This year I’ve decided to embark on a project for Warhammer The Old World.
With the rules for Chaos Dwarfs as a legacy army recently out, I wanted to kitbash some short angry fellows. I was initially thinking of doing an oldhammer style army out of Fabelzel chaos dwarfs, but I’ve since decided I want a dark and gritty rendition of the chaos dwarfs. I guess the core theme of them is that they’re some kind of slaver caravan travelling the outskirts of the darklands and the territories beyond, always raiding and trading their unwilling cargo for coin.
The army is going to be styled like my favourite pieces of chaos dwarf art. One of the core pieces of inspiration was the hellcannon crew with their eclectic armour style. I still plan on there being some big-hats here and there, but they’ll be grim and gritty big hats with lots of spikes, and saved for the more elite units and characters to reflect their status.
For some of the basic infantry, I’ll be making them out of the Hammerers/Longbeards kit as they’ve got that scaled armour on the lower half, and for others I’ll be using the arkanauts kit from AoS, heavily modified and sculpted over.
So far the plan is to build (at a minimum) the following:
Slaver-dwarfs like this for the most “normal” infantry (i.e. infernal guard in the TOW rules).
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I’ve already begun making their unit filler, which is a kind of overseer type fellow on a captured beast from the darklands. He will get a whip in the other hand. He still needs some further sculpting on the helmet to give him some extra scales where the helmet meets the beard, but he’s coming together.
A bunch of blunderbuss guys - I’m still unsure how I’ll go about making these and am searching for appropriate gun arms that aren’t too much effort to fit to hammerer/longbeard bodies.
An iron daemon. I’ll be building this out of some boiler parts from the Khorne Lord of Skulls kit from 40k as well as some more mundane bits and plasticard. This will hopefully be very train-like in appearance.
A magma cannon - I plan on making this like a chaos dwarf version of the flame chariot from elden ring. I loved the design of this thing and thought a bearded metal face on wheels spewing fire was right at home in the army.
A sorcerer-prophet on lammasu. The bale taurus might be somewhat better in game, but this IMO theme is king and I will die on that hill (including in-game if my little angry fellows don’t do so well). I’m making the lammasu out of the centaurian marshall kit from Warcry, with manticore wings and a giant’s head as the basis of the big dwarfy head (though I’m still awaiting the giant’s head).
Some hobgoblins - eventually I want both archers and melee troops. I will be converting them from stormvermin and night goblins, which I have thankfully gotten from eBay before they went out of print. I’ll also be making wolf riders, which I reckon are easily made from the new AoS snarlfang ones.
Hobgoblin bolt throwers - I have started converting these from the big crossbow from the AoS kruleboys range. Need to work on the angle-adjustment and firing mechanism more now because the thing was ridiculously long and I cut the original down to fit it to the TOW size base. Larger wheels are from the AoS ironweld cannon kit.
Today I’m doing a little bit of work todays my Lammasu - was waiting on heads from the giant kit to arrive by post. He will of course get a big knotted beard with various gold banding throughout.
I used to use greenstuff but I’ve predominantly moved to using Tamiya Quicktype Putty - I find it has the best properties and because it cures quickly, there’s less risk of picking up your model to find you’ve thumb’d over a piece of detail you just sculpted (a problem that tends to arise especially on big models requiring sculpting all over).
I use three main tools for sculpting - a knife (I like to use a Tamiya design knife because the shape is slanted and finer and easier to get into tight spaces), and two clay shaper tools (these are like paint brushes made of silicon rubber instead of bristles). I use one with flat chisel shape, and the other a rounded one that comes to a gentle point on the end.
I find I can do most all sculpting with these and I rarely reach for any other tools. Because clay shapers are made of silicon rubber, the putty doesn’t stick easily to them and I find I rarely if ever need to lubricate the tools.
EDIT: the other benefit of this stuff is it cures hard, not rubbery like greenstuff - so you can very easily carve it and sand into it, whereas with greenstuff to get it to be very hard you have to use fair bit more blue than yellow when mixing.
I think for the saddle I want to use the one from the Vampire Mortarch kit (the three option kit on the big flying mount), and specifically the tall saddle Neferata has, but the bits are rather hard to find online, so I’ll have to keep looking (I don’t really want to buy the whole kit for a few pieces).
An update to the darkland dawi - though these are not exactly dawi. Its a unit of armoured hobgoblins. I wanted a vicious and semi-elite look to these guys (as much as hobgoblins can be considered ‘elite’) so that they stand out as slightly higher up on the slave hierarchy.
They’re made from the (now) older stormvermin kit with heads and arms from the new hobgrot kit + tamiya quicktype putty for some sculpted details. I carefully removed the fur and smoothed down those areas using tamiya extra thin cement with a brush applicator, then sculpted straps and details where the area felt blank, or the armour needed straps to look like it would hold on.
I’m still working out what shields I’d like to give them - using the stormvermin ones looks a little too much reminiscent of the base kit from which they’re made, and too skaven-y.
I have also begun putting together a chaos siege giant.
I found a cheap giant as well as some spare giant bits so I figured I’d have a crack. Need to figure out what I want to do regarding incorporating more chaos dwarf style especially re overlapping armour scales (the plasticard has only been blue-tac’d down).
Great to see this blog coming together and I’m very excited to see where you take this army. I’ll definitely have to consider that quicktype putty for my arsenal. The overseer is very inspired and something not often seen despite that it’s a thematic essential.
All the hallmarks of a blog to watch:
Pirate in avatar image
Elden ring conversion
Ambitious sculpting
