The Dwarf Army Completed - A Warhammer Journey

 The Entire Dwarf Army is now Complete!

It has only taken 36 years to complete the army. Yes, that is most of my life.
I purchased my first dwarfs in 1988 in a blister pack, (Norse Dwarfs by the Perry twins), and little did I know that it would eventually turn into the throng you see before you.

At this stage I wasn't collecting armies, oh no, I saved up my pocket money and a little from my sales job and bought some models, enamel paints and began what would become a life-long hobby.

I mostly bought minis I liked, but never considered collecting a Warhammer army.

...until..

I walked into a Games Workshop store in Hornsby, Sydney where I found this guy.
He reminded me of a Slayer dwarf I used to roleplay in D&D called Slade.
I bought him and painted him terribly in enamels, using a pinhead to make the tattoos.

That was really the catalyst, as I then began, very slowly, collecting slayers, then other dwarves, and when unable to afford any, made my own using sculpey.

I scored at second-hand copy of 3rd edition as well as Slaves to Darkness and The Lost and the Damned and this became the first edition of Warammer I played and the first time the dwarves would enter the tabletop battlefield. 

  

I never played 4th edition, and only had a few games of 5th edition, including a dwarf vs dwarf battle. I'll always remember to check to see if my slayers have an additional hand weapon next time.
I very much preferred the Marauder style dwarves over others and hated the 4th edition monopose warriors. So ugly. Yes, I have one. It is not in my army, but the shields are.

I didn't mind monopose in my  other armies, growing as they did with boxed sets of Battlemasters, but for the dwarf army, I wanted individuality in every model.
I converted models that I had duplicates of, and that was fine for many years, but then I was buying small batches online and duplicates became necessary if one wanted to field larger units.
There simply wasn't enough variety in the citadel range for a large unit, so I ended up painting them differently rather that converting every single one.

By the time 6h edition came out, I was well on my way to painting up proper units and had a nice range of war machines too. I liked 6th edition rules as they had a lot of 3rd edition feel and made things a lot smoother and I also liked that magic was back in the rulebook rather than a card add-on.

I purposely skipped a few of the GW miniature range editions, not liking the aesthetic, but when BFSP box came out I decided the scuplts were mostly acceptable and would not only boost my dwarf army, but the goblin army too. I also had a good paying job at the time and so I snapped it up, even though it would take me years to paint the dwarf models, and yes, I still have a lot of the goblins with base paint only. Not every single dwarf made it into the army, but most did.

 

It was really the Battle for Skull Pass that got me painting matching uniform schemes too, as individuality often meant a massive rag-tag look for the unit once they were all lined up.
While this was ok when I only had a few units, it also took ages to finish painting models, so when the box came with units, I started speeding up my paint times and finishing whole units at a time.

With the end in sight and Warhammer the Old World due for release, I put my head down and gathered up the last of my dwarf models, finished off the Longbeards and then finally the last unit - Bugmans Drunken Quarrellers. I had been collecting every dwarf with a tankard that I could to make the drunken dwarf unit, and finally, I completed it the week TOW launched.



After that, it was down to a few warrior stragglers, a handful of alternative sculpts that only had undercoat and then finally basing with flock, updating the flock on the old models as well.

The last stage was moving them all to 3D printed movement trays, and finishing off the final cannon crew from the BFSP boxed set which took only one day.

Time to arrange them and take the photo.
A total of 297 dwarves.

For Valaya!

Barbs vs Louie McFly

 It was some time ago that Sluggaz the Chaos Thug was abducted by the Lamian Vampires to be their slave and ultimately a Thrall and personal bodyguard of Barbs herself.

Louie McFly, Chosen of Nurgle and fly mutant, decided that it was high time that this foolishness was put to an end and that Sluggaz needed to return to the service of Chaos.

Louie and his warband track the vampires down to a remote graveyard and Barbs picks up the rotten stench as they draw near, summoning the dead to fight them off.

Louie's entourage consists of a unit of choas warriors with the burning banner, a unit of Chosen - including himself, a unit of mounted chaos knights and a rogue minotaur.

Barbs and her familliar, Felix, raise a unit of skeleton spears, and a skeleton sword unit, as well as skeletal cavalry with a hell knight champion.
From the woods, dire wolves and rat swarms are summoned. 

Things kick off with Louie summoning a vortex of chaos which wanders around dangerously close to his own unit before heading to the unit of warrors. He ends the spell before it consumes his own troops as the undead begin their advance.

Barbs summons a few zombies from the graveyard and the wolves burst from the forest.

Louie casts Demonic Vitality on the Minotaur, who speedily runs to the graveyard wall, setting an ambush for any that would come close. He orders his warriors forward, saying "fzzt. bvvszrt, frzzzpp."
Blessed by Nurgle, the warriors understand because they can speak fly.

Barbs is not fooled by the ambush and halts the advance of the wolves, sending in the rats first and manouvering the cavalry, wary of the chaos knights, who howl insults and curses into the night air.

Barbs summons more and more zombies from the earth to join their rotting brothers and Sluggaz joins them, spinning his magic sickle of speed.

Louie summons another vortex of chaos, this time consuming one of the three rat swarms.

Barbs uses her vampiric powers to turn into a giant bat and fly into the middle of the graveyard where she cannot be attacked, and charges the rats into the chaos warriors. The rats do not get past the armour of the warriors and are in turn mashed to a pulp.

The warriors turn to the other side of the battlefield as Louie and Barbs dispel eachothers magic.
Sluggaz and the zombies charge the Chosen and manage to kill a few of their number before many zombies are also cut down.

Barbs once again changes into a giant bat and charges the Chosen Chaos Warriors, dispatching a few with her Bloodrinker sword. One of the Chosen, his skin deathly pale spits at Sluggaz, claiming "I too have vampiric blood, whelp!" before Sluggaz slices his head from his neck with his sickle.
The battle rages as the remaining zombies are cut down and crumble.

The chaos vortex, moving randomly around the battlefield, clips the unit of skeleton spears and rips their bones apart. The rest continue slowly toward the rest of the battle, too far away to assist their fighting masters.

The othe side of the graveyard becomes a mass attack, as the rats, wolves, cavalry, hell knight, minotaur, chaos knights and chaos warriors all charge together in a miasma of fang, claw, metal and bone. The rats are instantly eliminated and the chaos warrios make short work of the skeleton sword unit, while the hell knight and chaos knights smash into eachother. The roar of battle fills the night. 

One of the Chosen swings at Barbs with his mace and breaks ribs. Annoyed, Barbs thrusts Blooddrinker into the warrior's torso and exsanguates his body till it is a lifeless husk. Using the blood, she heals the wound. Using the flat of his burning blade, Ulchin the Horrid, Champion of Chaos slams it down on Sluggaz's skull, rendering him unconscious.

Horrified, Barbs screams at the champion, but Louie, whilst yelling, "bzzfft bvvt svvfftz",  swings his Headsman's axe with great precision, lopping off Barbs' head.

Her corpse falls to the ground and the rest of the undead warband begin to crumble.
The wolves retreat back to the forest and the skeletal horde falls to piles of skull and bone.

Louie McFly picks up the vampire's severed head and holding it high, exclaims:
"Fzzbrt, bfzzt wrzzzt bvfrrzzt!"

Gargoyle

 

Way back in 3rd Edition, Warhammer had gargoyles.

In Heroquest, we had a Khorne style gargoyle.

Where did they all go? I want them back.

I never did like the interpretation of the harpy for the Dark Elf army roster; not the concept, just the metal models. I like them, don't get me wrong, but they look like gargoyles to me rather than hapies. Harpies were meant to be half hag-like old woman and half vulture.

I had a DE harpy from somewhere but the wings ended up on some other model - perhaps the furies acting as vampire bats, and I had a Heroquest gargoyle wingset spare. The two had to go together and the painting took all of about 15 minutes to finish and then base.

Isn't he sweet?