Up now are some Stoneclaw Troops for the Dwarfs!
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| Everything, together. |
The models are Mantic, as I am still trying to keep this army predominately Mantic where feasible. I picked up a pair of these second-hand, which were unfortunately the same everything - rider pose; rider head; even the wider wings. I dipped into some old purchases for another pair of models, and tried to break things up visually with harder angles for the birds, weapon-swaps to hammers for fun, and reorienting a wrist to help with attaching one of riders. I don't know if I was doing anything wrong, but these were just not fitting well, but in the end, we mostly figured it all out, and now either troop can be in front, if I do want to rank them up.
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| Troop the first. |
Color-wise, these were actually quite a pain. We kept to the same greens and such, with focus on highlights again. That all went ok. It was the birds that were troublesome.
I kept the birds colored like Ravens. I primed in black, then did a nice black base coat on the birds, followed by a drybrush in dark gray and then one in light gray. With details left to do, I tried an acrylic matte spray varnish to preserve what I had so far. I don't really do this step... ever, and wanted to experiment. Unfortunately, I must've been spraying too close, as yowza, was it glossy!
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| Troop the second. |
With the spray goofing my progress up, I then tried a new paint-on matte varnish for the save. It did deaden things a bit, but not enough to get back to where it was. I ended up repainting things, but not repriming. It's still not quite there, and more shiny than I'd like, but I don't feel like spending more time on these. We can always come back to touch them up, and these are good for now!
These have been on the back burner for a while, as I wasn't uite sure how to hobby them up in order to effectively run them. Seeking inspiration, I queried the FB group, and got a nice variety of answers and it seemed like folks liked both the regiments and the troops, depending on the rest of the list. The most enthusiastic reply came from Tyler Schulz, who extolled the benefits of both. He even provided a reference pic, which I had seen a few weeks or months before somewhere, but had not saved. We'll post it here for future reference!
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| Lots of Dwarfs that look very free. |
Tyler failed to mention that he was taking this to US Masters! Watching the stream I was enthused to see him appear in Game 2 and trounce some Orcs. It is really neat to see a list in action, and I'll be returning as-needed for some inspiration!
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| The pair, again. |
These should add some nice speed for the Dwarfs, and look like a lot of fun. We might even get to use Feint at some point! I've got 3 Sprues left, which should be enough for a regiment. Frustratingly, the sprue comes with only almost enough to make two models, just lacking the a second bird tail and second bird body. I'd like to get use out of all the extra bits, so I think a longer-term goal will be to sculpt some bird bodies, though if anyone finds any STLs for this, feel free to share!