From AaronH - 28mm Dwarfs (140 Points)

This next entry is 28 28mm Dwarfs from Games Workshop for Lord of the Rings; that being the unofficial theme of this year's challenge apparently.

Gimli leading a bunch of short and nasty Dwarfs.

The local shop has a Lord of the Rings tournament every year, Mayhem in the Mountains. Folks fly in from all over the country, including some of the best players.  In an effort to have good local representation the shop is running some primers to help people build up new armies and learn to play well.

Gimli and a Dwarf captain.

The tournament requires one good and one evil army.  This primer was just one 650 point army with one painted army.  I recently got a great deal on a ton of Dwarfs so this was the perfect chance to get some of them painted.  This list was made up of what I had that was primed, so not exactly ideal.

A dwarf king as a captain and Gimli.

A warband is between 1 and 13 models, but Dwarf heroes are expensive so my list will be three 13 dwarf units; 1 hero and 12 warriors.  The first decision was whether to go with a uniform look or not. I decided that I wanted these to have a very strong uniform appearance, and that Gimli would match.  I have another of this model so I'll paint that one to match the movie.

These are metal models, very nice detail and fun to paint.

The first unit I knew I had to have were the Iron Guard.  These are my favorite troop type in the Dwarf army.  Very high armor, two attacks and throwing weapons.  They are a viable threat to any other troop type in the game.

There are only a few different poses.

These guys are a type of super ranger.  They served me very well in the tournament and will remain in the army.

The next unit included were Khazad Guard.  These are the bodyguards of the king.  They are also well armored but have a two handed weapon instead.  This can be a real liability and twelve of these is too much for this army.

Khazad Guard.  Metal miniatures.

These are great models.  They were fun to paint and have fantastic detail.

The other poses.

The next unit is Dwarf Warriors.  These have a better than average stat line and a great armor save.  They also did the majority of the dying in all three games.  Weird.  I had intended to have some archers in this warband but when I opened my box of Dwarf Warriors the sprues were actually Rangers.  GW made good and sent me out 24 Dwarf warriors, but they didn't arrive until Friday and it was just too late to deal with them.

The four poses of Dwarf warrior.  

These models are nice enough filler but they suffer from the usual GW LotR plastic problem of soft detail in spots.

Closer shot to show the soft faces.

These are very solid rank and file troopers and the models are good enough.  I won't be carrying all twelve of these into the final army though.

Rear shot.

We had some 70 degree weather this week so I was able to get some more models primed, including the rest of the models for these warbands.  I'm looking forward to getting more of this army painted and to playing some more games with it.  I've fought dwarfs for the last four years, so now I get to figure out how to make them work, instead of how to take them apart.


From Curt:

Wow! I love the blue you used for the tunics and shields on these dwarves - it's such a nice diversion from the typical dour colours that are so common in other armies (i.e. mine). Your King and Gimli look suitably regal and hard-as-nails.

On an aside, I like that your upcoming tournament has participating players bring both a good and evil army. That way the tables make sense aesthetically. I always grimace when I see tournaments that commonly see 'civil wars' between allied forces - it just looks so ridiculous (but I'm a git that way).

Good luck on the upcoming tourney Aaron!