Assembly and Painting Dwarf Warriors; Orcs & Goblins
Following on from yesterday's Dwarf Tactica, Adam Troke has added Dwarfs: Assembly and Painting Dwarf Warriors to the Astronomican, which guides you through getting your Dwarfs ready for the battlefield. Although Adam uses Dwarf Warriors in his examples, the techniques covered are applicable to any Dwarf and in fact, you can apply the assembly tips in particular to any plastic miniatures.
After talking about the tattoos on Carl's Dwarfs in yesterday's blog I remembered that Nick Cristofoli had an Orc & Goblin army covered in tattoos and personalised armour. And seeing as the greenskins are the arch nemesis of the Dwarfs, I thought it an ideal time to show you some pictures of Nick's army:
When it came to painting his Orc & Goblin army, Nick decided that he wanted a 'horde of individuals', and actually painted each model separately. By sticking to a limited palette of colours (greens, browns, reds and grey-blues) Nick has given himself enough colours to play with while still maintaining a cohesive look to his collection.
As there's little in the way of flesh showing on a Black Orc and because most people focus on the face of a model, Nick paid particular attention to the helmets of his Black Orcs - every one of Nick's 20 Black Orcs has a different design painted onto their helmets.
Nick used mainly red on his Wolf Boyz face-paint in order to make them look 'meaner'. He has tied the wolves into the rest of his army by painting their fur in the same browns and grey-blues that feature on the other Orcs clothing, tattoos and banners.
Nick is rightly proud of his Rock Lobba conversion. He has replaced the standard firing mechanism with a River Troll. Notice the various Dwarf slaves Nick has added to the model: one carrying ammo for the lobba (from the Dwarf Stone Thrower set), an unfortunate one under the Troll's foot and a captured Slayer receiving a whipping.
Nick has two units of Savage Orcs in his army; one made up of the current models and one made up of the old Savage Orcs. As the current ones are slightly larger then the old ones, he uses them as Big 'Uns. This mix of old and new models adds to the horde feel of Nick's army. Notice the various markings and tattoos Nick has added to each Savage Orc.