Order of Iron's Helsmiths of Hashut

[OrderofIron]

For the Forge! Demon powered purple chaos dwarfs hailing from the desecrated Forge Anathema. Everyone seemed a bit taken aback by the purple/green colors in the helsmiths reveal and I guess I understand it was a bit of a departure from the typical blazing red, but I was gonna paint mine purple and green anyway! One thing I can agree with though is the lack of vibrancy with the default Forge Anathema scheme, and I wanted to give it some extra oomph.

These infernal cohort about halfway through I thought started to resemble bismuth crystal formations and I tried to play more and more into that idea with the metallic blue on their shields and the color shifts on the designs. I wanted them to be glorious, flaunting their wealth and status, resplendent in their sinister colors. To bring in more of that forge anathema “obsessed with demonsmithing” green glow I painted 2 rings on their hats, one on the very top edge and the other connecting the notches on the brass armor plate so that it mimics the multi tiered mesopatamian style hats of old.

I gave them all different beard colors, not only because I never wanted to shy away from more colors in this scheme, but also because in the new lore these Zharrdron are the inheritors of the old Khazalid Empire. Let it be known, while the cowardly ancestor whelps fled to the skies or abandoned their people, we endured. All the long lost clans that prospered before the age of chaos are found here in our smog-clouded domain, and I see no reason why we should leave blondes, browns, oranges, reds to our weak and dying dispossessed cousins. These thick ringlet rows are excellent opportunities to add in salt and pepper effects, or possibly dyed multi colored beards as well in the future. If only they were larger, bah. The old grumbler in me is definitely bothered by the distinct lack of ground dragging facial hair. I’m a big fan of the warhammer fantasy sweeping beards that dominated the whole model, and it looks like I’ll have to settle for only having them on heroes, or centaurs. Woe.

Not mentioned above is the weakling hobgrot, toiling away carrying his heavy gong destined to be clonked by a demon infused mallet that slays him. He’s not quite done yet. I kinda love this miniature. I love his grimace, I love the way he’s bent over and miserable and in a visual demonstration of his wretched oppression I painted his burden the primary color of his superiors. Bringing that medieval peasant vibe, all the hobgoblins in the army will share the tan yellow/bright red quartered tunic look, heavily smeared in agrax earthshade to show their lowly filth. The gobbo was the last one of the bunch to get painted and it was like a nice cherry on top of what I thought was a spectacular kit. I hope when the full army releases the other gobbos are half as fun to paint as this guy here.

Anyway that’s it for now. If you took the time to read and see my guys thanks a lot, very happy to finally join this community for real with my very own chaos dwarf army. I’m sure all the old school guys are grumbling as is their dwarfy right that these new sculpts aren’t exactly what they’re looking for but I think they’re perfect for me and where I’m at in my hobby journey if that makes any sense. Coming up next is a bright yellow war despot to garishly contrast the rank and file. Let me know if anyone has any cool basing ideas, I was thinking kind of a yellowish sand? Some kind of savannah maybe? I dunno nothing really seems to be hooking me.

Until next time kinsman.

[PawocK]

@OrderofIron

I was gonna paint mine purple and green anyway!

Bold choices, but it’s great !

Keep up the good work

[OrderofIron]

Dark lords are overrated. The bright yellow infantry commander for my force. Done in one mad frenzy that left me looking at him as if he was done by someone else for a time. Very happy with how he turned out, he’s exactly as I was hoping for. Garish, resplendent, cruel.

Up next is the bull engine.

[flagellant04]

@OrderofIron

One thing I can agree with though is the lack of vibrancy with the default Forge Anathema scheme

Hell yeah dude, if you’re going to use bright colours, go all the way! This is a ton of fun

[OrderofIron]

Thank you kinsman. Ever since I got into warhammer I always had the idea to paint up some chaos dwarfs in a crazy color scheme, and since my other armies lean towards the darker end of the spectrum this has been so much fun. Got a lot more painting to do. Can’t dominate the mortal realms with what I got just yet.

[OrderofIron]

In the shadow of His horns!

One bull engine for Hashut. Legends say the Bullfather is pleased with tauroid automata, as they are the perfect places for his spirit to manifest in the mortal realms…

Funny how even when painting the same scheme there is still so much experimenting going on. I planned to highlight my normal warpfire glow color on the dominater engine by adding a flourescent yellow paint. I absolutely loved the results, and went back to add that same flourescent effect to the glow on the spears and helmets of the rest of the dwarves to great results. Though you can’t see it in the photos exactly, that green glow pops like crazy even in dim light. Very pleased. I’m also starting to get confident in my technique of putting contrast over large flat surfaces. It’s not a perfect finish, but far better than splotchier attempts on previous armies.

My favorite little detail I painted on the dominater are the strips of red and blue on the gears in his joints, and the orange piping on the back of his arms. It was the last bit painted as a finishing touch and felt wonderful to add. The same alternating red/blue over black will be used on the wheels of the tormenter bombard artilllery piece which is next in line.

Progress has begun to slow as hobby fatigue has set in. A dangerous prospect, as I’ll have a year or mores work ahead of me once I get my full order of chorfs, and Hashut only has the harshest of deadlines. Ah well. Zharr Naggrund was not build in a day. See you next time for the bombard!

[OrderofIron]

As promised our Dark Father. Traditional artillery is a rarity in this age of sigmar and it’s nice to not only finally be fielding some myself, but also have plans for a decently sized battery once all is said and done. My favorite part about painting this guy easily was the blue and red striped wheels which I hope please the grumbling longbeards and suffice as yet another callback to the paint schemes of old. Also they’re just so much fun. I’m using more and more glazing techniques with this army as time goes on and it really helped to increase the vibrancy of the blue and red using a couple lighter shades.

To make me eat my own words, my technique for a smooth not splotchy finish for applying thinned contrast over larger flat surfaces did not work out exactly this time around and required some clean up. Another challenge I have and also see amongst other zharrdron tyrants is the ability to nail a precise glow effect on these cuneiform runes. I was hoping that the grooves of the runes would be deep enough to catch a few layers of thinned paint to make the effect fairly easy but this wasn’t so. Regardless, I still did it on the most visible writings on the artillery piece because even if my brush wasn’t the most precise, the effect still brings a lot to the model when its out amongst its fellows on the table. Suppose I’ll keep at it, see if practice makes perfect. That’s what it’s all about. That and domination, riches, demon power, dark sorcery, and fantastic hats.

And fear not, hobby fatigue has not set in so fiercely as I believed. I think I’ve finally set my mind on what I want for basing. New heroes have been built including a cool new kitbash. Construction on the leader of the Forge Anathema the dreaded Urak Taar will soon begin. The rest of this sinister legion has yet to arrive…

[OrderofIron]

And Behold! The first box of Helsmiths of Hashut miniatures, and the first official chaos dwarf set released in 20 years, painted and ready for its first battles. Already these bloodthirsty bastards have squared off with flesh eater and stormcast spearheads. A meager offering to the Dark One.

[PawocK]

This is one amongst the craziest color scheme out there on this forum. But it works quite well it is very coherent, quite bright and awesome. Good job on the box !

[OrderofIron]

Thank you so much! I was planning the scheme for months before finally getting my hands on these guys. It’s really nice to know all that time deliberating manifested as something special. It’s bright, unique, and not too difficult to paint. Much more where that came from.

[OrderofIron]

Salutations fellow tyrants. For many moons was I locked away in my dark tower, overseeing terrible construction, pondering twisted lore. Now I return with new offerings to our Father.

The Bull sends me visions of a far off future where I run thematic narrative games of Helsmiths vs Fyreslayers and play out a campaign of the fall of Grimnir’s Firehold. Alas, I don’t have the minis required for such a campaign let alone have them all painted so I’ll settle for a quick game of solo spearhead, practicing both fyreslayers and helsmiths rules for more battles against friends soon. Here are some cool images from that game.

Game start. The more elite berserkers began the game taking refuge behind their large terrain feature while sending up the first wave of vulkites to throw their mortal wound dealing axes and inevitably die. The first line of vulkite axes nailed the dominator engine for max damage dealing 3 mortal wounds right off the bat while the rest of the the fyreslayers began to spread over the board. Helsmiths first turn involved a typical bombardment and a big charge from the empowered dominator, supported by cohort spears. It wasn’t enough to entirely remove the slayers in the center of the board, but the dominator engine didn’t sustain any more wounds and dealt a fair share of damage. The despot and his cohort lined up with their flanks covered by the rubble, prepared to launch an assault on any overextended duardin.

At the end of turn one here. Bull robot in a commanding position already. No fear with its 2+ save. Every game of spearhead I’ve played this dominator has been the star of the show and at this point I knew this game would be no different. Fyreslayers lead by points, but lack board control.

Turn order stayed the same going into round 2. Slugfest begins here, both sides using defensive commands to try and hold the center while a melee erupts between vulkites and cohort on the side. Big showdown between elite units, fyreslayers charge their hearthguard into the dominator, hoping to get lucky, roll well, and ignore the automaton’s 2+ save entirely.

But Grimnir isn’t with the ancestor worshipping whelps this day. The flame poleaxes aren’t enough, do no mortal wounds and otherwise can’t pierce the armor of the engine. In other parts of the battlefield the vulkites fight admirably, but even with their ur-gold rune abilities also have a lot of their attacks clash harmlessly against the zharrdron shield wall.

Here’s the clearer board at the end of turn 3. Began kinda talking it out from here mostly. Fyreslayers were slowly losing their point lead, and got incredibly unlucky with their mortal wound rolls. On the other hand Helsmiths had spent the game nailing bombard shots, had reinforcements for units of cohorts on the way, and was only getting stronger as the game goes on naturally because of the way demonic power works.

All in all had a great time. Helsmiths victory, only fitting, but rather surprising considering how good I hear the Fyreslayers spearhead is. Biggest strength for Helsmiths was their overall spectacular save values because the potential damage of those slayers was leaps and bounds higher than anything Helsmiths could throw out, but this game at least we made up for it in the effectiveness of our assaults.

That’s all for this update. Next time we’ll talk about model building, kitbashes, and the exact make up of the army. Until then.

[GhraskDragh]

Victory!!

Really enjoyed reading up on this battle, looks like loads of fun and great seeing old enemies go at it painted up in all their glory

Great read, hope you do another one

[OrderofIron]

Thank you so much man. I have some big plans in the future. Only thing standing between me and them is hundreds of dollars of unpainted unbuilt plastic. Shouldn’t be too hard…yeah…

[OrderofIron]

On metal wings I return. Let the world tremble at the sound of our march.

Here’s my kitbashed war despot. Inspired by leck7S on his own “Deranged Chorfs” blog. I posted back in October I loved how much changes about the despot if you chop off his horns and give him an axe. I pulled out my old box of khorne skullcrushers for an appropriately meaty axe head, and butchered a few pieces from a “Horns of Hashut” warcry box for his smoke stack and shield. I have no sculpting experience, so cleaning up the bottom of the smoke stack and covering up the khorne symbols on his axe head will take a little more work in the future, but his silohouette is different than his counterpart. I’d love to paint him in metallic green, but I worry how that will look with so much neon green going on in the scheme anyway that I’m not willing to budge on. Maybe we’ll paint him bright blue with traditional flame patterns as a zhatan the black tribute. We will see.

But wait you thinly bearded wretch, did you think that was all my hellish forge was capable of? Did you think all those dark nights alone in my tower were for naught? Fool!

Assemble my infernal legion! There are realms to ruin.

Here we have the other foot heroes of the army. The sorcerer was entirely assembled from bits from the Urak Taar and Ashen Elder kits which I can ensure you is normally not the case with these modern games workshop kits. Again I marvel at this AoS release, there are factions that have been around since the primordial soup of the game that haven’t received so much unit variety and since almost every kit we have has an alternate version there’s just so much to play around with here. Even if you don’t like the AoS aesthetic or mechanics, if you’re a chorf fan you’ve gotta pick up a kit somewhere in the range there’s too much kitbashing tools to ignore.

The 20 grey cohort. Games workshop made the very strange decision to have the default poses for a lot of them not have their shield, not be standing at attention or in formation, without their helmets, and frankly I think it looks terrible. You see this a lot with stormcast units where in an attempt to make all the models more unique they don’t look like a cohesive unit at all. Screw that. I also made the daring decision to not build a group of 10 with its banner and musician so you’ll see a lot of poses in the cohort I bet you won’t see often anywhere else and that brings me a special degree of satisfaction. For the future I’m definitely adding another unit of spearmen and waaayyy down the line maybe a unit of those gladius wielding cohort. They look awesome and I built a unit champion with one, but their rules are pretty terrible and I think of the two variants they are the less cool. But their time may come.

The goal with the Blunderbusses here is that they all end up with helmets and at least look like they’re prepared to fire, instead of I dunno, half prepared for battle and sipping a coffee or something. They’ll be at least 5 more razers on their way soon, with the goal of having 2 units of 10.

Here we are with more weakling hobgobbos. Got a little excited and jumped the gun painting these guys but I had such a great time painting the last guy I had to try more.

The deathshrieker! I have 2 of these guys now and I might be satisfied with the level or artillery, maybe supplementing this force with another massive bombard at some point. Can’t wait to paint up the wheels red and blue again, and add the same colors to the missiles.

The centaurs are glorious and absolutely huge. My favorite pose among them is the one on the right, he looks regal and full of disdain while he charges forward. These guys are pretty high up on the painting priority list, and there’ll be another 9 of these guys before it’s all done.

Everyone’s already seen the Taurus but here he is lacking Urak Taar. Couldn’t pass up the opportunity to build the named character since this particular warhost hails from the Forge Anathema. Uruk Taar can’t even properly stand because of that giant magic blast he’s casting, but we’ll get him on his throne after he’s all painted up nice.

So there you have it. I really dislike the building part of the hobby, but there was enough variety here to make it really fun. This isn’t even everything from my original order I still have more waiting to be restocked and sent out to me. It’s a hell of a project and it’ll take forever, but I’m really pleased with the progress so far, and every step gets me more inspired.

I have no idea what my next update will contain. Probably gobbos since I’m so excited to paint them. Foot heroes? Maybe the taurus? Only Hashut knows. Until then, I fly!

[OrderofIron]

Hail kinsman, including those from the outer factories of the Helsmiths of Hashut subreddit. The harsh rebukes and scathing words of the overseers there hid deep appreciation for my forgecraft, and while my demeanor normally shifts between rampant chaos-addled obsession and rumination on the wrongdoings done to my people, I appreciate the glimmer of green light they brought to my blackened heart.

Weaklings. So many tiresome weaklings. Extraordinarily fun to paint, however. I mentioned while painting my cohort what a strange joy it was to finish the gong carrier, and I got that same enjoyment here with the vandals.

I wanted to invoke the dark, medieval vibe with these ones. You can tell they aren’t slaves, not really, with their admittedly spectacular hats, actual weapons and some attempt at armor. They’re peasants, churls, serfs. The lowest and most loathsome class, eking out a living working as go betweens for the Helsmiths and the various orc and goblin tribes of the Realms. We are a surprisingly well connected people, given how contemptible we find the other races of the world.

Really happy with the quartered tunics, and how cleanly I managed to get the lines on the banner. Tried some new things with these guys as well. The green skin is a mixture of Orc Skin and Malignant Green in an army painter speed paint set I received as a gift some time ago and was pleased with the results. This was also my first time actually varnishing my minis properly as well, so they have a nice matte on them that will make them stand out next to the shining finish of the helsmiths themselves.

I couldn’t help myself, and progress has already been made on Urak Taar and his Taurus. So watch the skies.

And one more thing…