Saturday 11 February 2017

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.

6 comments:

  1. That's a great looking army. The cabers are fantastic and I really like the badger theme.

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    Replies
    1. Thanks. The badger theme kind of dropped out of the prints. I thought that the black and white facial markings would break up the rather dull all-metal machines, and after I'd done them realised that it would also make for an excellent shield-design. Finally one of the heroes has an animal-head on his helmet, so I did that as well.

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  2. Brilliant.

    I recently obtained some very old dwarves in 25mm and can't decide if they should be a 25mm HotT army or a 15mm exotic. The figures are very primitive (more like hobbits than dwarves) and a mix of pike and axemen. I guess time will tell their fate.

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  3. This post comes at a time when I've just taken my Oldhammer Dwarfs down from the shelf and packed them into storage trays. Maybe I should unpack them again.....

    Great job on these, love the badger theme

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  4. love - especially the impractical Knights.


    Have you tried Lings of War - I think its a pretty good system. Best of the Warhammer style games Ive done

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    Replies
    1. I've watched a game being played, and read a bit about it. I always shy away from those types of games because they seem to be focused on units with individual figure removal, but I'm aware that this sin't actually important to the way the game works now, and you can record losses in other ways.

      However I also feel that the game doesn't really offer anything more than HOTT, and is less flexible in terms of individual army creation.

      I quite like the look of Dragon Rampant, and may buy that at some stage and give it a go; it looks like you can use one or two HOTT elements to represent a unit with no difficulty.

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