27. Avatars of war

Once upon a time, I was in my local gaming store, just buying my regular, pseudo-necessary stuff, and there was a sale. As You might know, the sales in the local gaming stores are one of the greatest powers on earth. There were such stuff, I never know I needed, but suddenly it was irresistible…

It was a sale of Avatars of War miniatures. They make beautiful metal and resin miniatures in the best WFHB aesthetics. They are a bit on the more expensive end of the market (12-13€/human sized miniatures), but they are really lovely especially with nostalgic googles. I always adored these minis, but as they were so expensive, and they didn’t really fit to my other miniatures (they are bigger, with more heroic proportions, and they dwarves are twice the size of an Oathmark dwarf). But now! For the price, I bought almost everything what they got (and Im still angry about the stuff I left there...). Lets take a look on them one by one.

Imperial Marshal with great weapon

It’s the only mini I can use in Oathmark (or Frostgrave), because it fits pretty well in my collection (yes, he is a tall guy, but its okay) and I think he can be any leader or champion character in the human army. The inspiration here was a visit in the Landeszeughaus in Graz (it’s the biggest original weapon chamber of the world, but it could be more interesting, because its basically just a store), where I saw some 15-16. century plate mails with a lot of black ornaments.

I thought that the look would fit this miniature. He became a brown fur cloak, some golden details, and to bring in some colors, red gems (the heart shaped on his chest promises a story…) and yellow feathers. I like the result, this is my maximum paint quality:

Barbarian Warlord

He is another mini, that can be used, but more for Frostgrave, because of the sizes: he needed a 32mm base, so doesn’t really fit in the rank of the other minis. And he is a mountain of a man! I can imagine him as a huge barbarian mercenary, but next to normal sized humans, he looks a bit off… Leathers are brown, metals are steel and gold, kilt and shield are red, but the really eyecatcher is his fur cloak. It’s a big cloak, and I didn’t really wanted to make it only one color. It would have looked boring. So I took the most striking, what I could think of: tiger fell! I wet blended a light-brownish orange in the middle with off-whit on the sides, and painted black stripes in it, but not just straight, looked at some real life pictures before.

I really love that cloak:

Dwarf Pit Fighter

The first though was obvious: Trollslayer! So he became traditionaly Trollslayer, with orange colored spikes. His kilt is green (just to complement the hair), and, not really much more to say here, lets the pictures speak:

Champion of the Deep Watch

At the last two minis, I wanted to play a bit with metal colors, so I mixed a green-metal, and a blue-metal. He is the green one. Red hair and red cloaks are a good complement to the armor color, and golden ornaments look really good on it too:

Dwarf Thane (or something like that, its not available anymore)

He has the blue-metallic armor. Its more light blueish, so with the white hair he has a pretty bright look. The weapons became silver, because it would have been too much of blue I think. Golden ornaments look as good on blue as on green, and as he is some kind of a king, I was generous with the golden details. And there is the cloak… The cloak made me try out a lot of colors, I really struggled to find something fitting. But at the end, the light turquoise outside with the pale yellow inside fits in the color scheme well:

These dwarves look so ridiculous next to my other dwarves, that I don’t want to use them for any game, but I still love them. They look great, and it was a very good painting exercise to make them. And another general remark to the Avatars of War miniatures: they are expensive, yes, but the design and the quality are both great! Its really easy and fun to paint those sharp details. So if you run into them, don’t hesitate, and let your wallet bleed!