A couple of Dwarves to share today. These, like much of what I’m showing at the moment were painted during the latter months of 2016 when I was too busy to post. Basically, my free time was right down, so I spent a few months where my “hobby time” was spent painting instead of writing posts and following blogs and my “gaming time” watching YouTube videos before falling asleep for the night. Reaper Miniatures really has some lovely models for wargamers. We all know that their bread and butter is the D&D/RPG crowd, but the effect that this has for the wargamers is that their models tend to have a lot of character to them, and so make great low-level heroes, individuals and unit leaders (as long as you don’t mind some uniform variation amongst your usually-quite-uniform plastics. Since I’m an old grognard and love my old metal models this isn’t a big issue for me. On the other hand, they’re not especially cheap. They’re not expensive, or anywhere near the prices of GW’s hero models mind, but if you were looking to make a unit of Reaper metals, well, they’re not so cheap as to make that an easy option.
Anyway, I saw this guy somewhere at some stage, and knew I had to have him, so I picked him up. He’s sculpted by Tom Mason and alternately known as Dwarven Pathfinder Grunt with a slotta or in “broccoli base” form, as Bregol Jagstone, Dwarf Ranger. Oddly, despite the “Pathfinder grunt” moniker, I can only find a single other dwarf pathfinder by Reaper, so…
When it came to the figure, I of course got the slotta version, so he fit in immediately. Anyway, with his wrench shaped axe and hooded cloak, he could easily go in any of several directions as far as paint goes. I chose for reasons unknown to me to go with the “ranger” look and painted him with a series of naturalistic colours – a series of greens to give him some variation and red-browns to give the model a nice rich tone. I have a box or two of AoW’s dwarf rangers somewhere, so one day he’ll no doubt lead some of them. He did get a great ginger beard, since I felt that fit the sculpt and palette nicely.
Stonehaven’s sculpting is a little uneven, but many of the figures have a definite old-school charm to them. I’ve shared a few of them a little while ago, and will have more soon as well. They’re clearly also going for the D&D/RPG market that Reaper aims at, but that’s ok by me, and I’m sure it’s fine with roleplayers, who obviously have an absolutely huge range in what their characters look like. This model is their Anti-Paladin (Death Knight, Shadow Knight, etc). As such, I painted her armour with metallic blues with a sea-green/black tabard and gloves, and bright red hair as a nod to my old (non-dwarf) EQ character. Her sword doesn’t quite reach down to the ground (at least on my casting) so I hid it with a little skull at the front and a tuft of grass at the rear.
In game terms, they’ll both work well in RPGs and various board games. Bregol will have a place leading some Dwarven rangers, or as an Artillery guy in the interim (because wrench-axe) and the Shadow Knight can no doubt have some sort of spot in the Undead or Chaos armies. Until I get the Chaos Dwarves properly out and about, anyway…
These look real nice. Really love the NMM!
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Thanks! It’s actually a TMM, though 🙂
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I liked the mini’s and the female dwarf in particular. She’d be a perfect fit for many of the characters I liked to play (dwarf fighters and clerics) back when I was playing D&D.
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Thanks Ann. I’ve got another pair of Stonehaven’s female Dwarves almost finished – one of which fits that bill pretty well also. Hopefully the varnish has dried by now, and then it’s just the flock, so hopefully I’ll have them photographed and posted inside the next week.
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I’m not a fan of Dwarves in general but I have seen many that I like. Your Ranger Dwarf is full of character. The ginger beard looks great. Reaper has such a vast collection. It’s almost too daunting to scroll through all the pictures hehe… Almost.
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I have a funny relationship with dwarves. In some ways they’re a little boring, yet I’ve always liked them, though not enough to build an army until now. There’s a hell of a lot of character in so many of the models, though – and who can resist a throng of bearded maniacs?
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Do you know how a dwarf has sex with an average sized person? Someone has to put them up to it. Hehe. I think Dwarves ( Thanks to tolkien) are the epitome of the fantasy world. Along with Elves. I might learn to love them one day.
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Badoom-tish! It took me awhile to get past some individual models, so there might be hope for you one day…
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Hahahaha. No one has said that to me since my Grade 4 teacher back in ’88.
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Cool selection mate, both are full of character and nicely painted. I really like that blue armour on the pally!
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Thanks Alex – though I won’t let her know you called her a Pally!
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I really love ‘old school’ metal miniatures, they have so much more depth of character than mass produced, plastic minis
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I have to say that I love both – as long as they’re nice sculpts. 🙂
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