Hobby Update: Free Dwarf Earth Elementals

A bit surprisingly, I have got a lot of hobbying done here in early November. I had a few work from home days to deal with some other crises, and was able to use some of that time to wrap up a number of much-languishing hobby projects, cleaning out a fair bit of space in my cramped and disorganized little home office space. Up now are some Earth Elementals for the Free Dwarfs!

Regiment, the first. With a Castellan Green base.

The models are from what I think was a Russian-based company, previously found on Amazon as the generically named Fantasy Battles. They had made some generally really nice larger models from a variety of offerings for incredibly cheap, though browsing things, it looks like their selection is much more limited now, and gotten more expensive. Shucks. The dwarfs here are no longer offered from what I can see, so unfortunately, I can't properly link or recommend them.

Still the first regiment.

The models are very cheap plastic, and tend to need some significant touchups for the injection sites or for the mold lines, but even still, they tend to be a bargain, all things considered. These got more work than usual, as I didn't like one of the katar-like weapons (replacing it in both regiments with a shield made from a Citadel base and some coffee stir sticks), nor the model with the flail (replacing the one in the first regiment with a kanabo-like weapon, and the other kept as-is, due to laziness). 

The bag of models, for any internet sleuths. 

These have languished basically for nearly the entirety of the Free Dwarf project, as I liked the idea of them (that is, Dwarves carving facsimiles of others dwarfs to protect the living), and picked them up long ago, but was struggling with unit sizes and such. Ultimately, despite my penchant for interrogating units at every size I can, smaller Troops of these are not really appealing to me in the new Edition right now, so in an effort to tidy up my space, we are just sticking with the fuller regiments and getting them done.

Regiment the second. With a Death World Forest base coat.

These are normally Specialists, which is a very important and competitive slot for Dwarves, already having popular Brocks, Rangers, and the also-Def6 Ironguard (as well as the lesser-used Berserker infantry, and the potential for slot-swapped Stoneclaws too). With Specialist slots capped at 4, what you take is very impactful on the rest of the list. Notably, while there is a potential slot swap the Elementals to Core using Banick Kholearm, this (unlike the Forces of Nature swaps for Elementals) only works on the larger Regiments. 

And the second regiment, again.

On the table, the regiments are obviously sturdy, with both Def6 and good Nerve. As Elementals, they have Fearless over the typical Dwarf Headstrong, and with Speed 5, they are also quicker then normal Dwarf infantry, though Shambling constricts their movement, prohibiting moving at the double, and some pivots. 

While they have Brutal 1 and CS2, and have some parallels to the potent Ogre Siegebreakers, they are no where near as powerful on the offense as the Ogres. The Elementals fall victim to the 4E Large Infantry adjustments, which knocked down the attacks of all Large Infantry - excluding Ogres - a smidge. With just 14 attacks hitting on 4's here, the damage output from the Elements is a going to be lacking. Despite some decent stats, they are not hammers (which seems like it could be a refrain for the blog), and will need either additional units or turns to try and win out in their combats. 

They should be good anvils, though the builds are probably going to be niche, as the Elementals do not have wide support in the rest of the roster. As-mentioned, Banick Kholearm has a nice slot swap, but  oddly, as a spellcaster, he doesn't have Surge. Indeed, the only Surge-caster for the army is a Stone Priest, which is a good caster, and can even grant them TC(1) with a Surge cast, but in these instances, you are forgoing a normal, sure-thing charge move and trusting the dice instead, which could lead to some missed connections.

The main issue I see with the Elementals right now are is that the Earth Elementals have some direct competition with the Def6 Ironguard, and the latter are just better supported in the roster and with Commands. That said, I could easily see this issue dissolving after their eventual book update, with Free Dwarfs getting stuff like Earth Elementals and Greater Earth Elementals, and Imperial Dwarfs getting Ironguard and the Steel Behemoth to fulfill similar roles in each list. Only time will tell if the Free Dwarfs will actually return as a distinct army, but regardless, these are ready for the table!

Hobby Update: Second Berserker Lord on Giant Brock

Up now is a second Berserker Lord on Giant Brock to help lead my Free Dwarfs. I like the army overall, but all the iconic or fluffy units for the sub-faction are [needlessly] restricted. Tyler Schulz ran double mounted Berserker Lords in his speedier Dwarf list for US Masters 2026, which looked like a lot of fun, so here I am, taking some inspiration from him. (Counter Charge #863 goes into it a bit). We don't have his air force of Stoneclaws, but we might be able to run some other weird, multi-battalion builds instead.

The new Bewrserker Lord, poised for action.

The newest addition is a small kitbash. I'm utilizing the body of a Stoneclaw/Frostclaw rider with a small weapon swap, so he has something more imposing that a spear, and then the larger badger from Mantic's Wandering Beast box, a peculiar offering from around October 2022. It's got some interesting offerings, including what appear to be sneak-peaks of the Herd, and was touched on a few months back when I had to rebase my Guardian Brutes. I actually bought it for the badger, but we'll see if we can get some use out of the other miniatures another time. 

Lots of neat offerings!

The badger is ok. It is only slightly larger than a normal brock, but a more interesting pose, and is  the more forgiving plastic, compared to Mantic's metal model (notably... this model is listed as discontinued now, so we'll see what the future holds for modeling options from the Arrogance release), which should be great for gameplay and much better for travel. One of the back legs had a slight notch to insert into the cavalry base. I didn't want to add the smaller base onto the new one, so shaved off the slight nub for a flat foot. The connection to the base was all in the back, and seemed a bit flimsy, so I added an insulation scrap as a rock to hopefully provide some stability. I was trying to sell this as a mid-charge jump, and think it works ok.

From the side.

Painting-wise, I aimed to tie these into the other Free Dwarfs, focusing more on layering paint and using rougher, bolder highlights, rather than washes to get definition, and I like it. I still need to paint all the edges of all the units (I finally decided that I'm going with a dark gray for the army), and grass up the display board, but overall, the Mostly Mantic Free Dwarfs are looking very good!

The new Lord, head-on.

As-mentioned recently in the Dwarf Lord post, the like the more level-headed counterparts, the various Berserker Lords do a ton of slot swaps for the roster, making Berserkers, Brocks, and Stoneclaws all easier to run. I don't particularly like this, and hope the swaps are broken up a bit down the line. On the table, the unit feels like a proper combat Warlord, and can really dish out the damage, and works best alongside the speedier units on offer, like the Brocks and Stoneclaws, giving the usually ponderous dwarfs some much needed reach in the movement phase. Overall, I have actually liked the Lord option, but they have performed best when they are supported by other fast units, otherwise their speed seems to be wasted. With a second Lord around now, we'll see what shenanigans we can get up to with our list building!

Hobby Update: Free Dwarf Lords on Large Beast and on Foot

I've really struggled the last few months to get in games or paint minis. Things have been absolutely crazy on all fronts, and even when my schedule allowed for a respite, I couldn't really utilize the time for fun as I was so otherwise burnt out. This haven't quite slowed down to a comfortable level yet, but I have gotten to do a little hobbying and relaxing in November.

Up now are two more warlords for the Free Dwarfs: a Lord on Large Beast, and a Lord on foot. Multiple warlords is a bummer for my collections nowadays, as they just inflate the totals now, but it is nice to have options for testing, and I haven't ever been able to fit a mega battle in anyways. Shucks. I still don't really like the new approach to army building.

A Lord, with a bit of a bent hammer. Oh well.

The Lord on foot is just a Wizkids offering, picked up at a FLGS. For the budget gamer, those still tend to be great picks, when you can find them in shops and save on shipping. We were already able to use the other half of the blister pack as a Free Dwarf Captain already. This guy is as-is, with no conversions, and just a basic paint job. His hammer is a little bent, and I couldn't quire fix it up, but we'll just roll with it. Fluff-wise, he's just been hitting things really hard, and if it ever does break, just gluing a new hammer head on should be easy enough.

And flaggy things, so his soldiers don't lose sight of him on the battlefield.

The more interesting model between the two is the Lord on Large Beast, which  is a combination of models. The Beast is actually from an Amazon seller. Not having a 3d printer, I am not great or experienced at sourcing STLs, and couldn't readily find it elsewhere at the time, so picked it up from that Amazon storefront. The armor looked angular enough to be dwarven, and it had enough extras (the gun, rope, etc.) that it looked like a rugged adventuring beast, perfect for ranging outside. It's some kind of resin, and after a rinse and prime, it took paint well.

The Large Beast part of the unit.

The Lord is from the Vanguard line, a one-off supplementary soldier for your Warband. I believe the line was cancelled, but I think most of that ended up on the Vault, though again, I am not a 3d printer guy. The unique models were all funky, brittle, resin, which I am a bit wary of after my Finecast days in Warhammer Fantasy, but it's working out so far. I just don't want to drop him or anything. He doesn't really read as Def6, but there isn't anything else he could really be in the list, so the duo seemed unique and cool enough to call good. They got paint but no washes, and I am continuing to try and explore layers and highlights with the army.

The Lord on Large Beast... beside the beast.

These Dwarf Warlords are in a weird spot for 4E, and I don't really like it. At the start of the new Edition, the Lord / Lord on Beast had their own stats, but did the same fluffy thing: letting you swap regiments of the Def6 Ironguard into Core. One of the excuses Mantic had for the new slot system was reducing egregious spam of unfun units, and here we had two Warlords that you spam Def6 Core, which doesn't sit right with me design-wise. Ironguard being unlimited, while Rangers and Berserkers and such were capped was also irksome, from a Free Dwarf perspective, of course. Ultimately, like their Berserker Lord counterparts, I really think they should swap different things to differentiate them.

The normal Lords have gotten some tweaks though, with some peculiar buffs. The foot Lord has an Aura for +1 Speed for Holdfast units (your fighty, non-Berserker infantry) which is cool, but feels out of place on a Def6 Lord - this seems like something more for the more lightly-armored Captain, or ASB,  or some kind of new spellcaster, but is useful, and puts the slow Dwarfs on par with other infantry for speed, which can be nice. The Lord on Large Beast got "Run them Down", a new ability which gives holdfast units in the same combat TC+1, which could be very nice for any counter-punching style of play. 

One last picture of the Lord and his Beast.

These are both neat buffs, but I hope the Dwarfs get the Abyssal treatment in the future for their list-building, where slot swaps are still numerous, but unique, designed to encourage that specific characters or units be picked more. In short, I still don't think both Lords should swap the Ironguard. Oh well. The other buffs at least still make these more interesting and differentiated units, and we'll try to get them on the table for testing sometime soon!