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!