With this year’s Northern Invasion weekend event done I have decided to try something. I’m going to be giving updates on how I progress with a new force for one of my wargames to keep people up to date on how things are going. It’s a bit of a precursor or trial I presented as an idea to do when the next edition of Warhammer 40k most likely comes out next year. Don’t quote me on that it’s just an assumption based on previous examples and the general flow of releases.
Several months ago a reveal streamed that was billed as having a connection to the 10th anniversary of Age of Sigmar (AoS). The tease with the announcement had those doing it wearing a series of large hats as a hint towards a brand new AoS army. While people who can’t think beyond 40k were coming up with outlandish notions those of us who remembered this was about AoS had one army they knew it must be. Chaos Dwarfs!
I don’t have an AoS Chaos army yet and this seems like a good difference from any of my others so I picked up the early release box from Cycle Orkney in Kirkwall and will be working on it. Completed they will form a Spearhead, which is a small scale game of Warhammer AoS, the equivalent to Combat Patrol.
Going forward with this force I had two major notions to think of. First is, what is the colour scheme? I like my armies to stand out and I don’t have a predominately green army so I figured a Metallic Green for the armour. The second notion is that I like to do a little more than a blank base. I decided on these people fighting in a more urban environment, or at least the AoS equivalent of an urban one.
I started with one of the Infernal Cohorts. These are the basic troops from the box. They had a choice of a spear or sword, but looking at the rules the spears seem better. I had a core idea of the colours to use: Metallic Green for the main metal and a Bright Gold on etching details and the like. Just how to do that ?
I started by using Leadbelcher spray for the undercoat. I did this as my first idea to get a Metallic Green is to use a green contrast spray, namely Hexwraith over the Leadbelcher. It worked but came out too dull. To fix this after it dried I used a shade paint Biel-Tan Green. That worked but I chose to use Mute Green on highlights for one final bit of colour. The Retributer Gold was then used for the trims and etchings, and I think you can see that contrasts nicely, a bit of Agrax Earthshade I find makes gold extra shiny.
Skin was done with with Rakarth Flesh followed by the contrast paint Darkoath Flesh. I’ve never been good with eyes, but I figured red eyes should be good enough and not need pupils. Still a difficult task but I find a pair of basic reading glasses help a lot with fine detail. I had to decide on an idea for the cloth they wore and ultimately decided to go with black, and with that we have the core colours.
When it came to making my brickwork bases I had a notion, I just didn’t know if it would work. Picking up some thin card I cut some rectangles out and with basic PVA glue put them on a base. That was the easy part. The difficult bit came with trying to then cut the parts glued on so they made a circle that fit the edge of the base. Scissors didn’t cut it so I had to use a sharp crafting knife and even that was a pain. But once they were undercoated I could look on and be proud of the work, then just had to use some browns, a bit of dry brushing and my brick pavement base looks the part.
I had a bit of trouble with the banner as I had figured out of the factions to go for: Ur-Zorn, but its banner couldn’t be black then or the logo would look off. I just decided purple as these are rich dwarfs and that is a prime rich colour. I’ll let you know if I manage to get transfers working.
I’ve still got a lot to go as this is only around the first half of the core unit and there’s the nice War Machines to build but I have a colour scheme in mind. I’ll contact you in a month see how things have gone from here.
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