Matt's Ewal Dvergar

What was the inspiration behind the unit?

For a while I had wanted a Chaos Dwarf army but it wasn’t realistic to collect enough Perry Chaos Dwarfs or 4th/5th Edition big hats so that idea moved down the list of projects.

Then came the Ewal Dvergar Kickstarter. The miniatures looked great and I had other projects to finish so I backed it and was happy to wait. Just as my dwarfs were about to arrive and the full range went up on OSM’s website, I spotted a Middlehammer painting challenge on one of the Facebook groups. Though I would say the OSM sculpts are Oldhammer in style, my painting style is probably more Middlehammer and I like miniatures and army books from different periods so I decided to sign up, with a plan to fill my army with Chaos Dwarfs and greenskins.

The painting challenge will last for six months. The first month’s theme is a character and a core unit so I decided to use the Ewal Dvergar general and some warriors with a command group.

I like to make my characters unique and I had decided that none of my dwarfs would show their faces so I converted the general and the musician. I also needed to make a standard bearer. I added horns to the general, a skull to his sword and I swapped the beard with one from one of the general’s heads to keep the detail on the armour visible. (Also, the face on the armour looks Emo -Jack) 



For the musician, I just sculpted over the opening for the face, after I filed off the eyebrows. The standard bearer is a warrior, with brass rod through a hole I drilled in the hand and a plastic banner from a Skaven Plague Monk. His axe comes from the Ewal Dvergar cannon crew.

The warriors were pretty straightforward to assemble. I planned them so I wouldn’t end up with the same combination of head and body. They were very quick to paint as the armour is well-defined and not overly ornate. I particularly like the helmets as I think it would be easy enough for me to sculpt onto these if I wanted some more variety, though there is already plenty, with spare heads for other conversions. I used round shields from OSM with a bit of green stuff flattened out as I wanted my shields to look like the ones in the 4th/5th Edition army book.


 

I painted them in threes. While each individual is painted predominantly one colour, there are five main base colours across the unit, which meant I could paint them quickly but still have variety. I started with quite dark base colours, did one edge highlight and either one or two highlights on the corners. Other than that, they are all black beards, light brass, some silver and a few patches of brown. I did enjoy painting the twelve shields at the end.

So, what's next?
 

At some point in the next six months, I’ll be painting the Handgunners, Boar Centaurs, Lamassu, some more warriors, some sort of war machine and anything else I might come up with.

Well, we can't wait to see them when you do!