Monday 12 March 2012

Finished Chaos Dwarf Lord, and a musing about mantic

So here's the finished chaos dwarf. Overall, this model pleases me. I shall name him Thorgar Kinbane the petite pugilist.


As I stated in an earlier post, chaos dwarves will be my next army, after beastmen. I should get my beastmen finished by summer, built, painted and to 3000pts. Should...


So this gives me time to think about how to make a start on the evil stunties.


The forgeworld models are the dream. Really well designed and oozing character. They are, however, prohibitively expensive. I calculated that even buying off an ebay seller with £5 off the rrp it will cost me £90 for 30 men. One core choice. And an additional 16 english quid for a command. And, if rumours are to be believed, forgeworld will not make any more new scupts at the behest of GW.


Now, a discontinued line has never stopped me before. Infact, I've already ideas for both kinds of kdaii. But the idea of no hobgoblins (or hobbos, for those not into chaos dwarfen lingo), great weapon armed infernal guard (who Ive an idea for converting anyway) or blunderbuses ( who most CD players advise against taking anyway...) But most importantly - no bull centaurs.


On the positive side - I can get a finecast hellcannon again!


So, alternatives. Well mantic offer abyssal dwarfs at a decent rate. Many people dislike mantics range. I quite like them. Some look really good, and with the addition of some decent shields would look good rank and file. A couple helmets are dodgy (giant eye I'm looking at you), but on the whole theyre quite a good alternative.


Also, a battleforce consists of 20 infernal guard equivelants, ten blunderbuss equivelant, 10 great weapon infernal guard equivelant, two quite frankly horrible warmachines and theyre useable crew and a bull centaur character for £85 - less if I wait until a maelstrom games voucher day.


The current mantic range is in a state of flux. Theyre a hybrod kit currently in metal heads a plastic body, with characters being entirely metal. Bull centaurs (or halfbreeds) are pure metal and are quite pricey at £45 for 5 with an additional 10 great weapon equivelants to sweetrn the deal. The rumour is that mantic will eventually release all their metal componants as resnic - a resin plastic combo. This should actually decrease prices but were looking at summer before any changes are made.


I've also never gone entire alternative miniatures before, just as I game at warhammer world semi - frequently. As I'll be no doubt gaming at the local club or my friends houses with a list thats not for tournaments Im not that bothered about a mainly non GW army.


So my options -


Go for the more expensive, better looking resin army with gaps in the line?


Or


Go with the cheaper mantic force which I can't use at warhammer world the 3 or 4 times a year I go there?


I will mix and match - fw warmachines and failcast hellcannon will be used in either list - and restic mantic bull centaur / half breeds will be used in both lists when they eventually arrive. But for the majority troop choices... I'm leaning to mantic.


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5 comments:

  1. If your prepared to go non-canonical for Chaos Dwarves there are several other manufacturers of suitable models out there at reasonable rates. I too think the Mantic CD's are alright, but do some digging first!

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  2. I'd prefer to go canonical - HOWEVER the mantic dwarves arn't really the archetype chaos dwarves either - they lack hats and braided beards for a start.

    The other alternatives I should have really mentioned as well are Titan games - who offer a range of metals (3 immortal guard models) and several character models.

    I've seen some options for bull centaurs, but the company name escapes me and they're metal as well (not that metals a bad thing, far from, but they tend to be expensive as the models are, dare I say it, squat, so weigh alot and pushes up manufacture and delivery prices).

    Of course, suggest away any alternatives!

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  3. Love the finished Dwarf.

    You have some difficult choices I see. I would be going for the FW infernals, including a fireglaives unit. I'd then fill the rest with models from other companies. If you stagger the purchases you'd get the FW dwarves by summer.

    Scribor minis are interesting, but they look like Russians (I'm not a xenophobe...)

    http://sciborminiatures.com/en_,shop.php?art=1047#i/2011/big/riff_raff_chieff_1_01.jpg

    This guy is the pick of the bunch IMO, bought him to be a daemonsmith whilst still toying with the idea of buying some CD warmachines from FW. He will likely never be in my army list now, but may get painted one day.

    On a slightly differnet note, you heading to FW open day on 1st April at Warhammer world?

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  4. Another alternative if you feel up to the task is GS'ing the GW plastic dwarfs. I have seen some really good conversions doing this.

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  5. Yeah, check the CD forums online. I recall a chap did a very thorough job with the Skull Pass Dwarves. At one stage in my "I'll only do another army for WFB if it's one GW don't officially support anymore' phase I considered Chaos Dwarves...

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