Dwarfs on the March

I am about to return to painting dwarfs. I have a small commission job which I will be starting soon, plus a selection of the bearded warriors to add to my own collection. I already have a sizeable Warhammer dwarf army which I may return to one day, but not yet. Instead, I will be expanding on my Lord of the Rings force. The first unit I painted was some Dwarf Rangers, about six months ago. I want to expand on this start with more warriors, command groups, maybe a war machine. I have also splashed out on a couple of the boxsets from The Hobbit range - funded by selling off my old Battle of Five Armies stock. I'm not really sure what games I will play with all these bearded folk, but that's not really the point for me, it's mostly about the painting. Having said that, there are plenty of dice rolling opportunities around - Lord of the Rings strategy game to start with, maybe War of the Ring as the force grows. There's also potential to mod other game systems, such as Saga, maybe even Lion Rampant.

To get myself in the mood I have been searching around for inspiring artwork and colour schemes. I came across this amazing paint job, on the Sergey Popovichenko blog. It's mostly historical figures of a larger scale, but they are absolutely incredible. Go take a look. I'm not even sure if the figure is a dwarf or maybe a viking, it's a fierce looking bearded warrior and that's good enough for me.

For a long time I preferred the more stylised Warhammer range, but these days I much prefer the more true to life figures of the Lord of the Rings series. I know dwarfs are mythical, obviously I refer to the more realistic proportions and the "historical" aesthetic. The figures are slightly smaller scale than Warhammer and the level of detail is sometimes lacking a little, but I reckon it's still possible to get a good looking force on the tabletop. And that's what I will be doing with the dwarfs in the next few weeks. I am hoping to tie in my new units with the exisiting Rangers, so there may well be more opportunities to practise my tartan painting.

I will also be revisiting another of my Warhammer armies, all part of my participation in the Lead Painters League on the Lead Adventure Forum, but more on that in future posts.