From JamieM - Old World Dwarves (230 points)

Another week, another new project for me. Games Workshop announced a couple of years ago that they were working on a game called “The Old World”. It was essentially them rebooting Warhammer Fantasy Battles, a rank and file game of 30+ years standing that they completely killed off and replaced with the controversial “Age of Sigmar”.

Warhammer Fantasy Battles, like games like Bloodbowl which GW had previously killed, never died as fan support kept fantasy battles going. Like Bloodbowl, Games Workshop realised that they really should make and sell all of the things that people wanted to buy in order for them to make money, so, like Bloodbowl, they brought it back.

I didn’t want to splash out for new armies and a rummage around the garage of potential highlighted that I had enough random figures left over from other projects to make five different 2,000 point armies (I feel that I’m in a safe place admitting this).

One of those armies was dwarves. I had about 50 dwarves already painted and found that I had about 40 odd to paint and that would give me my army. The most cynical move Gee Dub made was to demand that all models were rebased into bigger bases. Apparently this was to make things look better, but some might suggest that it was so it screwed up your existing armies and meant you’d buy new stuff instead…..

Undeterred, I searched eBay and third party sellers had my back, so I hoovered up a bunch of new bases and set to work rebasing half of my army and painting the other half (this being a painting challenge and all) and here they are...

This is essentially the dwarf half of an old starter box “The Battle for Skull Pass” which released decades ago.

First up are the warriors from the set, who I’ve chosen to paint up as “Longbeards”, veteran dwarves.

I gave them all grey beards and the same yellow and blue quartered scheme that I used on my empire army that I’m very comfortable painting. GW also actively encourage using unit fillers, so I based up the mine cart that came with the set and it will stand in for 6 extra warriors.

Next up are the thunderers, who use handguns made with dwarven craftsmanship.

I’ve been using contrast paints a lot lately and I really like them, but as the other half of the army was painted pre-contrast paints, it was quite refreshing to go back to classic base-wash-highlight.

Miners and the Lord (almost out of the picture!) next. As an old starter set, these are all one piece mouldings and it was rather therapeutic to paint something so simply made in this era where a lot of miniatures can be so busy as to make them little fun to paint as you constantly miss bits.

Last units are the war machines. The cannon is from the set whereas the organ gun is an additional until that I got in the box when I bought this joblot. I also painted up an extra set of three crew for another organ gun that I already had painted.

In summary, 12 + 8 + 10 = 30 warriors, 9 crew, 1 lord, 2 warmachines and 1 cart. Scoring them all at 5 points each for 28mm models gives me 215 towards my score.

And, just for fun, here is the complete army with the rebased models and the newly painted models as I’m rather proud to have completed a project!

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Well, what a lovely way to start a Wednesday, with some Warhammer Fantasy Battle! Even if they are Dwarves...I must say it is kind of you to paint up this army so that other Fantasy Battle players with figures representing the much better and more interesting factions (i.e. any of the other ones) have some targets to walk over/charge over for fun :)

Snarking aside, it is lovely to see some classic models here. And yes, this is exactly the forum where one is safe to share stories of the "garage of potential" - the fact that one can use that term and not need to explain it sums things up nicely!

GW's re-launch of its Warhammer Fantasy franchise has been an up-and-down thing. As a fan, it is great to see the game return. As a fan, the transparent "f**k you" actions to the old fans, particularly the absurd re-basing, are so depressing. The entire thing has been in exercise in watching GW wallow with its head up its arse as only GW can, so unable to execute on the basics that every other business must master...

Kudos for working the magic of the "garage of potential" into a new - and supposedly "completed" - Warhammer Fantasy project Jamie! And bonus news - the spreadsheet tells me this is all actually worth 230 points - and you didn't even need to include a photo of your Dwarf lord next to a paint bottle in order to chisel more points! Bravo!

GregB