At long last, I have some Ironclad units to reinforce my Free Dwarfs! ...well, I guess technically I have a regiment of Ironclad in with the bespoke Free Dwarf demo stuff already, but that is bespoke. And since that unit is apparently using completely different shields, the original unit will continue to be bespoke, and we'll use these newcomers for our larger games.
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| A new regiment! |
A while back I heard that the non-Imperial Dwarfs (so the NA exiles, and Free Dwarf survivors) prefer round shields. Since I am building towards more of a Free Dwarf army, a goal of my collection has been to swap over to those round ones.
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| Another new regiment! |
Surprisingly, the big hobby hurdle for these were the models themselves. Mantic's main dwarf spue have 5 models, and two of them have integrated triangular shields. For the Pathfinder Armies, I just split that bundle of models up into haves and have-nots, and units without the shields became Northern Alliance refugees for those hobbying forays.
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| The sprue in question... |
Getting into the Free Dwarfs, I can't simply discard 2/5ths of a sprue these days. Thankfully, after some fiddling around, I realized that I could trim the shield tip off, scrape and edge here or there, and the round shields would be able to cover it all. The scraping helps disguise things from the rear, and the shield blocks the view from the front, and it all works out. Nice and easy!
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| The "fix" is pretty easy, actually. |
I was a bit surprised though, as I thought my shields matched my demo unit. They do not. While both come from Wargames Atlantic, I was apparently using stronger from from their Dark Age Irish sprue, with all of these being bulk buys from their Dark Age Shields kit. I liked the metal rim more, as it had more visual interest, but what can you do. These will work fine.
I finally hit a stride for painting these, and the process were browns, skin, greens, silver metals, then beards, golds, and the wood color. This approach let me messily block in the large bits, with the next color tidying up while still making forward progress. My hobbying tends to be a bit sloppy, with many small backtracks to tidy up, so it was neat to get into a rhythm for all these dwarfs and make steady progresses session after session.
In addition to the two regiments, who will be around to unlock and such, as good Core regiments do, I also hobbied up four troops of Ironclad, who, in a pinch, can be thrown together to make regiments or even a pair of hordes, if I combine them with the other regiments.
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| What? Four troops? What is this madness... |
A few months into 4E, with the hobbying for this project in full swing, I queried the Dwarfs of Mantica FB group for advice. Having lost the Mastiff Packs, what were folks running for chaff? The answer boiled down to: "You're playing Dwarfs. Take the charge and trust in your armor!" The main constructive suggestions were bringing Earth Elemental Regiments, Ironguard regiments, or Ironclad Hordes to take the charge and then retaliate ith other stuff, or to just take a lot of Shieldbreaker hordes to do it all in one grindy package. While I will try to attempt those braver gambits at some point, that "bring it on" approach with a terribly important unit is not typically my style. I still think that any list I run (especially one leaning into Shieldbreakers!) will want some chaff and blockers, and I think these will fill those roles nicely for the Free Dwarfs!
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