my story with the brotherhood commences not that much time before today, with the start of a map campaign at university.
I’ve fought for other Warhammer kingdoms before, still remember my red, black and white Ostland army.
I’ve served other dark powers, my necromances lay in wait for another massive resurrection and mayhem (not really like the vampire counts theme).
I’ve been an accursed Chaos raider, though not a very dangerous one.
After some years I lost contact with the hobby, and regained interest with last year’s university campaign, fielding an overwhelmed Dwarf army.
Well, and now here I am, with my hearth sold to the dark powers of Hashut!
ATM my army is very much a work in progress, and since I will need to play some battles I had to make some compromises (using standard Dwarf miniatures to fill some units).
I’ll use this post to show the state of the army as it is now.
Also to say hi to the community, being my first post.
First I’ll start with a summary of my largest army roster, which I’m trying to fill with recruits.
Lv.4 Sorcerer with Lamasu - Metal
Lv. 4 Sorcerer - Metal
3 Lv 2 Sorcerers - Fire, death and metal.
Hero
BullCentaur hero
2 · 15 Warriors
15 Warriors - great weapons
4 · 12 BB
2 · 10 Hobgoblins, fully equiped
19 Hobgoblins
3 · 10 Hobgolin archers
2 · 10 Wolf riders
8 · Bolt Throwers
1 · Death rocket
20 · Black Orcs
2 · 5 Bull Centaurs
Earhshaker
Well, now on the initial state images (CLICKABLE THUMBS, for convenience), from which the blog will be developed on.
[align=center]Bolt Thrower Original Parts[/align]
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[align=center]Bolt Thrower as it is now[/align]
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[align=center]Wolf riders in process[/align]
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[align=center]Bull Centaur[/align]
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[align=center]Green lads - Hobgoblins[/align]
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[align=center]Sorcerer in the making[/align]
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[align=center]The lads[/align]
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[align=center]The lads with guns[/align]
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And that’s all for now. I think these days I’ll keep churning hobgobbos, which instead of green I’ll paint in some sort of very pale green - grey.
I wish I had knew of this forum before the begining of my adventures in the ash plains of Zharr, so as to have a complete log on my army.
I guess I’ll have to call today Day 1 and commence from here.
I do have a large half-assembled dwarf army with lots of volunteers wanting to join the dark side. The other half of that army relieves me from some pressure, as they do well filling up the ranks of the Chaos Dwarfs for battles.
I’ll begin work with some Immortal infantry, while I’ll use standard Ravening Horde rules, I’ll make a special looking Great Weapon + Heavy armour looking squad, just in case.
The main points in which my army is based, aesthetically, are:
- Heads covered in Chaos Warrior helmets of Masked (the mask is placed over a helmet anyway)
- Long dreadlock beards and hair
- Naked arms with heavy duty gloves. (Pale skin)
- Scale armour
- Blue as main colour
- Battered round shields, often marked with runes or symbols
- Chaos weaponry (crow’s picks, axes, maces…)
- Heavy duty artillery
I use, as a base for all my miniatures, a standard backbody of a plastic dwarf, and often the front part of the body with the head chopped to the mouth (to make space for the chaos helmet).
Here I’ve arranged some bits to begin work with:
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Nothing special really, but those beastmen weapons sure look cool.
Now the first assembly, putting everything together with plastic glue so the material is welded together. I do make the pinholes in this phase, it takes a while for the glue to set.
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Now on to casting some heads for my guys:
I don’t really make elaborate moulds for such tiny details as heads, since I only need the frontal part with its fine detail (the backpart is overlapped with the back beard and otherwise easily reproduced).
I use plasticine (beware of children’s plasticine, it’s not suitable for these things since it will stick to the finished product and smells like strawberry (which is not a bad thing per se, but being chaos dwarfs…)).
I use some pliers to carefully sink the head face first into the block of plasticine, each iteration to be made some space apart, to avoid unwanted deformation.
A great use of plasticine for casting is that you can morph the dimensions a bit. I’ve been tempted to use some GameZone dwarf helmets for my army, but since they have such large heads, they don’t fit at all. Solution? After making the mould for the head press it’s sides until the head is the right dimension.
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Ah, my beloved cans of resin, to be mixed 1:1, and for that matter the tiny pots in front of them.
I like to make this things as simple as possible, and since this material is highly fluid, It’s easy to check visually the 1:1 proportion.
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Mixing with care, and on to the pouring!
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Guess we’ll have a nice set of chaotic heads to work with the following days:
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On this point I had to leave the work because of some drama llama.
So far the 5 Immortals have had their beards and armour sculped out of Grey Milliput, and most details done, including the last-minute variation I decided for the helmets, dun dun duuun. Photos to come.
Also a warmachine out of plastic card, a bit more on the Hobgoblin side than the Bolt-thrower above, but after seeing that there’s a warmachine competition going on, I think I should keep it as an entry.
@ Willmark : I need a complete unit to post in the gallery, right?
In fact, I’m a bit lost as where to place everything. Were I to make step by step photo tutorials, should they be somewhere else than here (Conversions forum)? Also, I think that while most information could go in other forum sections, summarized here would be easier to maintain (Showcase, for example).
I could’t set up the light set properly so the photos are not the best quality available, sorry for that.
First, update on the Immortals:
These guys have a helmet/mask taken from the Hellcannon tripulation; round shields and great weapons taken from Beastmen or Chaos Marauders / Warriors.
They had a first layer of white grade Milliput to create beards & hair, arms and place the shields into position. Those dwarves whose beard or hair wasn’t obstructing the skilt had the plate armour sculpted too.
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Second layer is green putty, used to finish the hair details and add some plate armour, as well as gloves and muscle. Long bearded dwarves had their platemail finished. (It was no use making plate before beard since the latest covers most of the model).
The champion does have a Marauder shoulderplate.
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Now on to the warmachines!
Under request from a friend, I made a clone of the goblin bolthrower out of plasticard of various width, green putty (which is a great material to make the rope), and a resin cast of the thoothed armour.
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Finally, since the bolt thrower posted above is merely a recast of a dwarven war machine and the Hellcannon plate, I tried to do an original design, here’s the result:
(Again, plasticard and green putty, the bolt is the lower part of an ogre banner pole).
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Grouphug!
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I wanted the chaos thrower to be a mixture of the heavy duty look of dwarven machinery and the goblin ingenuity.
Also, it’s detachable, for easier transportation.
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Today’s work also included a green putty foot, (to be recasted until dawn of days), to replace some of the puny looking feet these dwarves have.
Also some tests with original weaponry, made out of 1,6 mm aluminium bar and plasticard. Still in the need of more testing (it’s very fragile for certain weaponry).
I dunno what to say, maybe it’s just the pics. I feel confused because your helmets are really cool and look really well casted. I do not think it’s easy to be done.
Your plasticard skills are great, I love your chaos thrower, very chaos dwarfish but… your milliput works look terrible. I’m sorry to be harsh, but it could just be pictures. If so I beg your pardon.
I’m looking forward for better pictures and painted minis :hat off
I’ve been looking through your conversions and I like very much the design of your mass-production bolt throwers, since I still have 5 to go, I’ll keep the frontal mantlet and use your approach.
Thanks for the comment Bassman, ah, I guess I’ll need some practice! Or better photos, since contrast for white is not very good.
The casting process is very very simple, if you’ve got access to 2 component PU resin, it’s as simple as shown above, given you find some plastelin.
What I don’t seem to be able is to make nice enough pictures, it might be the lack of lighting perhaps, since the camera is set to macro and min. distance kept. Well, again, more practice.
Here we are again, back with more beards and eastern steel.
I’ve finished work on my first 5 Immortals.
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Using milliput was not the greatest of ideas, I guess it has certain applications for bulking or platemail, but beards… not really.
Then I got into painting them.
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Well, just after I finished one of them (the rest are on basic colours), I got notice on the developments of the Warhammer campaign I’am playing.
Hmm, it seems I’ll be joining some Orcs from the mountains to crush a mighy 4.000 pt Midland army that menaces to besiege our frontier outposts.
Well, it’ll face 4.000 + 1.000 (reinforcements) points of Chaos Dwarves and 3.500 points of Greenskins. Seems easy, but I’ve just started my army, which atm looks like this:
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+ some unpainted BOrcs, that don’t really need to be shown.
The battle will be on the 24th of February, so it’ll be hard work to get the ranks to look like Chaos Dwarves.
Back to work then! Where was I?
Yep, the Immortals. Ah, I like this guy
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Well, the warriors will do for now, Immortals need a banner, but they’re ok. Warmachine department needs two Earthshakers, 6 BThrowers and at least a Rocket LAuncher. But bulltaurs, I have one! Back to the table, I need at least a BTaur Hero and 9 more grunts.
Based on the pony from BFSP, stand up guys! (those of you who have legs):
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Good thing to know about our GreenStuff clad Chaos Dwarves is that they, like the brute lads of the Ogre Kingdoms, have a decent amount of layers, so I like to have at least 5 models in the workbench, so when I work with one, the rest are drying.
Some updates on the bulltaurs, which include half a ton of green stuff over the previous update, one painted, other finished, a new addition to the ranks of the unit (raising up the total of miniatures in ths batch to 6) and lots of details here and there.
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