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!