Squad Challenge - Dwarfs?

Last year after the Old World Army Challenge, I learned there was a smaller, more relaxed "off-season" challenge in Oct. & Nov. in which any of the OWAC participants who wanted to paint a 10 person squad or unit. I ended up doing double-double duty last year and painted 24 half-orcs which also coincided with Orctober. Doubleplusgood!

This year I've been looking at a couple of options, but a new one jumped out at me today and I thought I would elaborate a little with a group photo.

Similar to the sea & wood elves, half-orcs, trolls, fomorians and other minor factions, I've had a small dwarf sub-faction developing for many years. In my mind, they're much more an integral part of the Marienburg forces (which are largely mercenary anyway)... but I've always had a thought to expand them to a more fully developed (yet small) faction.

Here's the state of things right now.

(click to enlarge)

 

Close-ups...

Handguns, pistols, and a couple of crossbows.

Artillery.

Pike/spear in back, dwarf-style zweihanders up front.

Light artillery in back, sword & buckler skirmishers in front.

Yes, we have a mage. Or at least a wise elder.

So on to the possible challenge figures...

Primed & ready figures. I'm thinking about adding to the pike/spear regiment for the 10 figure challenge. In terms of the rest of the force I've got waiting in the wings (or bins) I have the actual Marauder cannon/siege gun, more artillery crew, a few more (duplicate) command figures for the spear/pike regiment(s), 6 (I think) of the White Knight dwarf spear/pike, and a few odds and ends. Maybe not quite enough to round out the force the way I would like, but it will still get me closer.

Confession: I still view these as distinctly mercenary and at some distant point in the future wouldn't mind doing a small, more "traditional" dwarf clan contingent as well.

Trollwives & Giant Forest Troll

Drewtember continues.... Trollwives from Satyr Art Studio are done.

Now I'm making solid progress on the giant forest troll from Sandstorm Miniatures. Not sure it will be 100% done by the end of the month, but I'd rather run late than rush it.

Sci-Fi Future

I've had on & off plans for a return to sci-fi painting & gaming. There have been several project or potential projects brewing for years now, and I think I may not only move ahead with some/all of them, but I'm going to try to tie them all together.

Let me start with the brainstorm I had over the weekend on this topic. It all started with the Gothmower.

Yes, Gothmower. I bought a new electric lawnmower towards the end of last Summer. The start button, for some reason, looks like a green coffin. I usually listen to music while mowing, and last time I decided I should honor the Gothmower by listening to some music in that theme. Because I am of a certain age, the first band that came to mind was Bauhaus. Turns out I don't really like most of their music anymore. So this week I put together a playlist from another suitable band...

That went much better. I hadn't listened to ASF for a long time, but this was inspiring. The lawn didn't stand a chance.

As I rocked out and mowed, thoughts drifted to painting and gaming. What if I started with Rogue Trader as a base, and then drifted off into my own cobbled together crazy space-opera setting/theme, sort of like I started with Warhammer but made it my own Althammer. As the heat and music kept my mind drifting around, I remembered that Rogue Trader was already a bit of an "open sandbox". The 40k setting didn't start getting fleshed out with tedious officialdom until later editions. So I won't really be diverging -- sort of a retro-hammer sci-fi thing.

But I'm not sure how much Rogue Trader I will actually be playing. In fact, right now I'm on the hunt for some solo rules. I just bought Five Parsecs from Home and will be reading through the rules this week. I also have a few others on my radar. But eventually I'd like to play some games with live opponents someday, too.

So here's a brief summary of the projects/plans that I'd like to pull together:

• Meat Hating Robot Pirates. Previously mentioned, and I've already collected quite a few 'bots.
• Rogue Trader Eldar. They were my first RT/40k figures, before I even bought the rules. I just liked the figures. As happened a lot, I sold them in college. But I have been working on collecting figures for next year's Old World Army Challenge, which is opening up for 40k as well as fantasy.
• Spaven. Cheese Stealers. Not sure I'll go any further with them. Maybe a few odd figures if I get inspired in the future.
• Adeptus Mechanicus. I've been planning an AdMech Kill Team force. So I will hopefully break my block on building & painting the figures.
  
• Miscellany. Civilians, mercenaries, beasts... I don't know. I'm sure I'll add some oddball stuff in at some point.
• Gaming surface & terrain. Still thinking about this a bit. Thinking about a dark alien world look like on the Spaven bases, but also doing some sort of semi-modular starship/building tiles -- along with all the accessories.
  

Only one robot painted so far.

Some of the Cheese-Stealer Cult.

Eldar on deck.

Trollkids

Trollkids done. I made some painting errors, and then trying to fix it seemed to work at first, but then resulted in somewhat Muppet-y colors. I guess I can be OK with that. More Drewtember figures from Satyr Art Studio. I just put down the first base coats of color on the trollwives.

As I was painting them, I kept hearing Ron Weasley saying, "eeew, troll bogies" in my head. 😆
 

Upsized Giant

My first completed Drewtember figure is the recently released cloud giant, a tribute to the old Ral Partha figure by Tom Meier -- which happens to be one of my favorite oldschool miniatures. Both together, Drew/Satyr Art Studio on left, Tom/Partha on the right.

 

Besides painting, one of my joys has been the enjoyment of our modest gardens - both flower and vegetable. At times it's a bit of a train-wreck due to the neighborhood wildlife and neighborhood fungus plague, but we've managed to pull through. The most plentiful of our "crops" has been one of the basil plants that's grown to an insane size, and three hot pepper plants. I've been making and freezing (or giving away to friends) pesto made from the former, and recently I've been experimenting with hot sauces for the latter. This past weekend's production, in addition to the painted giant: