WhyNotCrashDifferently?:
Howdy.
Being in the early stages of building my army, I thought I’d make myself a blog so that I have a place to dump all my ideas and inane rantings.
Inane rant begins here:
Well, I like big hats and I cannot lie. I also like converting my armies to pieces, which I then convert back together again, so Chaos Dwarfs seemed like a perfect fit. In the past I’ve built Brettonian, Orc, Ogre, and Space Marine armies, beginning in 5th edition sometime in the '90s, but those big hat-wearing midgets have always appealed to me. Much to my chagrin however, I ditched every Warhammer-related thing I possessed maybe three years ago and told myself I was done with toy soldiers. Yeah, sure.
This past November I curiously wandered into a local hobby shop that opened its doors sometime during my hiatus and Warhammer sucked me right back in, but I decided to do it right this time and focus on one army and only one army, as aside from my previous four I had wasted much time, money, and patience on fickle dalliances. After poking around a bit and talking with the staff, I returned home and had a good think, and somehow or another ended up with Chaos Dwarfs on the brain.
Anywho, I bought the Battle for Skull Pass and a bunch of other Dwarf kits, despite ailing finances, that together makes up somewhere from 1000 to 1500 points of an army, and dug in. I had, however, come to the conclusion that Dwarf rules suited me more than the old Chaos Dwarf PDF for a few reasons:
1. I like the Dwarf rules and the fact that they’re complete, modern, and concise.
2. I don’t like horde tactics (despite my old Orc army, although it was all Orcs and no Goblins) and modelling up a whack of Hobgoblins doesn’t really appeal to a slooow painter/hobbiest like myself. I enjoy small armies of elite troops.
3. I’m simply not interested in arguing the relevance of a nine year old two-page PDF written for a different version of the game with every snot-nosed purist I go up against when all I wanna do is play a game. I have no problems with the Chaos Dwarf rules myself, but in my talks with folks at my local shop, others do (boo).
And so, some models:
An example of some Warriors nearing completion. Gotta clean up the armour a bit and conjure up some decorations for hats and shields, but they’re pretty much finished (aside from armless being armless, that is). I think I shot myself in the foot with their hat design as I’m a slow modeller and crafting the headgear is a longer process than it probably should be. The wooden bit is dowelling run through a pencil sharpener to give it a taper and the top bit is a piece of thumb tack trimmed to size, and I haven’t even figured out what to put on the tops or added the decorations yet. Ah well, live and learn.
These Slavers represent Quarrellers in the Dwarf book, with the option to upgrade to Rangers. As such, I wanted them to look kitted out as I envision them to be the blokes who wander into enemy territory and capture whomever they can to haul back to the mines and quarries. The crossbows have been ditched in favour of spear guns of a sort, made from crossbow stocks with thin plastic piping jammed on the front. The Slavers will also be festooned with pouches and packs and things.
As for the hats, well, from the get go I wanted different styles of hats to represent different ranks or positions in the army. Warriors have what you see above while Slavers and Blunderbussiers will have their own designs, etc. For the Blunderbussiers I want something akin to this:
although I have no idea how I’m going to replicate that as I can’t sculpt worth a damn, but as for the Slavers I’m stuck for ideas. Something compact and practical or large and ostentatious? Dunno, will have to ruminate some more.
A work-in-progress Taskmaster (Thane in the Dwarf book) to lead the infantry, one of two planned. Mostly there’s just the decorative bits left, as well as the hat, to greenstuff. Maybe a shoulder pad to hide some of the ugliness apparent from his surgery (converted from the Battle for Skull Pass Miner champion, so he lost an arm and then some). The back banner is a Chaos Dwarf throwback, though I figure if I ever make a Lord on foot (planning on using a Runelord with Anvil of Doom in 2000 point games instead) I’ll give him the proper twin flags, but heroes can live with one. 
The only three models I’ve completed thus far, these are a few of my war machine crew members. In trying to drag some Chaos Dwarf fluff into the army, my war machines (one for each Dwarf machine, six total) are amalgams of daemon-flesh and technology in the spirit of the Hellcannon. Being that I’ll be playing with Dwarf rules I also wanted a little bit of magic in the force, even if it’s only superficial, as another ode to Chaos Dwarf fluff. Hence, there are a handful of sorcerous-looking fellows amongst the crew (dude with the orb; maybe I’ll go back and greenstuff him up a more magical visage, or a hat) to keep the daemonic bits in check while the rest of the team minds the machinery.
As for their paint jobs, I’m happy with tabletop standards. I’m an excruciatingly slow painter who tends to paint models singly, so if they look fine from a distance, that’s good enough for me. They may appear a bit drab, but the war machine crews will be primarily black, brown, gray, and metal, except the sorcerers who’ll sport some purple. The rest of the army will be more red and orange.
Finally, an obfuscated shot of my war machine for the upcoming Golden Hat contest, awaiting paint. It’s a Chaos Dwarfified Flame Cannon rules-wise, though I’m lacking a suitably evil name for it. Yeah, look at the detail in those pixels.
Now, I have a few principals that I’ve more or less followed during the building of my armies, and I’ve only abandoned one of them in the case of my Chaos Dwarfs.
Firstly, I don’t like working with pewter miniatures. All plastic or bust. I wavered in this with my Ogres as I bought the Tyrant and Hunter kits, a couple Maneaters, Gorger, Yhetee, and that gods awful Scrap Launcher (horrible kit). I ended up not using some of these things because I just plain don’t like metal. In the case of characters especially, I much prefer converting them from normal plastic warriors. I also remember how crappy a time I had putting the sponsons on the Land Raider Crusader together before it became an all-plastic kit. Ugh.
Secondly, a limited paint palette. This one is pretty common but for me it’s the only tenet I haven’t broken. I also happen to prefer a more drab and dingy colour scheme as opposed to a rainbow punch in the eye.
And finally, I believe basing achieved perfection with the early adoption of Goblin Green-painted gravel as the standard. This is my black eye, as I’ve abandoned my guns and done something else with these Chaos Dwarfs (see above). I wanted to give the little guys some height, and honestly the green just didn’t work with their look. Now there are some beautiful bases out there, and the lava theme that is so popular around these parts is very fitting (I’m not convinced I could paint lava anyway) and nicely executed, but I had an idea early on to stick my Dwarfs on gray stone plinths rising from a sea of yellow grass. Of course, the shop had no yellow flock, but the multi-coloured stuff I ended up using is close enough and provides that contrast I was looking for initially. I do vow that if I ever put together that 1000 point Brettonian army I’ve been dreaming of (they were my first army way back when and so have a special place in my heart, and the current plastics are just fantastic), they’ll be galloping over green gravel.
Well, I guess that’s it. If you’ve read this far, kudos to you. Next time I’ll post some of my under-construction war machines. Cheers for now.
[align=center]2017 Image Salvage
[/align]
