Mantic Dwarfs

These guys are Mantic Dwarfs, multi-part plastic figures, that I was given (years ago?) by Azazel. (Mantic calls them Dwarfs, not Dwarves.)

I generally dislike multi-part figures, mostly because when I was first buying miniatures they were mostly metal, and awkward to assemble – often because parts didn’t fit smoothly together.

This lot were mostly assembled when I received them and look to have been two or three pieces – just enough to give a good variety of poses, weapons, etc. I have nine dwarfs, and while there are similarities, all are unique! I may have to watch out for some more of these. I like the style of Mantic’s dwarves; they were easy and fun to paint and it would be really nice to have more of them. I really like the idea of building a dwarf army, but I don’t know if I would ever get to do anything with it.

When I eventually decided to add these to my painting tray, I found I had three headless bodies, two loose heads, and two figures with no weapon. This is an excellent reason to put figures into plastics bags when you get them and not have them lying around on a shelf or mixed with other components in a box! I’m certain that I’ll turn up a dwarf head sometime in the near future.

I took the head-less body I liked the least, and cut his hand off to get a hammer for one of the other figures, and cut down a long spear in my parts box for the other. Heads were glued, a few small gaps were filled and many images of Ironclad, Sheildbreakers, etc were browsed on the ‘net.

I decided to try something different when undercoating – spraying with black from the sides, then white from overhead, aiming for the contrast of zenithal highlights that I’ve seen in many painting videos. (“A technique that quickly reproduces the light and shadows produced by an imaginary light source directly over the subject.”) I didn’t like the final effect. White undercoat makes detail stand out more – very helpful with my eyes when painting fine detail – and black means the final result is dark. I might go for this with monsters, but I don’t like the idea for characters. If do it again, it’s going to be with less black, and much more white.

Armour is primarily antique copper, with bright bronze for highlight. Gun-metal and silver highlight on some armour and weapons. Various browns, a few greens, some red and silver (chainmail) to add some variation.

I have very few decals left in my parts box, with nearly all of those being chaos related. At some point I think I need to look for some decal sets that would go with more “good” aligned forces, or that are more general in style. My free hand painting can’t do the fine detail that people like Azazel have achieved. I went with a variation of an online shield design. I’m glad I only had four shields too, not a whole unit… even when pencil lines marked in advance, trying to get all four looking the same wasn’t easy. A hammer or axe symbol on top would have been perfect.

These are also an entry in the Mo’vember challege by “Rantings from behind the Moustache“