Hobby Update: Free Dwarf Shieldbreakers

Up now are some more very badly-need Core units for my Free Dwarfs. We have some Shieldbreakers joining the ranks! The bodies are all Mantic Dwarfs, but we've added some Free Dwarf flair with horns from the Wargames Atlantic Dead Animal Bits kit.

A horde of Shieldbreakers

The kit has a ton of neat bits, but I was a little let down. I bought two boxes, and I was hoping to really bling out these Dwarfs, but most of the antlers and horns are much more massive than I had assumed. It's on me, and this does have a ton of neat bits to dip into for the future. A box has three sprues, all duplicates. For ram horns, a box netted me just three suitable pairs of smooth ram-style antlers and three pairs of ridged ram style antlers, enough for a single regiment. With two boxes purchases up-front, I opted to just bling out one horde with ram horns, and the Shield Breakers felt like the appropriate unit for this, as they would be swinging their hammers around, and might want adornments that wouldn't get bonked off in a fight.

Only a few bits used so far...

The horns were attached with Tamiyo cement, and they've stayed on pretty well, which makes sense being a little closer in on the helmet. Painting-wise they followed the painting pattern set out with the Ironclad test unit, namely multiple colors for everything, especially greens and browns, as I practiced some messy highlighting attempts.

The first regiment.

Like everything else right now for the Free Dwarfs the units lack additional flowers and an edge color. And about the only additional hobby thing I want to do is backtrack with some sprue go to fix the heads of the mallets. But these are all final little touchups, and these are ready for the table in the meantime.

And the second regiment.

These have always been the melee damage-dealers for the Dwarfs, but have had quite the ride over the years. Way way back in 1E they just had CS1, then in 2E they got bumped up to CS2. In 3E they were back to CS1 originally but were eventually bumped back up to CS2 as the edition rolled on, and now in 4E the designers are being cute and they have CS1 and TC1, letting them hit hard if they get a clean charge, but slack off a bit in any grinding brawl. Conceptually, I like this as it is a neat design space to play around in, but the TC makes them a little harder to use well, and I'm not sure how often Speed 4 Dwarfs will get the charge. Still, these are a very welcome addition, and it will be great to have some fighty dwarves in the collection!