If you have been following my progress of the Free Dwarfs much over the last month or so, you might notice that even with some nifty slot swaps coming courtesy of the Berserker Lords, I have an incredibly lopsided collection, and I am really short on proper core units right now. The list building changes really got me good, and while I have a bunch of boring core stuff assembled, and even primed, many of the stands still need snipping and it was better for me to just start hobbying and worry about list building later, than prep for another few months. I do want to play the army though, so slowly chipping away at this practical problem are some Ironwatch Riflemen, which alongside the recent Shieldbreakers, should give me a decent core to work off of for the initial builds.
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| A horde of Riflemen! |
These had a lot of “fiddly” bits around the rifles, and ultimately, I decided not to really stress over what knobs or things needed to be what color, or if the wooden stock should wrap up and around the barrel or not. Details and consistency have not been Mantic’s strong suite for models, particularly older ones. It’s all done and good enough, and a bunch of the painting even has highlights done too.
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| A regiment of Dwarf Riflemen! |
While there are table-ready, I apparently worked a little too quickly on one of the regiments, gluing everything on backwards. I pried one model off to see how bad this would be, and took everything around it with him. The superglue seeped into all the grasses beneath him, so fixing this is going to be a real pain. Perfect is the enemy of the good though for creative things. I can run these on the table as-is, so we'll avoid tackling the fix for now.
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| Booo. The dummies of the second regiment are facing the wrong way. |
I’ve had the chance to play both with and against these in a handful of demo games, featuring a more Imperial Dwarf themed list. A regiment plus the Organ Gun has been a bit oppressive in my hands though, since I am always making the new player play first and get going, and this generally gives me Round 1 shots, and strong shooting like this can really punish indecisiveness… and all this is why I’ve now replaced the Imperials with the Free Dwarf demo list now.
In proper games, a horde of Rifles should do well at zoning out a big chunk of the board, and regiments can probably do the same while being a little more versatile for scenario play. Reload coming to units this edition is a nice touch, and does create a neat choice between Crossbows and Rifles on the table. I probably will prefer Crossbowmen, since I can struggle to plan multiple turns ahead, and they will be slightly more forgiving, but the Rifles are done first. The overall plan will be to play a bit slower and more defensive with them, which seems like a good Dwarf mindset. We'll see what we can accomplish on the table with them!
Table ready, with a few more units on the way! Really short on typical Core units though.
And with these done, the first tranche of Free Dwarfs are all at a point where they can see the table for a game! Excluding the bespoke demo list, it looks like we've got around 4500 points finished? Due to the myriad of new lost-building restrictions (one Warlord, limited Champions, slots generally...), unfortunately not all of that is usable at once. The first lists are probably going to be a little rough, but so it goes. We'll see what we can learn!
