them. The newer method of taking stormvermin bodies looks quite good, but it is a bit expensive for me and I want to try a more classical look. Pot bellies, padded armor, stygian caps…
In addition I got my hand on cheap battle of skull pass goblin archers… In World of Hashut I is a way to make sneaky gits out of them. But I want to make them a bit larger. Lengthening the legs discourages me and I will only lenghten the torsos AND the arms. I hope the robes mask the short legs.
Hm, I guess this text is much too long for you to read (again), so I give you at least one picture of my first hobgoblins.
the camera hates my conversions, they look awful with this grade of detail.
Yes, I think the evilness of my Chaos Dwarfs is even more wicked. Instead of letting the slaves starve, the overseers give them very unhealthy food...
buahahar!
:D:P
Stiglitz
Alright you miserable excuses for slaves! I've got fifty McHappy Meals here and I'm gonna whip the guy who finishes his last! And don't even think you're going to get to keep that toy...! =)
I did the chaos dwarf rune for slave from the Tamurkhan-Book on the banner… In hindsight, it was no good idea. The execution was difficult and is far from perfect… and even if it were perfect - the rune is not very well known and just looks not very good.
So I decided to make a second command unit, so I can make either one big unit of hobgoblins (about 40+) or two small ones…
I’ll give you a step by step of my work with the second command unit.
Here is the step by step of how I make hobgoblins - in this example a command group:
First I do all the plastic work. For rank and file sneaky gitz I cut the bows from the night goblin archers and give them daggers. I carve the quivers off. I make the arms a bit longer by adding wristbands. You can see it on the sword arm of the champion. I just use any round bit of plastic (often I cut dwarven arms in slices) and glue it between arm and hand. I cut the poor gobbos in half and add a bit of sprue between upper and lower body.
Next step, I used milliput to fill up their middles. In hindsight, I think, I have overdone it a bit… Hobgoblins have potbellies, but mine are just little fatties.
Then I put a layer of greenstuff on and sculpted a kind of padded armor. It’s quite easy, just horizontal and vertical lines.
When I make scale armour I make the cuts so, that the scales are not right under the other. But padded armor is just one square under the other - this way, it’s easy and quick to make.
In the last step, I make the phrygian caps… I sculpt a rim for the cap (on the back, unfortunately no pic) and give them the straps/ribbons (don’t know the right word, sorry) hanging on both sides of the face. Last thing is the bobble.
For a change I started with my earthshaker. Like said, I want to make it from a Kinder egg like Bolg did in such a great way.
He filled the egg with paper and lime to make it a bit thicker. I wasn’t quite sure how to do it and instead used milliput. Functioned great, but it used up quite a lot of it and Bolgs way is the cheaper one, definitely.
Then I made a rim around the muzzle, with milliput, too.
A head from the black ork banner and a sculpted beard and mustache…Don’t know, if it is clear, it should be a beard?
Worked on the chassis for my earthshaker… I used the lower part of grudge pony carts
I had to increase the size of the chassis by adding sprue bits. In hindsight, it was overly complicated, perhaps. I have to mask it with plasticard anyway.
The wheels are way too small, of course. I will try these instead.
When I want to take my hobgoblins with slayer-rules, they are drugged fluffwise. So, I thought how to make it clear that they are drugged. I decided to use a unit filler - a hobgoblin, carried on a litter, carrying bottles an barrels with potion.
I like my litter bearers, so I tried to make an alternative dwarven whip master to be carried by them. But I do not like him very much.
I have worked a bit on the earthshaker chassis
and on the cannon itself… it’s not glued to the chassis yet (I think I will do it after painting)
That is an very cool earthshaker!!!! Instead of glueing it to the chassis, could you magnetizes it? for storage and transport...?
Yodrin
I would be possible, but I'm not sure, if it is necessary... Put together, cannon and chassis is quite compact ... it would be a bit smaller to store, if magnetized, but not much...
On the other hand, I liked my empire cannons to be two parts, so I was able to show malfunctions and destruction of the cannon by lying the barrel on the ground...
I just saw this, your warriors all painted and ranked up look awesome, I might have to consider trying something like that. also I’d never be able to tell that you’re grayscaling either, good stuff
D
