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Behold! The steam-powered budgie!

There is a weird piece of music playing in my head, it's Ride of the Valkyries playing on a piano accordian. Why? Because of this:


This is a mental contraption, a Dwarf Gyrocopter. It is essentially a wooden and canvas helicopter powered by a steam engine? Physics? Go hide in the corner and cry, for once I don't care. It's cool. These things are used by the Dwarfs for carrying messages between the holds and for recconnaissance. Its such a perfect choice for this army (essentially crusading across the Empire) so it had to be done. Plus they're evil in this version of the rules.


The majority of the painting techniques used have been mentioned before so just a quick run down. All of the woodwork is my Steel Legion Drab with Rakarth Flesh highlights and Agrax Earthshade wash. I decided to keep the canvas sections very simple. Mostly the Stormbourne blue I've used before with just a few bone white sections. The studio one, by contast, is just awful. Its rare for me to criticise another painter's work but seriously, it's just messy. It just not the best advert for the model and the photography makes it worse. Check it out and see if you agree.


The engine sections are covered in my usual oil mixture (brown ink and gloss varnish or water effects) to make them look, well, mechanical. I think keeping it simple allows the quality of the sculpt to come through and speak for itself.


Keeping the machines flying and shooting is this chap. Hwell the Guns; Master Engineer. Not much to say about this model as he's fairly simple. Ridiculous huge hammer (silence physics, gyrocopter has already kicked you to the corner) and chainmail. Now there are lots of engineers in a Dwarf army and the master engineer brings a few extra benefits to the army, one of which is:


Entrenchment! You can hide one of your war machines behind a defended obstacle. This is a set of gabion emplacements made by Anarchy Models. I was trying to figure out how to make these and then spotted these for just a few quid. Why spend hours making them when something this good looking has been sculpted already? They're perfectly scaled for Dwarfs too, see?


A gabion is such a cunning idea. They're just baskets that you tote into place and then fill them with rocks and earth. They are medieval sandbags essentially. I'm moving on to the rangers next, but am definately starting to feel Dwarf fatigue. The last thousand points I think will take as long as the first two thousand. That having been said, I had just six painted slayers and a shield fence as of November. It's not quite January and I've got 2000 points plus done. Gotta love elite armies. I imagine I will be able to get the last thousand done but that will be my lot for Dwarfs, maybe for another ten years...

TTFN.

Comments

  1. Nice work! They look great, I really like the defences. I think the gyro and engineer could perhaps do with a bit more colour here and there, the gyro especially.

    I do wonder why you find the gyro so good. Most don't mainly due to the fact it no longer can mark block that well, and it's template is perhaps one of the few still with partials (army book states it has partials, and army book trumps rule book).

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    Replies
    1. Only in tournaments, which I have precisely no interest in. Instead we use what I like to call the "common sense" approach and say that the most recent ruling on a mechanism applies. Otherwise some army books remain crippled for years.

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    2. That's a fair point. It doesn't make any sense why GW made it so it's the only thing in the game that still has partials.

      House ruling that I can see making it a bit more viable, but it's still only S3 (-1SV?).

      Oh, did you find it hard to assemble? I have one of these in the box still, but have heard that the rotors are a real pain in the arse to assemble to the main frame.

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    3. I will mainly be using it for war machine, fast cavalry and other anti-dwarf annoyances removal. It is nasty against small flanking units, detachments and the like. Yes it is a sod to assemble. Pin the rotors and i used magnets to hold them on to the copter for easy transport (and spinniness).

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    4. Sounds useful. Might have to look into getting mine out of the box this year, I'd like to expand the dwarfs and I have a lot of extra stuff lying about.

      OK, thanks for the advice. I'll try to remember that for mine. :)

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    5. Kuffeh I think you're underestimating the effectiveness of a S3 template! You'll get around 30 hits on a unit, and knocking 15 T3 models out is the equivalent of firing about 40 Thunderers at long range. That's some serious firepower!

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