A Rank of Dwarves for $4.50

I took a brief break from the club's post-apocalyptic campaign, and the preparations for Little Wars, to paint up a rank of EM4's plastic fantasy dwarves. These figures, along with their plastic Orcs, were from the original "Fantasy Warriors" game. Each faction features three poses with different weapons. I purchased 10 of each sculpt -- crossbow, greataxe and spear -- for the bargain price of about 35 cents each!

They measure 21mm from foot to eyeline. This is about how they look in the grey plastic. They come attached to a square base approximately 25mm across.

 

The plug on the back can be easily covered up by a shield -- EM4 sells a bag of 50 shields for $2 -- but I forgot to buy these. Oh well, I ended up removing the plugs and the bases, which which was the most time-consuming step.

Note: the axe-wielding dwarves had a small void in the back under the left armpit that I had to fill with green stuff. Not a huge deal, just FYI if you're concerned.

The bases I used are 20mm square bases from Proxie Models. They are really affordable at 48 for $4.50.
They are tiny bit thinner than a standard slotted base and have a nice lip which very neatly contains flock, sandm ballast or foliage.

I've never painted a rank of fantasy figs before, so I wanted to see how quickly I could finish them. Here's the speedy process I followed.

• Remove plug and integral plastic base
• Glue to 20mm base -- I used Plastruct Plastic Weld
• Spray with cheap hardware store silver spray paint
• Block in basic colors
• Apply ballast to base -- the lipped bases made it really easy to squirt in some water-thin super glue. Then I dropped on a couple small pebbles, sprinkled sand on top and allow to dry.
• Paint and drybrush the base
• Brush-dip with Minwax Polyshades Tudor
• Apply Krylon Matte spray sealer

A little later I applied some squares cut from magnetic sheets to the bottom of the bases. Here's how it turned out. The light washed out some of the beard shading, but you get the idea. It's a quick, easy way to paint up some tabletop-quality dwarves.

No sign of the plug on the back.

Here's the full rank, all 10 of 'em.

And here's a before-and-after shot.

I'm very happy with the way they turned out. I'm not sure what I'll do with them yet, though some of them will probably show up in our games of Song of Blades and Heroes. Interestingly, these were not the only dwarves made in this style. There's a whole range of metal dwarves like these, and they are still being produced by Mirliton.  Though they do have a bit of an old-school look since they're all the same pose, these dwarves could make great filler for bulking out larger units in your games. The style is fairly generic, and they are not too dissimilar in size and features to Games Workshop's dwarves.

Here's a comparison picture from this blog post. The first and third are GW dwarves. The second figure is a Mirliton Fantasy Warriors metal dwarf, and the last is the EM4 plastic Fantasy Warriors dwarf.

Suffice to say I think these were more than worth the 35 cents each I paid for them. I'm not a fan of the integral bases, but the Proxie bases class them up a bit. If I someday build a larger fantasy army, I'll likely paint up more of these.

-- Karl, Chicago Skirmish Wargames club member