Short but not so Sweet

Happy New Year one and all and it's good to be back in the swing of things after the yearly 2 week assault on kidneys, liver and circulatory system that is the festive period. Normal function has been resumed in most of my more important internal organs and I've even managed to paint some stuff up!

Among the many projects I have lined up this year is a painting challenge with my fellow M1 Marauders - a sound bunch of fellow gamers who live up and down the M1 between Leeds and Nottingham (apart from me who foolishly buggered off up to Cumbria!). This is in preparation for a game of the 6th edition of Warhammer Fantasy Battle - heresy to deviate from 3rd ed I know! As always Warlord Paul has devised a cunning way of ensuring a fun and balanced game so we can paint anything as long as it adheres to the army composition rules in the 6th ed Ravening Hordes booklet. Oh and we can field everything we paint as long as it doesn't exceed our opponents' armies by more than 25%. Oh and we get 10% of the points value of everything we paint to spend on magic items too!

Much as I chose Dark Elves for the Tale of Four Gamers thing I'm doing for BOYL 2017 because they'd been sitting round in a box for far too long, I decided the Dwarf army I'd been haphazardly collecting for some years now should finally see the light of day. Plus they're quite short. And are composed mainly of beard and chain mail. And so should be relatively quick to paint. I hope  as the game is in March!

My list is legal as long as I get all of the 2112 points of it painted up, leaving me with just a couple of Bolt Throwers surplus to requirement. 

First up is a Special Unit - simply because they were an easy start being mostly armour and beards! Twenty Ironbreakers should form a pretty solid unit that will be at the heart of the (admittedly fairly slow) advance and will be a tough nut to crack.

The old blue and white scheme was definitely inspired by the sadly missed Wayne England's superb Dwarf army that starred in White Dwarf many moons ago.

I will be adding shields in the near future now that the always marvellous Steve Casey has rescued me from the prospect of painting lots of free hand designs on the blank citadel shields I had lined up. I eagerly await a small parcel of the Marauder shields with suitably Dwarvish designs molded on to them!

I've also since added a banner since the previous photos were taken and thought the command group deserved a bit of a close up. I seem to have ended up with most of the Dwarf Lords of Legend and thought that The Baron would make a suitable Champion for the elite Iron Breakers.

As you can't have an army of special units I had to paint up some core troops and as I already had a few crossbow armed Dwarves done from the Ashak Rise scenario in my Orc's Drift project, crossbows seemed a logical place to start to take advantage of the head start. Plus they don't need any shields painting up.

You might notice these four chaps don't quite fit in the blue and white scheme of the more Imperial looking Dwarves. I seem to have ended up with a rather motley bunch of Dwarf robbers, thieves and assassins amongst the more traditional Dwarf warriors  in my collection and thought they'd lend themselves well to making up a little warband for scenarios yet unplanned - maybe as the bad guys or the protagonists?

The Dwarf with no name has long been a favourite of mine and I couldn't resist a bit of an homage to another favourite of mine - Clint Eastwood in the Dollars Trilogy!

Blondie didn't take too kindly to the new non-smoking policy at his local hostelry...

 The slightly manic fellow waving a Space Marine knife about (his original weapon was missing) and chewing on his pipe might also make it in to the Bad Lads Gang. I must say I'm quite a fan of the Bretonnian style quilted armour that the other Dwarves in this pic are wearing.

And on to the more Imperial style of Dwarves - certainly an eclectic mix!

I was able to cobble together another core unit - this time Dwarf miners.

Uther (another Dwarf Lord of Legend) will be there champion along with this Marauder Clansmen who has been promoted to standard bearer.

The rest of the unit are some of the Dwarves of Ashak Rise who looked suitable miner-y and some of Ozrim's engineers. I think there's even a Gnome lurking in the back rank too.

On to the General of the army, Bakraz Drakenklad, an Asgard Dwarf Lord I believe. He looked suitable lordly, especially pointing imperiously as he is and the big golden dragon on his helm helps him look the part. As he's a pre slotta he stands a little taller than the rest of his troops too. Ozrim kindly agreed to loan his standard bearer and so I have another Thane to add to the list, and Battle Standard Bearer to boot.

The long arm of Bakraz Drakenklad - well longer than his leg at any rate!

For the last character I'm legally allowed to take with a 2000 point army I decided on a Runesmith - mainly because Dwarf Wizards seem to have disappeared by 6th ed and I really wanted to paint this lovely old Marauder magic user!

Grungnaz Zagras the Runesmith was never short of an idea or two!

He also has a whacking great pistol which is always fun. Runesmiths seem to give the Dwarf army extra dispels which should be handy as they have no spell casters at all.

And so the whole army so far!

I have a couple of units of Dwarf warriors, a unit of Troll Slayers and a baggage train on the way as well as quite a battery of war machines too. We'll see if the artillery gets included in the game or not as I know they can be a quick way of ruining someone's day if they prove too accurate! They'll get painted up anyway while I'm on a roll and all being well I should have cleared the decks a bit for the Tyranids (6mm and 28mm) who are champing at bit to be painted for BOYL 2017...