22. Oathmark dwarven army

Next stop: dwarves, who belong to my smaller son. I stick to the structure of the former army introductions, and begin with the official Northstar range:

• Dwarf Infantry:  business as usual, there are 30 bodies with chainmail (5 different), 30 spear holding, 30 hand weapon holding, 30 bow holding, 30 shield holding hands, with a lot of head options (with or without helmets), and some additional bits to make champions and standard bearers (one/one on every sprue). So every standard unit can be made of it. The details are not so fine as by the goblins, but the overall look is still very satisfying. My personal problem with this set are the archers: I don’t like the idea of dwarven archers, because they have too short hands for a normal bow. They should get crossbows, but I know, that technology is non-existing in the Oathmark universe. But in mine it is… The point value of a box is between 450 (soldiers and archers) and 480 (spearman/speardwarf, but I promise, that was the last time…).
  
  
  
• Dwarf Heavy Infantry: the second boxed set contains the heavily armored dwarf troops, so warriors and linebreakers. Again 30 bodies (of course with 5 different heavy armor), tons of heads (I started to count them, but I gave up) with full face and open face helmets, 30 two handed weapons (you have to take care, the holding hands are paired, mixing probably wont work), 30 hand weapons, 30 shields, and the usual options for champions and standard bearers. I like the design, they look really tough, and the armors (the 5) are also pretty different.

• Short break! Important thing about building such multipart/multipose plastic boxes: try to mix and match the bodies, heads, hands and the gear so, that the same combination doesn’t appear twice. Such twins can look a bit strange in a unit. At least in my eyes, but if you want a more uniform look of your unit, like the old WH miniatures, go in the opposite direction!

The point values varies from 510 (warriors) and 600 (line breakers)

• A blister pack of the ordinary metal king/wizard/musician trio. It’s a lovely pack, I like especially the wizard with the crow, but the king (with the crown) is also very good looking. My son wanted to have them, but again, god of stockpiles intervened…
  
  
  
• To blister pack of champions. One with chainmails, shields axes and a spear, nothing really exciting. The other one though is a bit special: they are called heroes. Equipped with heavy armor, they fit the heavy infantry box very well. And there is a woman (wodwarf, ok, I should stop…)! They seem to be on stock by Northstar, but weren’t they some promotional at the first release of the range?
  
  
  
  
  
  

Lets switch from the options to the actions! What does my son has in his dwarven army? Meanwhile he got both plastic boxes, and by the first one, we followed our beginner rule of making 10/10/10 of every option, after that we fitted the heavy infantry a bit to his needs. With a little twist. As you read above, I don’t like dwarf archers, so they needed crossbows. I had a lot of spare crossbows in various sizes from other different sets (Perrys, Warlord Games, Frostgrave line), so it was clear to convert the dwarves into crossbowman (crossbowdwarf, sorry). I don’t want to write a more detailed process, it was a lot of dry-fitting, carving and gap filling, but at the end there were 15 dwarves (5 with heavy armor, because there was no other option left) with crossbows. But of course, they will be used as normal archers according to the rules. I’m not perfectly happy with the many different crossbow sizes, but I think the result is good enough. My son is happy with them, so it certainly must be.

From the Heavy Dwarf Infantry box, we made 15 Linebreakers, all with faceguards (as a big, offensive unit), 10 Warriors with open faced helmets (a defensive unit, maybe like bodyguards for important characters), and the above mentioned 5 ranged troops. At the end, the units are (of course not yet painted…):

• 10 spearman (I’m trying very hard not to write speardwarf again…), the only ones with some paint, and I think that blue-yellow looks quite good:
  
  
  
• 10 soldiers:
  
  
  
• 15 dwarves with crossbow (yes, I managed to avoid crossbowdwarf... D´oh!):
  
  
  
• 10 warriors:
  
  
  
• 15 linebreakers:
  
  
  

Every unit with his own standard bearer, and there are some champion looking troopers also. Now to the characters! So the blister pack was not on stock, we had to search elsewhere. At the end, we arrived at Reaper Miniatures, and my son choose a king and a wizard. That king is one of my favorite Reaper minis! So much detail, a beautiful axe, the falcon, the pose, it’s great, I love it! The wizard is more average, but my son likes it:

Forth to the monsters! The dwarven monsters in Oathmark are pretty unique, but all the choosen wooly-hairy creatures fit to the overall design of the universe. The easiest option for the eachies was to look after yetis, and as usual, the cheapest but good enough option was Reaper (as always for the monsters). They are maybe a bit smallish, but for that amount of money, we can live with this. The paintjob is one of the easiest ones (basecoat-wash-drybrush, everything except the face, hands and feet):

The barghest is the only high-speed option for the dwarven army, so it’s a must have. It is described as a semi-ethereal warhorse sized dog, and I think we made a good decision taking the six-legged bloodwolf (Reaper, of course). It wont be black (as described), because it would be boring, and I will tried my best to add an ethereal feeling to the paintjob:

Last point are the warmachines. As before, I will make it myself, but its not ready yet. I wanted a special design, to be a bit more dwarfy, then a normal catapult. I think that basic idea of the enormous-double-crossbow-shooting-thing is good, but I’m struggling with the undercarriage. It has to look mobile and with adjustable angle, and the design isn’t ready yet, and I dont want to show a half warmachine (although it looks pretty cool already).

So lets look at the army list (without characters):

• 10 dwarves with spears (yes!): 160
• 10 soldiers: 150
• 15 dwarves with crossbow (YES!): 225
• 10 warriors: 170
• 15 linebreakers: 300
• 2 eachies: 240
• 1 barghest: 200
• 1 heavy catapult: 140

Overall point value: 1585 (between elves and goblins)

Next time, the introduction of the biggest army: humans!

And of course: Happy New Year!