Army Showcase - Dwarves

Back in 2010 I won a HOTT competition, and my prize was a Mantic Dwarf army box. With over 40 figures, plus some artillery and other bits and pieces, there was certainly enough in there to do a HOTT army. I painted some of the figures - the axe- and hammer-armed warriors - back in 2013 for our Battle of the Five Armies project, but everything else has sat undercoated since then. Now, nearly seven years after I got the box of figures, I have completed the army.

This is only the third 25/28mm army I have produced for HOTT, but it is certainly the largest, with 52AP of troops. About 36AP of that comes straight from the Mantic army set. However this army is significant in that the remainder of the troops, and the army's stronghold, were all 3D printed at home, using files from Dutch Mogul on Thingiverse. Whilst I have printed odd figures before, and a couple of small warbands for Battlesworn, this is the largest force I have printed in the year since I acquired the machine.

Here is the army:

The list is:

1 x Blade General (King with Bodyguard)
5 x Blades (Dwarves with Axe and Hammer)
6 x Shooters (Dwarves with Crossbow and Rifle)
1 x Lurker (Snipers)
1 x Hero (Mr Brock and Mr Set)
1 x Hero/Paladin
2 x Artillery (Guns)
1 x Artillery/Cleric (Mr Tufnell)
1 x Beast (Mechanical Badgers)
1 x Behemoth (Giant Mechanical Badger)
2 x Knights (Cabers)

The blades, en masse.

And the shooters.

The blades again. All of these figures are straight out of the Mantic box.

The shooters are straight out of the Mantic box as well. Each figure is sculpted so that it can take a gun or a crossbow. I went with crossbows for most of them.

Artillery. The Mantic set comes with two pieces and crew, and both pieces can be made as a single barrelled rifle or the organ-gun. I went for one of each.

A 3D print - the Dwarf Rockstar. I was originally going to run him on a base by himself as a Cleric (think a bard, but with more oomph), but I found the speakers, printed them and based him such that he could be a third artillery piece if needed. I can't remember who designed the speakers. Sorry.

The lurkers and beast.

The Mantic set contains enough figures for twenty blade and twenty shooter figures. My six elements of each type use eighteen figures, so I had two spare figures of each type. These are the spare shooters.

The Mantic set also has some dead bodies. I resurrected on as the handler for these wonderful mechanical badgers. I made him a cloak from milliput to disguise his flat back.

The two spare blade figures became Mr Brock and Mr Set, the army's maverick heroes. They both like a pint and a smoke.

Two more 3D prints - a giant mechanical badger and a heavily armoured warrior.

This is a beautiful model and took about five hours to print.

I plan to run this chap as either another hero, or as an iron-wearing, magic-disrupting paladin. Since I printed him, the designer has produced some variants, with spear, axe and a combined gun/warhammer.

My favourite elements - the cabers.

Initially I thought that these would just be more behemoths, but I thought that they would make delightfully impractical knights, giving the army a 'mounted' arm it's otherwise lacking.

What's nice is that I can easily add new elements to this army by just printing more. I have done a stronghold for it, but still need to assemble and paint it, and may do some more of the armoured Vigilants at some stage, to add one or two elements of spears to the army as well.

My next printer-based project will be a 15mm HOTT army. It's already in the planning and printing stage.