"Seven rings for the Dwarf-lords in their halls of stone." Zirak Zagul Colonists Greetings, wanderer! Welcome, by blasts of horn and meaty fat sizzling in the fire, to the newly carved halls of Zirak Zagul, a budding hold of Khazâd settlers of Ironfist extraction. Warlike and quarrelsome, the teeming numbers of their expanding mother hold saw an intrepid group of colonists split off to seek untapped ore veins and spread Dwarven might to new locales. Their mythical maker, Mahal, created the Khazâd to be tough and strong in order to withstand the baleful horrors and hardships of a hostile world. For Ages, these traits have stood the Dwarves in good stead, allowing them to endure, outlast and ultimately overcome their hated foes. Yet the true wonder of the Seven Houses of the Dwarves are to be seen in the crafty works of their hands, working magic on metal and stone beyond the dull ken of manlings. To the heirs of Durin, the mountain sing with marvellous potential. The raw metal speaks to them of true wonders to be wrought upon the anvil. And so the hardy Khazâd raise hammer, axe and mining picks alike, and set about their wondrous toil. Such works! Such unsurpassed carving of stone! Such unparallelled forging of metal! Truly, the Dwarves themselves are the greatest treasure, the makers of such riches and wonders sung of in sagas and disbelieved by dull folk. And so the Khazâd will guard their hoards and their kin with ferocious vengeance promised to anyone who so ever dares to challenge them. Baruk Khazâd! Khazâd ai-mênu! - - - Two weeks ago, amid frugal Christmas present-making (as befits a Dwarven tightwad), Johan von Elak, a friend of mine, decided that we should meet up in the days between Christmas and New Year, and play Lotr Strategy Battle Game. He had been introduced to the system by a friend, and fell for it. Having tried Lotr SBG, he wondered why he had played clunky Warhammer with its bloated mass of special rules all these years, when such an elegant fantasy wargame existed. Be that as it may, me and my brother were fired up with enthusiasm. We have collected Lotr for as long as we have collected Warhammer, and the wonderful miniatures and especially Games Workshop's homebrew designs for Lotr (Dwarves, Khand, Easterling Cataphracts and so on) have long captured our imagination. The Perry twins truly know their craft, and they gave us a phenomenal model range to crown their work for Games Workshop before they took their leave to focus on their own historical range. Yet Lotr players around here are few and far between, and no tournament has ever been sighted. As such, our modelling efforts have by necessity become concentrated on Warhammer Fantasy and Warhammer 40'000, which do have players and tournaments. Absolutely lovely as those settings and miniatures are, this has still left us longing for Lotr, even as we piled the boxes and blisters of our Lotr collection higher. And so, after 18 years in the hobby, we at last have found opponents and a communal drive to convert and paint our Lord of the Rings miniatures! While Johan goes for the elite forces of Mordor, and my brother paints Easterlings, I have spent at least 8 days of nonstop work from morning to midnight on converting my Dwarven warband for the Christmas games to come, based on the rather shoddy plastic kits. Painting will happen in preparation for some later Lotr event, and so I present to you pictures of these finished conversions. Time was short, and so I declined to work in all the angularities and intricacies I would have loved to do. Drawing inspiration from Games Workshop's own Lotr Dwarf range and from the splendid artworks of Sergio Artigas, I set about decorating the Dwarves. Most importantly, I went for my lifelong love of realism details, and frontloaded their equipment. I also drew on certain Warhammer Dwarf designs such as ancestor faces, because good designs should span settings and not be confined in their outreach. It is far from perfect work, yet it was not meant to be anything else than fast work, though still completionist in scope of equipment and decorations. These are just quicksculpted personal conversions, not sculpts for casting. In the process I also happened upon a simple method to give a base for making flapping cloaks, involving plasticard, pinned paper clips, super glue and baking soda. A tutorial can be arranged if the below work in process pictures do not suffice for an explanation: Say the word! It is so good to at last be back not only to true Dwarven hobby work, but also to Lotr. And now, heed the blasts of horn! ...
I really aprove of all of this The conversions look amazing already. What an awesome army it will be. Grrr, Imrahil
Excellent work, another Middle Earth Dwarf player reveals his passion for the Sons of Durin! Will you be playing the current edition of the Middle Earth SBG (in which case you'll need more hero models because of the stupid Warband army selection rules), or, judging by the presence of your single Dwarf King hero, will you be using one of the editions dating before the dreaded February 2012 update? I particularly like the addition of the bowstrings on the Rangers and Warriors, that must have taken some real patience to do, but the green stuffing looks all-round excellent. I notice you've also employed some Hobbit Grim Hammers as Khazad Guard - that's an interesting choice that certainly works, I personally am using the Oathmark Dwarf Heavy Infantry for mine as I also want to make some Iron Guard and additional heroes with them. The only thing is: Personally I don't see anything wrong with the Middle Earth Dwarf plastics (apart from being monopose), and I thought you didn't either, given the praise you previously gave: Otherwise though, keep up the good work - I look forward to seeing what other units you have in store!
I get that it is kind of annoying coming from the War format of grand armies with moving trays and such, but you can 'simply' add a captain as a hero to lead his own warband. And so on. (I see how the extra costs of captains brings down the model count in the army) Grrr, Imrahil
@Imrahil : Thanks a lot! The colour scheme will be my usual blue and red. Karak Norn. @Lord Agragax of Lunaxoatl : Thank you! Glad to hear from a fellow Lotr SBG fan. We'll play with the current edition. I've got some metal Khazâd Guard and heroes in reserve for the games, not pictured here. The bowstrings were not too time-consuming, only fiddly. But it goes faster with practice, and is so rewarding to finish! I considered shortening the legs on the Grim Hammers, but decided recruitment standards were for only the tallest Dwarves to join this elite regiment. Clever choice with Oathmark! Do you happen to have a project log link for your Dwarrows? As to plastic kits, the design is good and the poses are mostly great. But it's still a 2007 or so monopiece plastic kit. Only the shields are multipart. Much of the Lotr kits suffer from this fundamental decision to make the plastic figures monopiece instead of multipart. It let down the entire Lotr range compared to Warhammer, in the final analysis. How much fun of posing and easy converting have we missed out on because of this? Some plastic Lotr kits compare well to the metal models, such as the High Elf/Númenoreans and Moria Goblin kits, Easterlings, Uruk Hai, Gondorians and Rohirrim. Other plastic kits compare poorly to the gold standard set by metal models. Lotr Wood Elves of all descriptions in plastic look considerably muddier and less sharp than their metal counterparts. The Dwarven kits are solid, with good poses and design, and it's reasonably sharp, but it's still a monopiece kit severely limited on the sides of the model, due to hard plastic mould limits. While they are better kits than all the plastic Wood Elves, they are still visibly muddier than the lovely metal Shadow and Flame Dwarves that preceded the plastic Dwarf release. Consider the quality achievable with a multipart kit, where arms folding in around beards would have been separate pieces, to be glued on. The depth would have been so much better. Same thing with some of the beards themselves: Multipart, they would have been less muddy than they are now due to undercut concerns with the mould. Not to speak of all the optional bits we missed out on. Compare with 6th edition Warhammer Dwarfs, anatomical wonkiness aside. As a sculptor, I spot these things immediately, and really have done so since I first picked up a model. I cast Carolean tin soldiers by age 11, and their thin frames immediately stood out. Still, as a converter I love rather shoddy kits, with good poses and designs but muddy side details. I'm hesitant to extensively modify astonishing models such as metal Khazâd Guards and Longbeards. But I won't bat an eyelid at chopping up WHFB Battle for Skull Pass Dwarfs and remake them into Chaos Dwarfs. Nor have I any qualms about upgrading plastic Lotr Dwarves. God jul!
It's not so much the difference from Warhammer that annoyed me about the Warband format when they brought it in, but the fact that it was clearly done as an incentive to get players to buy more hero models that really annoyed me - this is coming from a player who started the Strategy Battle Game a while before Feb 2012 when all you needed was a general and a few units to make a perfectly fun and balanced game. I was having a merry old time purchasing the affordable box sets for different units, and then you can imagine my frustration when, come the beginning of 2012, GW say that I can't use most of those unit models until I buy enough heroes to lead them all. Suffice to say, I've been continuing to use the older rules and not playing any games at GW until I get enough heroes for each of my armies (Khazad Dum, Moria and Mordor currently make up my collection so far, along with some additional allied units like some Azog's Hunters Warg Riders, Knights of Rivendell, Great Eagles and an Ent). At least the number of required heroes has gone down a little with the ability of Heroes of Legend to take up to 18 models, but it's still a nuisance I have to make a fair few Captains purely to lead my 24 Warriors, 24 Rangers and planned 12 Khazad Guard and Iron Guard into battle. Luckily the Oathmark box allows me to make 30 models which will give me 6 models left after making the Khazad and Iron Guard. I already have Gimli to lead one Warband, I could make up to 6 Captains with those extra models, though I was definitely planning one Shieldbearer and to use three models to make a King's Champion and his Heralds. Very much the mindset I'm using for my Oathmark Dwarf Heavy Infantry, they do look slightly bigger and chunkier than the Middle Earth Dwarves, but they are about as tall as the taller Hobbit Dwarves like Thorin and Dwalin, and given Khazad and Iron Guard are the elite regiments, only the toughest and strongest Dwarves would make the grade anyway . I did look at the metal Khazad and Iron Guard and they are great models, but given they only come in packs of 3 or 4 they make for relatively expensive purchases when you want a decent size unit of 10-12, which is why I went with Oathmark - a large number of great-quality plastic sculpts for an affordable price! I don't have a link to a separate blog for them, but certainly when I come to make and paint them, I'll tag you on the post in my painting blog when they're finished.
Neat! Hehe, I've come to realize that my favourite metal models (such as most of the Lotr Dwarf range) needs to be purchased before they go out of production. Pricey, but the quality of the sculpts pull me back with interest more than affordable plastic do at the end of the day. I tend to marvel a lot more at the best of metal than plastic. I already have 8 Khazâd Guard, but want another 9, so half can remain unconverted, and the other half receice cloaks and paraphernalia. Oathmark have some excellent kits. Lovely models. And nice plans for the elite there. I might buy just a single Dwarf ballista, and scratchbuild another two. Artillery or bust! Please notify me when you do. I should take a good look through logs here anyway. Cheers
@Warden : Thank you most kindly! @Lizards of Renown : Thank you very much! @Lord Agragax of Lunaxoatl : Besides, if you want to see some shoddy monopiece Dwarves, then look for the Battle For Skull Pass WHFB ones. GW did a lot less with what they had there, than they did with their plastic Lotr Dwarves. Khrake and Taghimbur of Zirak Zagul Dead leaves rustled and gravel crunched underfoot as the Dwarf archer Taghimbur, son of Taghimbrak, jogged up the barren mountain slope. The large roundshield strapped to the bowman's back bumped against his leather gambeson and sent tugging ripples through the fur-lined blue cloak that adorned all proud denizens of their young colonial hold. Taghimbur raised a thick, ruddy hand and sent off a sequence of signals with his calloused fingers. The archer avoided shouting, since the acoustics of this particular mountainside could have carried a cry far and wide, to whatever hostile ears might listen out there. The vista alone was impressive, with an unclouded sun embracing mountains, foothills, forests and streams with its golden rays. Herds of mountain goats could be seen grazing, while birds circled overhead. The golden orb in the sky vault illuminated glimpses of a vast inland sea to the east, even as it cast its shine over the rolling hills and plains of Rhôvanion to the west. The son of Taghimbrak motioned again with his right hand, his craftsman fingers repeating the signals. Soon, a stout warrior armoured in stainless bronze on top of a steel maille suit rose from a depression in the ground, having hidden out of sight amid blueberry plants and rugged stones. He used his great axe to lever himself upright, and waved the archer closer. Taghimbur approached, and hopped down into the depression, sliding on little stones and landing on a patch of bleak, green moss. His sleep-deprived eyes looked up to the axeman. "Thurlak's rangers have spotted foemen on the goat paths to east-southeast," reported Taghimbur. "Rhûnnic manlings, well armoured and marching in cohesion. Half a day's march from here. Heavy infantry only. They appear to be a small replacement garrison for one of their outlying fortlets, one who has taken a strange detour. Some herdsmen or other must have discovered our tracks and told them. The Easterlings must be searching for us, else they would not have any errand in such barren parts. They are all creatures of the watered lowlands, manlings." Zirak Zagul's little prospecting expedition to the mountains west of lake Rhûnaer was heavily armed, and over a quarter of all the Khazâd participating in it were rangers, well practiced in traversing and reading the greenery and landscape of the surface world. Such precautions were proving wise. Without the Dwarven rangers scouting ahead, the expedition would wander without eyes and ears into every peril on their journey. "Your words have been heard," replied Khrake, son of Byrnok. "Torik's band of bushwackers have reported a column of Mordor Orcs approaching through the northwestern defile. A full day's march from us. Pincer. Run to Thurlak and call back his woodsfolk to the basecamp. I will bring your tidings to Fibur. His is the call, for where to strike, for where to lay an ambush. Fear not. We will slay them all in detail, and your arrows will catch any longshanks who routs. We'll divide and conquer them." "We will. May your axe taste blood. By Durin's beard." "By the Maker." The Dwarrows departed. Taghimbur leapt up and returned from whence he came, scanning the surroundings with suspicious eyes. Jogging in the other direction, Khrake savoured the anticipation of upcoming bloodshed. They needed to strike swiftly, or be enveloped. Depending on Thane Fibur's decision, the eager warrior could look forward to either a red dusk, or a crimson dawn. Khrake let out a savage smile. The wary foe favoured them with war. He and his kin were sure to repay the favour with a vengeance. A guttural laughter escaped his throat. The axes of the Dwarves would soon be upon them! - - - When I last painted my Warhammer Dwarfs of Karak Norn and similarly blue-red coloured Lotr Dwarves over twelve years ago (hobby work on my friends' and brother's stuff, plus Chaos Dwarfs, Squats and sculpting for casting has kept me away from my core love in the hobby), I was relying upon a black undercoat and inks, with careful highlighting. This took time to paint but delivered stark results. The problem is that most of our Citadel inks have been used up, spilled or dried up, and no replacement inks can deliver the same strong results. As such, I tried to approximate my usual painting style as best as I could with washes (lovely paints, by the way). This proved tricky, since several of my staple paints were either half dry, or out of commission and in need of replacement shopping. As such, instead of Shadow Grey and its current equivalents, I had to mix dark grey and blue for my blue-grey bases. Likewise, I had to skip Ice Blue/Lightning blue (although I did find a bottle of the latter after highlighting all the blue, fresh and good to use), and applied Space Wolves Grey straight onto Enchanted blue, hoping to pull it together with blue wash. The most time-consuming challenge was the state of my dried up Shining Gold. I considered mixing Mithril Silver into Gehenna's Gold, but noticed that the clumsy dried-but-water-mixed Burnished Gold could still be used for highlights, with a lot of patience. Most colours I highlighted up to their starkest (orange for red, Bleached Bone for skin and so on), and then pulled the bright highlights into the base colours with a wash (red-brown Reikland Flesh for both skin and red cloth, for instance). All bronze/gold and iron/silver areas were given a re-highlighting, but this time I refrained from re-highlighting the entire model after washing/inking as I always used to do, because while it delivered crisp results, it also took a lot of time to pull off. If I shall have any hope of ever fielding a fully painted warband, I need to cut down on re-highlighting after applying washes. The result is sufficiently close to my usual way of painting Dwarves, with washes instead of inks and a lot less of re-highlighting. These two test pilots of painting have their names written in the runic Dwarf alphabet/futhark found in Shadow and Flames. Runic reference:
Again, personally I like the Battle for Skull Pass Dwarfs, in part because they were my entry into the hobby when I first bought the box at age 10 to get into Warhammer. They may not look the best from a sculptor’s point of view, but as a consumer I’d still take that wonderful set (which I believe to be the best one GW ever made) over the horrendously poor (and decreasing) value starter boxes GW produces now, regardless of the advances in sculpting.