The Kings of War project I started last year is one of those giant undertakings that I really struggle with. I’m not much of a horde painter when it comes to miniatures, I would much rather paint up a dozen minis and focus on skirmish games, but there is something about the enthusiasm of my local KoW group that is a little infectious.
I have a couple of good, solid core groups put together, and my command minis have arrived from Durgin Paint Forge in Italy, so I have some great character options for my Vanguard detachments.
What we need now is some artillery. Big, brash cannons and terrible engines of war. With Dwarves, you need a bit, too. Or just stay home.
The first two cannons are plastic hold-overs from a box of Dwarves I picked up from a friend. A couple of quick multi-bases later, and these standard cannons are ready for action!
The organ gun is also a plastic kit, but it looks cool and actually has a stat line in KoW, so that’s even better!
The Flame Belcher is the only vintage mini in this group, and it dates back at least 20 years or more from the classic Games Workshop Dwarves line. And, don’t you know it, there is a stat line for this one, too!
It’s going to be a lot of fun seeing these models back in action! Now all we need to do is get this pandemic under control, and let the heavens rain fire! At least the heavens in my games.
There is a fine line every hobbyist walks, where we balance our budgets against our love of our hobby. It’s especially difficult with the miniature hobby, because if you’re not completely dedicated to one single faction in one single game, you’ve got a lot of shiny miniatures competing for your attention!
I think that helps explain the appeal of budget miniature lines like Reaper Bones, which are priced low enough that you can get a decent amount of figures for your RPG or combat game without breaking the bank. But, the quality is often times lacking, which can be a bitter pill to swallow for people who regularly game with minis from Games Workshop or Corvus Belli!
The Reaper Bones Black Series promises better detail out of a new PVC formula, so I bought one to check out. The verdict? Much better! Not perfect, but a skeletal ogre for less than ten bucks is hard to come by, and the figure looks pretty great painted up!
I wanted the ogre to look like his armor has been kept in pretty good shape, but the rigors of time have taken hold a bit. The main body was painted with Studio P3 Menoth White Base, then touched up with Menoth White Highlight. I then went over the figure with glazes made from Daler Rowney inks, acrylic medium, and distilled water, and took some time to layer on some cool patina effects.
The skull was painted a camo green, and then layered up to white. All of the metals where layered up from a gunmetal to bright silver, then given a pretty heavy wash with a glaze made from Pthalo Blue and Burnt Umber inks.
Then I picked out all of the metals with Citadel’s Typhus Corrosion, which then got followed up with a little Ryza Rust effect to get some rust and funk going on with the mini!
I cut a base out of plasticard and built up the textures with Ave’s Expoxysculpt, then painted that grey with some dead grass for added impact. This guy was the unwitting beginning to a dead army, which I had no idea I was going to start when I picked this dude up!
Now the struggle is figuring out a way to make him work for both Vanguard and Oathmark, which are both games I would like to play when the pandemic is over!
I got a little side-tracked while putting together my Ranger regiments for Kings of War, and decided it was time to get my heroes together while I was at it. I kitbashed a pretty nifty Dwarf King mounted on a nasty critter from some Northern Alliance bits I had kicking around, and a few choice plastic GeeDubs Dwarf bits. The end result is entirely unique to my army, and I couldn’t be happier!
I was trying to find the perfect Iron Juggernaught, and settled on a pretty cool Keg Golem from Rocket Pig Miniatures. He’s pretty gangly and awesome, but he wasn’t Dwarfy enough for me yet.
I chopped up some more Dwarf plastics, and now have another unique model for both KoW and Vanguard. Meet Major Oakshanks:
Throgrim Oakshanks was, frankly put, one of the most stubborn Dwarfs to ever grace the Iron Hall, and that’s saying something. He refused to concede in any endeavor, no matter the stakes. If there was an enemy that needed a good thrashing, your best bet was to get Oakshanks riled up and point him at what needed killing. It didn’t matter how grievious his own wound would turn out, his sheer force of will would bring him back to the Iron Hall again and again.
Sadly, this stubborn determination wasn’t limited to just fighting. Oakshanks refused to be bested in anything, whether it be martial, or simple sport.
One fateful afternoon, Oakshanks became enraged when drinking with some younger recruits. The veteran warrior was well into his cups, and refusing to admit that the Youngbeards were putting his drinking prowess to shame. Oakshanks was beligerantly trying to down an entire keg of brandy when a cohort of goblins made the unfortunate mistake of attacking the tavern.
The Youngbeards held their own admirably, but they lacked the training to fight off a bloodthirtsty horde of seasoned killers. This was when Oakshanks entered the fray, laying into the throng of savage creatures with a roar of drunken enthusiasm.
Before long, the greenskins were slaughtered, and the Youngbeards surveyed the damage. The tavern itself was smashed and barely staying upright, with vital load-bearing supports splintered everywhere. The upper floor was groaning and visibly shifting without much to hold it aloft. And the entire scene was caked with the slimy green visera of dozens of butchered goblins.
Amidst the carnage was Oakshanks, propped up on a pile of gore. His left arm had been hewn raggedly from his shoulder, and his lifeblood was sputtering from the stump. His insides were most definitely no longer inside, and his neck barely had enough flesh left to it to hold up the old veteran’s head.
But Oakshanks didn’t care. He was grinning like a loon, and trying to encourage the Youngbeards to finish their contest. The recruits gathered around the venerable elder, and offered him sips of brandy and mead until he passed.
It was a fortnight’s march back to the Iron Hall, and the Youngbeards knew they needed to return with Oakshank’s body so that he could be entombed with his ancestors. They set about patching up the corpse as best they could, but soon realized that the stench of decay would draw un-needed attention from scavengers or worse as they made their way home.
Ranger Stonebrow searched the wreckage of the tavern and found a large barrel of spirits. He tapped the bung, poured off about half the contents, then carefully righted the barrel again. Slowly, he pried off the top of the barrel, then reverently lowered the remains of the old warrior inside. With the top hammered back down, the aged Dwarf’s body would be perfectly preserved during the long trek back to the Iron Hall.
****
Stonebrow and the surviving Youngbeards returned to the mighty fortress keep of the Iron Hall 16 days later. They had encountered brigands, raiding parties, and a troublesome Elf with a pesky habit of setting traps and snares. Despite all of these obstacles, they returned with the body of Throgrim Ironshanks, still immersed in a massive barrel of fortified spirits.
The Youngbeards and Ranger Stonebrow presented the remains to the Iron King, who ordered his bodyguards to take the honored veteran to the clerics, who would then prepare his body for burial within the Tombs of the Ancestors.
The clerics received the body with great care, and gently, reverently removed the pruny, pickled remains from the barrel that had held them so well for more than two weeks. They laid the corpse on a slab of granite, and set about the busy work of preparing the body for buriel.
That’s when they noticed that Ironshanks was staring at them. Then, to their horror, he started moving his lips, then started coughing up think globules of liquor and ichor. He finally hacked up a chunk of something black and wet, then took in a wheezing, challenged breath.
“Put me back in the damned barrel, you mangey taints.”
*****
To this day, whenever the Iron Hall marches to war, Major Ironshanks is sure to be present, charging into battle in a golem that holds his remains, eternally embalmed in the choicest Dwarven spirits. He is as stubborn as ever, but less inclined to argue with the Youngbeards as a sign of respect.
It’s time that work in earnest began on my Kings of War Dwarf army. The nice thing is that I’ll be able to build up my Vanguard troops while I am at it, which is pretty cool!
The first regiment up is a group of Shieldbreakers, heavy armored badasses with big, nasty hammers!
With KoW‘s multibasing rules, I can put a regiment that represents 20 troopers together with 15 minis, and work in some scenic elements to make the group look cool. So, I worked in some elevation with rocks, a dwarf totem in the back, and a magnetized section for the regiment leader, who will be my Shieldbreaker for Vanguard:
It’s cool getting all these old GeeDubs minis back into circulation, and that unit leader is one of my favorite all time GeeDubs sculpts, so… huzzah!
Here’s the second unit of Shieldbreakers, this group has big, nasty axes just to shake things up!
I’ll have to get the unit leader out and get a photo of his on his own, but this puts me at two regiments of soldiers for my KoW army, and two troops for my Vanguard list!
This is a funny one, because it’s a project about 20 years in the making. In 1999, my younger brother and I rediscovered Warhammer Fantasy Battles and the fantastic Mordheim. We were pretty instantly hooked, and spent just about every Monday evening for the better part of 2 years building terrain, painting minis, and rolling dice.
That Warhammer 5th Edition box was pretty hard to resist, with awesome Bretonian knights facing off against really sweet looking Lizardmen. The hobby was still pretty young, and finding a stockist wasn’t the easiest thing to do. But we had a blast, and really got into terrain building and army painting. Then Mordheim came out, and we fell off of the freaking planet with happiness.
Mordheim was the beginning of my obsession with skirmish games, and I must have painted up about a dozen warbands. My Sisters of Sigmar were an amazing group of fighters, and we had some amazingly fun games.
Sadly, since then, I haven’t been able to scratch that itch. Frostgrave came pretty close, but there was something missing. I’m not sure if it’s the mild goofiness of late ’90s Games Workshop, or the generic stats for soldiers, but it wasn’t quite there.
Frostgrave is a fun and brutal skirmisher, and still near and dear to me. But I’m looking for something a little more… monstery?
I tried Kings of War: Vanguard when it came out, but I really didn’t like the older Mantic miniatures, and got distracted by Wild West Exodus and Infinity, which both have excellent miniature ranges. Saga: Age of Magic was just too fiddly for me, but I still had a good game or two before moving on.
Some of these Dwarfs survived this Saga: Age of Magic battle and will be a regiment of Shieldbreakers!
But now… I have that itch again, and I think I’m finding some relief from Kings of War. I haven’t played a game yet, but the regiment building is bringing back some good old fashioned nostalgia in a big way!
Also, the game can cross over with Vanguard, with results from the smaller skirmish game potentially affecting the larger Kings of War game!
So, there you have it. I’m building my regiments of Dwarfs now, with a few rules baked in for fun. First, I want to use as many older models as possible. I have a ton of old GW Dwarfs that I can mix with some newer figs to bilk out a pretty sweet army.
Second, I want to be able to remove the regiment leaders to use for games of Vanguard, which I will be able to do by building the multi-base for the regiment with a magnetized slot for the leader. I’ll follow up with that on my next post!
Third, I need to finish the Dwarf army before I start the other five!
Until then, I have about a hundred miniatures that I need to finish up!
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