Dwarf miners regiment

Yes, it has been done. 10 Dwarf miners are painted and ready to fight. Slowly but surely my WHFB Dwarf army takes shape. Inexorably slowly that is, but it is happening. Well what is there to say about this lot.

It's a bunch of miners, they are looking nice and grubby with their candles. Painting was some work because of all the fine bolts and details that had to be painted gold.

I'm very curious how they will play in a game. The steam drill and maybe some tnt sticks will make them a force to be reckoned with. Maybe they will help us to digg us out of the huge amounts of snow that is falling the last couple of days :) Good weather to stay inside and some painting and other modelling jobs.

BTB: Living Treasure

We're still playing the Border town burning campaign but with some other scenario's then the original rules describe. It is fun to use the BTB surroundings and play all kinds of scenario's in them. This time we've played the living treasure scenario. Some slight alterations to the scenario. We've put in the treasure counters and when a treasure attacks you, there is a chance you encounter The luggage!. We've used the rules for the luggage as described in the blogpost. In our case we've played the scenario multiplayer with 4 warbands, orcs&gobbos, beastmen, possessed and dwarfs.


The following is a first part of the battle report from the dwarf treasurehunters point of view. Other warbands have their stories to tell and if available they will be added just the same!

"Truckloads 'o treasure, truckloads" the drunk farmer was blabbering in the Crooked Tooth tavern. Bjorgir was listening intently to the drunken man's talk. He was gathering quite a crowd in this small border town. Not much happens in these surroundings and a chance of some action or good stories the villagers weren't letting slip away.
The farmer (or so he looked) stumbled in this evening in the tavern, where the dwarf treasurehunters found themselves on a particularly harsh evening. The season was turning to winter and these surroundings were already cold in summer let alone in winter. The story of the drunken man was worth pursuing before the warband travels more down south were the weather is less harsh.
The weather already sent a lot of warbands away and the sturdy dwarfs remained quite long in these surroundings.
The farmer mumbeled something about ...Gorgon's way... "Hmmm," Bjorgir was thinking, "that is something I found on the weird map I found a while ago."
"OK lads, we're heading up north once more" Bjorgir was telling his warband. The beardlings were grumbling under their breath on the harsh conditions already, but followed their leader regardless.

In a corner of the inn a very drunk slayer was quaffing his ale. The 2 slayers already within the warband cought up with him and were getting very drunk themselves. Eventually for a couple of gold coins the other slayer was willing to follow them as well.
With 3 slayers, an engineer, 3 beardlings and a thunderer Bjorgir was prizing himself lucky to have such a warband. They were starting to get some name in these borderlands and gathering some fortune as well.

The warband take up their packs and leave in the cold weather. "Hopefully an easy find, this treasure" the engineer was thinking while they were traveling with the old map to guide them. Eventually after some days travel they found a derilict set of houses and part of some tunnel uncovered. The tunnel was supposed to be named Gordon's way. The dwarfs set to uncouvering the treasure when the weather turned for the worse. Hail was falling from the sky and the hail stones were getting bigger and bigger. The dwarfs gritted their teeth and went on. Upon entering one part of the tunnel they first came upon a shrine or grave for one famous slayer. Loki was well renowned for his deeds and this honorary grave did him justice. The slayers Durri, Grk and Hari were paying tribute to their battle mate. "A good death he found." said Durri. The other (still hung over) slayers mummbeled their respect and were silent for a moment.
2 slayers went outside to inspect their surroundings while the others went in. In running around a part of the hallway all of a sudden they encounter a squig! The hired slayer went directly berserk and split open the squig with one blow of his mighty axe. With squigs around there are gobbo's around and with gobbo's around there was bound to be some orcs as well. Straining their ears nothing was heard by the dwarfs over the hails stones that were falling down, already the size of hens eggs. These stones were doing some serious damage, but not enough to get the dwarfs down.
Under the hail of hail stones some screams were heard nearby of other beings suffering greatly from the onslaught of the weather. According to Grach the engineer it were the possessed that were getting clobbered by the weather.

The two slayers outside all of sudden found themselves faced with a couple of orcs that came running out of the curtain of hail. In no time carnage was happening and the slayers were really hacking into the greenskins. They were no match to big axes the slayers were wielding.

The hail subsided only for a fraction and in no time the hail stones were big as...stones! The dwarfs were getting hit badly. The dwarfs proved to be very sturdy since only 1 beardling fell unconscious when a hail stone the size of an oathstone hit him square on the helmet. The ringing in his ears was to be heard for a while!

To the sounds in the battlefield the orcs were suffering more casualties to the big hail stones and the possessed as well. Some gutteral noises were heard during the monster hail. Apparantly some beastmen were also present and suffering from nature's ice rains.

In the curtain of ice some icy light was to be seen as well when some beastman shaman was using his ice crystal. "How appropriate in these conditions" Grach was thinking squaring his hammer up to run into the room where some misformed bodies were already moving along chests. "The treasure" he thought and with the rest of the warband they went in. A massacre was already going on here between the beastmen and the possessed.

Apparantly the orcs and gobbo's were also taken part, but no livin greenskin was to be seen here. From the sounds of the slayers outside the greenskins were already legging it from the battle field.
In no time the dwarfs were searching the chests for treasure while the possessed and beastmen were fighting each other. This was not long since the beastmen also ran away. After suffering heavy losses from the hail stones the fighting with the possessed proved too much.
All of a sudden the dwarfs were facing some very angry possessed.

Bjorgir and Grach squared up in a doorway fending of the inpoor of possessed in the room. The possessed were pushing hard and the rest of dwarfs took some treasure. The angry mob of possessed proved a bit too much for the already very cold dwarfs. Bjorgir was calling the retreat and the dwarfs ran off (with treasure!).

While traveling to warmer areas Grach and Bjorgir discussed how close they were to the treasure. Living treasure it was told to house, Gorgon's way. They were musing over some pints of ale in a quit border town. In the corner an apparant poor farmer was listening intently...

Miners and a runesmith sneak peak

A quick update on the painting front. For WHFB 8th I'm painting a 750 point dwarf army. It's going slow, but it's going. I managed to finish 5 miners and yesterday painted a runesmith. The miners are completely done but the runesmith needs basing though. Still I took a couple of quick snapshots to keep you guys happy. Here they are!

BTB: Discovered Treasure

It has been a while since the last battle report. We decided to search for a scenario that could be played with 5 warbands and not take all night!
We came across the Discover Treasure scenario that could be really well played. Fun with the partial setup groups, so no advantage of carefully composed warbands but small groups entering the battle field. This could be food for a lot of skirmishes on the field!

Ok, the warbands present here were, possessed, marauders, orcs&goblins, dwarfs and beastmen. We rolled a snowstorm for the weather, so there go all the shooters. Small groups of 2 or 3 warband members enter the field very carefully. They were quite well dispersed when rolling for where to enter. The treasure was hidden in all of the buildings but you had to roll 4+ to find the actual treasure.

The first round for all warbands was basically finding treasure. The second round not much warbands had reinforcements. The little reinformcements that arrived came up in the same corner! It was getting busy over there!

The next round involved the Marauders founding a treasure, or was it? Sabretooth tigers entering the fray was making the board nice and busy. The tigers were wreaking quite some havoc.

Meanwhile some more treasure was being discovered. The gobbo's were getting it quite well when more reinforcments arrived in the same corner as before and also the possessed were getting at that spot some more numbers. The ideal combination for a good fight in the tower over some treasure.

The Marauders wer scouring the realm for more goodies and still battling the sabretooth tigers. Meanwhile the gobbo's unleashed some squigs to add to the mayhem of fuzzy teeth balls!
With the beastmen it was going well but not spectacular. Some treasure was unearthed but no big fights yet.

The dwarfs and possessed were not getting the reinforcements needed to keep up in this ever busier city. They already had some treasure in the pocket and routed voluntarily. Of course the dwarfs lost a slayer as usual and the possessed were licking some wounds. The beastmen were sniffing out some treasure but didn't make it very long on the battlefield.

The orcs&goblins and the marauders were left, making each others life very difficult in the snow. It wasn't long after the sneaky greenskins tactically maneuvered elsewhere and the win was for the marauders!

This wraps up the battle and it safe to say that it was playable for 5 warbands. No one had to wait very long. With the reinforcement rules a 4+ was difficult to get much of your warband in the field. A better rule to use would be the optional starting with 5+ and then each round a +1 to the dice roll. Noteworthy was an incredible dice roll of only 6's:

BTB: Wyrdstone pool

A battlereport seen from the different warbands. The possessed, dwarfs and orcs and gobbo's took part in this battle. We've played "The Pool" scenario from the chaos on the streets rules.

Starting of with the dwarfs and how they percieved the battle:
“It’s a fine morning for checking out that green pool in the east side of this shabby town” Bjorgir said. The air was clear for once and the AleQuaffers were quite fresh for once. Since the return of Grach, their engineer, spirits have risen among the dwarfs. Even the loss of Loki the slayer (he finally found his doom in a heroic stand against huge numbers of possessed) seemingly forgotten, the dwarfs move forward. They’ve taken their losses and now it is time to collect.
Collecting wyrdstone was a good start to refresh their depleted reserves of gold and start building on a wagon train for once. Bjorgir had high hopes of this pool in getting a good lot of the green stones and selling them quickly.

Striding through the derelict houses at the far side of the pool Grom Blacksmoke the thunderer spotted some movement with his keen eyes. Where these wretched possessed also looking for wyrdstone in this neighborhood? Without thinking he dropped to his knee, took aim and blasted lead toward the foul creatures. Screams indicated something was hit, but not killed yet.
The shot probably scared the possessed because now they were nowhere to be seen. They may have learned from this shot to be more careful but they also could be cowardly running away from the dwarfs of course!
The dwarfs carefully moved further toward the pool where now splashing noises could be heard. Were the possessed already filtering the pool? Outraged the dwarfs pushed on and saw a struggle at the edge of the pool where possessed seemed to be in combat with what looked like some greenskins. Nothing to dive into heads over heels.

The dwarfs edged carefully to the pool and started to look for wyrdstone. A measly stone was found when the possessed found out there were more competitors at the pool.

The gibbering greenskins were cackling with delight. After a brief skirmish with the possessed they seemed to have vanished from the pool. “Probably took all the wyrdstone and ran of, them cowards” Bjorgir was muttering. Now it is time to focus on the possessed, they were piling through a narrow gap between a building and the pool toward the dwarfs. The narrow passage was of some luck to the dwarfs, because now they could face the possessed one by one for a brief moment.

The slayers were off and charged into some plaguebearers and the rest of the dwarfs followed. It wasn’t for long when more possessed pushed through the narrow gap and the battle started to swing towards the possessed, where the dwarfs looked good to begin with. The dwarfs were pushed back and the slayer carrying the wyrdstone went down as well! This was turning out very nasty for the AleQuaffers. The beardlings were holding up quite well and the warband did deal out some damage, but the possessed have some experience under their belt and were quite battle hardened. They could suffer multiple wounds and still fight on!

This was the moment for the dwarfs to tactically retreat. There will be more moments to fight and set a better scene for the AleQuaffers. For now they just have to be careful since the previous encounter with the possessed proved to be very damaging indeed. Bjorgir found it wise to spare his powers (and his dwarfs) for now. Carefully build up some strength now and take it slow. The quest for riches did not have to be over in days. It may take years to gather wealth and fortune, but that is always quicker then to remain in underground in the dwarven holds, laboring for tens of years on the same arch or hall.
Bjorgir was already making plans to recruit and increase his warband in order to beat those pesky possessed once and for all!

Now let's take a look at how the orcs and gobbo's experienced this fight.
Fresh in mordheim, a sight to behold. No flowers, no happiness, no friendly faces. Ideal environment for a couple of deranged greenskins and their smaller cousins. Captain Wortnak took his rookie crew for an adventure. According to some rumors (friendly beaten out of some random passing halfling) somewhere deep in the forsaken city there was this fountain. Not just any fountain, but a rather deep one, filled with riches few would believe. The halfling had been there himself but was driven away by the foul stench of chaos the fountain inhabited.
There's 2 things a fullgrown orc likes to do in his spare time. One is beating up some innocent people and the other is collecting riches before someone else finds out about them and gets away with it. For that exact thing Wortnak rushed his man to the forsaken fountain.
When the greens made it to the fountain, they caught a glimpse of 2 other warbands also trying to catch some of the wyrdstone that was so carefully hidden from the world. Stupid round dwarfs and some really long-ago expired food. That, or it might have been nurgle, but wortnak guessed the food.

"No time to waste, lets go diving!" Wortnak screamed at the top of his lungs as he charged to the fountain. Arriving steadily first at the fountain Wortnak ordered his bravest men to take a leap and dive right in. Only "smudgebrain" can up without a stone. All others managed to dive up a shard. Wortnak kindly requested smudgebrain to take another dive, by punching him in the nose while pointing at the fountain. A minute later smudgebrain came up with a shard. Meanwhile the others of the band heavily defended the fountain from the emerging Nurgle. Damn these guys go fast! And they also pack a lot of heat! Within seconds the fountain was overwelmed by stench and fur. A couple of the greenskins went down like a brick while wooly took bites at, well to be honoust, anything he saw.
When smudgebrain emerged from the fountain, the warband decided to make a "tactical manouvre exaclty opposing the enemy". They had what they came for! A fortune on their first day in mordheim! What more could they want? Mission accomplished.

Last but not least (somewhat unusual, history tends to be written by the winners...) the event as seen by the Possessed. After the last successful battle the warband was strengthened by another Plaguebearer (In Mordheim rules terms a Beastmen, my warband has a Nurgle theme so I use Plaguebearer models instead).

Rumor had spread that in a pond wyrdstone shard were to be found, now the fountain after years of dryness had magically regained a water source of some sort. Nurgly spurred his followers to race to there...
However, when arriving at the scene, the first shard were already taken by Greenskins. At sight of the approaching Chaos worshipers, they made a run for safety. Shy Shy, together with some henchmen, charged into a small bow armed detachment, that payed the price for covering the retreat...

The rest of the warband headed for the pond, only to find a group of dwarfs standing around the water basin. An awkward stand off came into existance, like the sharing of drinking pools by predators and prey on the dark continent. And when the pond stopped providing shards the antagonists attacked each other...
At first the battle went well for the Dwarfs; the small passage between the ruins and the pond favored them as a high number of possessed could not join the frail. However in the long run quantity proved itself to be a quality and the Dwarfs were overwhelmed by possessed numbers and spattering black blood... It was only by the sacrifice of a slayer that most of the Dwarfs managed to escape with some shards.

Despite some heavy losses, Papa Nurgle had once again blessed his followers! The status of Nurgly and his followers was growing amongst the children of Chaos resulting in an unholy Dark Soul to join the warband.

Three in a row

Quick post for only a nice pic I took of three dwarfs that you might have seen come by separately. The three belong together and with this groupshot you can see they are different but have the same look and feel one way or the other.

Pony wagon projects

It's been a while, posting on the blog but it has a reason! I just became a father of the coolest baby boy named Jonas! The painting projects are a bit on low priority the last couple of weeks. This week there was actually some time to paint some stuff!
I was already busy with a pony wagon for my dwarf treasure hunter warband and now finished it.

Yesterday I got a pair of ponywagons as a birthday present from one of our blog contributers Arjan. This got me a good idea on creating a pony wagon train with a pair of ponys. Since my dwarfs will be collecting gold and goodies to amounts they can't carry alone, wagons are in need! I assembled and converted the ponywagons to create the following:

Some conversions were needed. The two ponys need to be next to each other. Easy enough a dummy piece was placed where usually the single pony is.

From above the pony wagon set will look as follows:

The other conversion is the link from the second wagon to the first. The cutaway pieces of plastic frame provided nice pieces of plastic to to fit as a T-piece that will be the couple piece to the first wagon.

BTB: Rat Race

It was in the dew of the morning that the slayers woke up hearing the skitter of little paws. Was it little paws ... or just paws running around they wondered. Bjorgir was a bit on edge because there was little to eat the last couple of days. In the blasted region of the city they were in now, nothing but derelict houses and a faint drizzle all day. You could get quite glum about this, especially with an empty belly. The skittering noises made him think of rats...rat-on-a-stick! A smile grew on the face of Bjorgir and poking his fellow warband members awake a plan formed in his head.

The Magister looked at the runes and smiled. Some days ago he had successfully summoned a lesser demon out of the warp to extend his warband. In exchange for this blessing of the Plaguefather a shibboleth had to be executed. And now the target was near...



The two slayers were very eager to get some rats and were out in no time. But they were not the only ones out there! Just around the corner some Possessed were slithering around with their mutated bodies also looking for food. Also hoof noises could be heard now so some beasties were about also. The beardlings were muttering amongst themselves that the undead wouldn't be far away either. Sarr said: "A perfect morning for a massive fight around some scrawny little rats". Dru and Crumble agreed and were getting ready to face a heavy day.



Locating the dwarf had not been very hard; obviously they were hunting for rats and not very secretive about their whereabouts. However, those pesky rats were hard to ignore, two of them were even attacking. On top of that a loose chaos hound had appeared and attacked Frogface, who (off course) was not up to the task of fighting a meager hound.

But now father Nurgle was really smiling at them! Their price was approching fast (for at dwarf that is)! The aberration, the false blackblood, the requested sacrifice was actually charging them!!

Then everything happened very fast. A rat darted by and the two slayers were loose! Charging into the rat and hacking it to pieces. The rest of the warband were huddling around the corner to check for more. There were more rats running around, a lot more rats you could say. They were so fast it was difficult to tell how big they really were. In the meantime, the rats as the beastmen, undead and possessed were running around and chasing rats.



One particular big rat was boring down on the necromancer of the undead pack! This was a rat of abominable size. The beastmen were charging into the graveyard for some rats with their rabid dogs leading the pack. One of the dogs strayed a bit and ran around one of the pillars of a ruined temple to find a big hammer of the possessed warband leader in its way. With a big squelching sound the dog found its end right there: Not only the rats were meeting their fate.



Nurgly the Magister had by now killed a rat and finished off the stunned chaos hound. Flyface was literally sniffing out the carcass of the abominable rat. He found a wyrdstone shard, yet another sign that the true Chaos God was smiling at them.

But not all was going well. The false blackblood dwarf was a formidable fighter and had more and more dwarfs were joining the fray. And it were the followers of Chaos that were suffering. Several henchies were taken out of action or laying knocked down and both the Possessed were down to their last wound.



Half of the rat pack were now getting nervous with so much mayhem around them and were sprinting of the table. Another two rats were caught in a fight, but the rest escaped. The necromancer was having some big trouble with the big rat facing him.
Meanwhile Loki the bigger slayer flattened the rat with one mighty sweep of his axe. Looking around in a battle craze he saw some movement around the corner and blindly charged into it. The possessed over there were caught by surprise and were getting slaughtered. This was one mean slayer! Everywhere the possessed hit the slayer the blood spraying around was even inflicting wounds. Some of the possessed had that same skill and in moments 5 possessed were surrounding the slayer and damage was dealt very hard. Luckily the rest of the dwarf warband was around to try to help out Loki. It could be questioned if this was, what a slayer would really want, especially since Loki was truly in his element. Some disgruntled shouts from Loki to Bjorgir were also getting the concentration away and the battle swung towards the possessed. Loki was paying too much attention to his fellow warband members not to take out HIS enemies, letting him die his much wanted heroic death, that the possessed landed some blows. Still the tough slayer did not go down, and it was becoming very close. Some of the possessed were chopped away only to be replaced by new foul plaguebearers and whatnot. Loki was doing his best but his mind was not completely to it. The possessed were actually looking to flee of the field or this entire battle to end. Their wishes were not being granted by a necromancer, who was still fighting that giant rat.



The Magister resisted the urge to flee; this task had to be completed or else... He felt chaos powers pour away as a Plabuebearer was sent back to the Chaos courts by the black blooded Slayer. The Magister grawled and rushed in himself, with him the rest of his minions too attacked the dwarfs.

Then it was too much for the big orange crested fellow, too much blows at once, not able to parry them all, Loki went down. The rest of warband wanting revenge, swung in this melee but the possessed although wrung through a grinder, were getting new vigor by slaying the slayer and were really bearing down on the dwarfs. It was soon that the dwarfs saw they were no match and ran of the battlefield with only one rat to share.

A green light lit up the ruins around the small square were some hours ago the dwarfs and possessed had met. Now the mutilated corpse of a slayer was surrounded by the strange shapes of his opponents. A dark liquid, much much darker than normal dwarven blood, was leaking on the ground. Floating above the body was a strange shining bulb, that grew into a crack, a passage toward the courts of chaos. For a moment a bellowing laughter could be heard accompanying a Plaguebearer striding through.

"Father Nurgle is very pleased with your deeds, master magister" Hissed the Plaguebearer. "He sends you this" The minor demon continued and handed over a putrefied, rusted axe. The Magister looked at the warped piece of metal and smiled, recognizing the axe as the one the slayer had barried in the killed Plaguebearer.

We player the Rat Race scenario found on the Wargame Weaver site. A very nice multi player scenario which really fits the Border Town Burning settings and is good fun to play (Thanx Jim!). Minor nitpicks/recommendations: Use random movement (or the Border Town Burning monster rules) instead of the 12" movement for the rats.

new slayer here

A small update on the painting front. I've been mostly busy with digging in the garden the last couple of weeks. I'm also growing a small beard and not that big so I get more and more comments of me becoming closer to dwarfmanship! In so far I'm not digging with a pick axe so I think I'm far from it, but denial is one of the first stages maybe?
Anyway, in the sparse time in between there have been moments I could pick up my paint brush and there was this slayer mini from avatars of war that screamed for being painted.
There is also a great tutorial on bugmans on how to paint a dwarf slayer with this model as an example. I studied the howto and got to work.

A good slayer with agressive looking eyes but he still ahd to maintain a sort of comic look about him what I like in mini's they shouldn/t become to serious in my opinion. I think that is why gobbo's as well as dwarfs appeal to me opposed to the empire or elves.

Aside I'm also working on a good looking thunderer for my dwarf treasurehunter warband. He's getting a leather armour apron garment thingie and coming along nicely:



And you always have to look out for loose laying TNT packages while painting:

Small overview of a part of the painting area with some other works in progress.