LotR SBG Dwarf Shield Bearer and finished 1000 point Dwarf Army.

Well, I finally got around to painting the last Khazad Guard I had. On the way I decided to hack one of them up a bit and convert him into a Shield Bearer.


With ten Khazad Guard all together, I found that there was one model stance that I had three of, so one of them was going to be a Shield Bearer instead. Two of the others had broken axes, so I took the opportunity to rotate the axe head 90 degrees when I glued them back on, that way even the same stance has different axes at least.

The Shield Bearer dwarf doesn't really look like the official one, but has a whopping big shield. I took off the top half of his axe so that it is the size of a one-handed axe instead of the original two handed one. This took way more work than I thought it would. There was stacks of blobby metal there as the arm behind and axe on his belt all merged at that point, so I had to file and file and then file some more to neaten it all up.


The shield is actually the result of two skeleton shields cut in half, skulls filed off, then top halves stuck together to make that sort of ovalish shape. I chose that shape and those shields because they have the raised edge and bolts like the other dwarven shields and it's sort of halfway between the warrior and Vault Warden shields. Then I gave him some horns on his helmet and stood him up on a bit of cork to change the pose angle. Hopefully with all of that it won't ever be obvious that he's the same model as two of the other Khazads!

I painted them in the same way as the Khazads (look in earlier posts for details on them. To further help in keeping the similar poses less noticeable I've been painting the helmets and chainmail in two different ways. One lot with bronze on the helmet and chainmail for Etako's guard, the others in mithril on the helmet and chainmail.


The shield design on the Shield Bearer was made to cover the bits that I just couldn't seem to file perfectly flat. If you look at the unpainted picture above you can slightly see the middle seam and the slightly raised U shapes where the skulls used to be. So on a bit of paper I drew them out then tried to work out how to merge those shapes into a design that would be similar to the Vault Warden shield designs. I think it worked okay.

Here are the silver studs for Brynmor's Guard...

And the gold guys for Etako's guard (including the Shield Bearer)...

Sorry for the very low angles and not so great photography (if I'd had the flash on you'd be able to see up their nostrils), back to using my ancient camera as my brother is away for a week, I'm sure there'll be action shots next time we play a game with them =)


So now I have a 1000 point army, well, slightly over or under depending on how many throwing axes I give my rangers!


Here's half of them with Etako Ironfist.

And the other half with Brynmor Deepminer.

And if I line them all up...

The left of the line...

Center...

To the right...

So there you have it, I have a dwarven ballista on my Christmas list, so we'll see what happens there, that's really the last thing I want to add to the group. 


Although I'd quite like something big for a centerpiece. The Balrog really "pops out" the goblin army, as does the Cave Troll and Wild Warg Chieftain. I might look into getting a giant eagle to ally with them. Or maybe I'll stretch the bounds of possibility and have a Cave Drake that has been reared from a drakeling and is loyal to the dwarves...