Day 2 - # 3 Down and 100 to go!

I got painting again last night and knocked over 1 model, and got stuck into my third.

I am not the worlds fastest painter, and if I knock out an army under pressure with goals towards a tourney for example, the results are ok but the army overall drifts down in quality. Stating the obvious there, I know! Generally I take the popular route of focussing quality on commands, lords, heroes and monsters, and for my rank and file, I batch paint and look to get a central colour across the whole army to tie it together.

Since I have a main army ready to play, WoC's, I think I can take my time with this new dwarf project without the pressure to rush. It has taken me close to 3-4 hours of solid painting to complete 2 and a half models, and these are rank and file! Anyway the effort will be worth it, it is just daunting at the start of a project as my aim is of course 2250pts, or even 3000pts for the next vigilence tournament.

Anyway I picked up another battalion from wargamerau buy and sell yesterday. It is built and undercoated, with a cannon and thunderers. The warriors have GW's which is fine. After only 2 days, my collection of dwarfs has grown from 0 to:

1 Dwarf Lord
24 Warriors, HW, Shield, Command
24 Warriors, GW, Command (may put shields on their backs)
1 Organ Gun
1 Cannon

I have 2 and a half warriors painted. If my goal is to have this army ready for next year, I have some work todo considering the quality I want to maintain.

Also I have been using Vomit Brown for my base for Gold NMM, this may not be the best colour for the job, but then I just read another article online that said it was perfect, oh well! I am going to pick up some paint this afternoon to attempt another way, using snake bite leather as the base colour. I believe a darker starting point might give me a better result. I also need some Chaos Black, Skull White, Fortress Grey, Cathan Brown and some fortress grey. As well as some more paint brushes. Oh well, there goes another $50....

I have decided to sell my ogre army to fund this. I expect around the $600 - $700 dollar mark for it. It is very nicely painted.

Thinking on bases and movement trays. I say an army a empire army on ebay that took my fancy. The basing on the models was great, but the real treat was the movement trays, which had very thick bases. The came up about 2-3cms and the models were a little sunken into the trays.

I would like to apply the same concept to my dwarf army. Very thick bases, raising the height of the dwarfs overall and then sinking them into the trays a little. The empire army trays where very green, with static grass, flock and lichen. I am thinking along the lines of grey stone, (think world of warcraft here) with smooth worn edges with some thick snow caps on the top and edges (need to be careful to not over do it). The theme been of course the dwarfs defending their snow topped fortresses.

I am thinking of using balsa for this, as it is easy to cut and shape, and also I can inscribe the sides and tops of the bases with runes, brick work, without having to work on hardwood.

I am not huge on the idea of scenic movement trays. You see some stunning armies such as wood elves, with wardances and glade guard sitting in trees. While this is pretty, I think I am looking for a much cleaner, neater aspect.

Anyway, must get back to work, enough obsessing on the dwarfs...