Dwarves Archers and Ballista

The past few months have been a bit lean in terms of hobby output, so the other week I took myself to one side and had a little chat with myself. I wanted to get something done in a relatively short time. I set myself the goal of painting for half an hour per day. Over a couple of weeks I managed about ten sessions and during that brief period was able to get these stout little warriors added to my army. Little and often, as a wise friend told me.

You will note that these are Dwarves of Middle Earth, not Warhammer Dwarfs. They are all metal figures, no longer available unless you hunt them down on ebay. There's only three poses each of the archers, and that's pretty obvious in this photo, but my idea is to eventually add in some plastic archers to increase variety in the unit. The ballista is a nice model, I have seen something almost identical to this at a Roman (historical re-enactment) camp. Though I seem to have stuck the front piece on backwards - not sure I would make it as a dwarf engineer!

The kilts tie them into my existing dwarf units, though I am unsure about the green and wonder if I should have stuck with blue. My thinking at the time was that archers would be creeping through the undergrowth to sneak up on their enemy and so would be more camouflaged than flamboyant. From that point I decided that all my missile units would be green clothed. All my warrior units wear blue kilts, and perhaps all my elite units will wear red. We shall soon see, because more dwarves are on the way.