Rangers with Character (part two)

Head over to part one if you haven't already read it ;)

Welcome folks, to part two of rangers with character. This time, the real characters of the force, the Odd Squad:

These are the weirdos of the rangers, the ones who do more than just shoot crossbows and whack things with greataxes. Thieves, vagabonds, a pirate and a lunatic, good company! Lets start with the lunatic...

I have fallen in love with this model. It's a Reaper dwarf hunter and I suspect is very old, it comes on an integral metal base with a nifty animal cage. I had to remove it to fit him on a normal sized base though. There is just so much interest on this figure. From the mad rat-pelt cloak to the mangy moggy at his feet to the eye-patched face. He's a brilliant character. Painting wise, there was a few challenges, first was to make the rat cloak look "real" and allow the rats to stand out. This was fairly easy as I just adapted my stonework painting method for rats, vary the base colour a little and make sure that no two of the same exact colour are next to each other. I'd love to tell you what colours I used for them and the cat but I can't, like with most of my animal painting it was a dab of this and that mixed until it reached the colour shown on the reference photos. The loincloth thing might have been just a boring scrap of cloth but I figured he could have a map of the tunnels where he does his ratting easily to hand. A few quick lines and presto, mappo!

Next up we have a father and daughter pairing, thieves, both of them. Again, Reaper minis designed as a father and daughter, I even liked the name they gave them Copperthumb so stole it. These were some of the easiest to paint as I had pretty much no decisions to make! The clothing and cloaks needed to match their existing ranger compatriots and all that was left was skin and wood really! I've talked about the cloak weathering on the original Ranger post so I'll leave it there if you want to find it.

Then there is the pair of murderers, sorry, sentry eliminators on probation. Once again, Reaper dwarfs, the cloaked one is probably my least favourite sculpt of the bunch but even he carries a certain something, a sense of flashing blades and swirling cloak. The hidden face makes it quite sinister as well. Neither of these got any of the normal linen-cream contrast that I use against the Incubi Darkness main colour. wouldn't have worked on people whose job is secret murder in the dark. Instead they got black (most clearly seen on the more feminine of the two stab happy nitwits). There's an ugliness to these two that I think underscores their role nicely.

And finally, another old favourite that I've been hoping to find a place for for a while now. The arabian dwarf. In the fluff he's a pirate and trade envoy that went a bit native. Painting-wise he offered me a few rare opportunities for colour and opulent fabrics on a dwarf. First, I painted the waistcoat and shirt in the normal Stormbourne scheme to tie him to the rest of the army. I realised that the trousers would probably also have to be turquoise if the balance was to work. To differentiate them I first painted them as silk (i.e. much, much higher highlights than normal and in sharp folds) and then added the not-really-NMM gold band around the waistcoat to seperate the areas. That left the cummerbund sash. Up until now I had been thinking to paint it cream silk, keep the theme rolling. But I realised that he needed that spark of bright colour to pull him out of the herd, make him seem different. A quick glance at the colour wheel told me all I needed to know. Bright red-orange it is then. I'm glad I did, it really sets off the whole model. Gives him an individual flair.

And that's all! Hope you've enjoyed the companion fluff articles over on Beard Bunker, I've loved painting and creating these guys.

TTFN

Rangers with Character (part one)

As most people who read this blog will know, I've been burning the painting oil pretty bright (or at least as long as my wrists hold out on any given day) to get the last of the commission work finished. This hasn't left much (any) time for my own hobby lately, so I started a fun little Dwarf drying-time project over the last couple of weeks and this is the result:

They are a sort of Impossible Mission Force of Rangers for my Dwarf army. We do a lot of narrative role-play style gaming to achieve non-battlefield objectives in the campaign (intelligence gathering, item retrieval, occasional straight up sabotage) and I wanted a crew of individuals to serve as my normal RPG force. Enter Dwalin's Dirty Dozen, twelve - slightly unhinged - Dwarfs dedicated to getting the job done, no matter the cost and with a minimal amount of ethics... Over on the Beard Bunker there is a series of companion articles to these two posts (I'm splitting the article in two so as not to have a nine mile long post) detailing their in game effects and nifty backstories. Here, we'll talk painting and modelling.

In part one we'll focus on the more "ranger-ey" half of the dozen, the "odd squad" can wait till next time and where better to start than with their fearless leader Stromni Skystride:

Stromni is a Hasslefree miniatures dwarf (you'll see more of Kev's Dwarfs as the army continues to grow) who is just perfect as the grizzled, taciturn leader of a bunch of hard-bitten rangers. Handily he's also armed with a shield so I can keep him alive a smidgeon longer than some of the others. In painting Stromni (and indeed most of the other eleven) I wanted to follow the scheme already set out in the ranger regiment so that I could add most of these nifty models in to the existing unit (and replace Bugman making him once more a special character). The classic Stormbourne scheme of Incubi Darkness and linen-cream (Val Deck Tan washed with Seraphim Sepia and rehighlighted with Deck Tan) almost gets lost under all the other colours on the model, the Charadon Granite (I kept a pot specially) cloaks, leather armour and other camp goods rather crowd it out. You can see it on the shield though, and yep, I got a bit excited with the shield design. I'm still not as smooth with the freehand as I used to be (stiff wrists do not help) but the overall effect is nice and complex.

Next up is Stromni's number 2 and new champion of the regiment. He's a Reaper ranger from their Pathfinder range and he... is... perfect for a warhammer ranger champion. Ideal armament and the gear he has is sublime. Look at the little tea-kettle attached to his pack! I added a fondness for Cathayan tea to his backstory just because of it! Something I will say about this model is that not one strap, buckle, pouch etc is pointless. All the straps link up (even under cloaks where it is easy to forget), all the gear has a purpose, he works. You wouldn't believe how often I see sculpting where someone has just put a strap around a leg or a random pouch with no thought at all to what it is for, just to have an area of empty space broken up. Highly recommended.

This is the fire support of the unit, a ranger with a reconditioned repeater hand gun! He's the only conversion I had to do, all the rest were stories informed by finding cool minis I wanted to paint. In this case it was a relatively simple matter of cutting off the existing rifle and pinning the business end of an Empire repeater handgun in it's place. I contemplated trying to get the left hand under the gun but it would have taken a lot of sculpting, as it is the raised hand looks nice. A sort of "everything is fine at the moment, I don't have to fire the gun'o'doom" pose. I did extend his cloak, the sculpting on the cloaks really lets the plastics down at the moment. Very thin rolled ProCreate was cut to shape, draped over the areas I wanted the cloak to hang and blended in when it started to cure. Surprisingly easy, I may have to do some more cloakage.

Finally for part one, we have the snipers, more Reaper dwarfs armed only with crossbows to provide some quieter fire support. All of these are covered in leather armour so to speed things up I started with the Rhinox Hide that I've used for the dwarf's leather all over the model, highlighting with Mournfang Brown and shading with Agrax Eathshade. Anywhere where there was a strap or pouch surrounded by more leather colour I used a mildly contrasting leather colour, in this case pure Mournfang brown highlighted with a little bone, to subtly differentiate the different areas. While the camera hates subtle changes the lacing on the armour of the lady in the middle is where you can see it clearest. Oh and a hat tip to whoever sculpted the head on the dwarf on the right, that thing is ridiculously expressive. Love it.

That's all for part one, the odd squad coming for part two!

TTFN