Thundercloud has been making poor financial decisions again, leading to Thunderwife saying, ‘Why are people in Australia sending you things?’ and the inevitable miniature review to justify purchases.
These miniatures were paid for in real Australian DollaryDoos.
The Casts
I got the following minis: Vegdrasill Strong Brow – Dwarf Captain, Dwarf Banner Bearer & Horn Blower, Dwarf Warriors with Axes x4 and Dwarves With Two Handed Axes x4.
The casts are clean with little flash or mold lines, and cleaned up nicely fairly quickly. The weapons are thick enough that there isn’t a lot of bending, and they can take a little bending back to get them straight.
The only really difficult part was cutting the brass rod spear and drilling out the holes on the flag for it to go through. The brass rod is hard, and you’ll need proper cutters or the cutting disc on your rotary tool to cut it – it will mess up modelling snips. Once it goes together it’s great. Do check the height of whatever you are storing your models in to make sure it doesn’t cause problems before gluing. You also need to drill the hand, and I think the hand is slightly too small. Be careful with this so you don’t damage the miniature.
Painting
The details and casting are crisp, which makes these easy models to paint up. They have some equipment on them, but not the endless straps and chains and doodads you get on GW AoS figures. A Chaos Black spray undercoat gave a solid basis to work from, as armour is a major part of the model and black gives a great starting point for this.
The metal was the first stage, and this was done by using Scale 75 Dark Metal for the basecoat, then a drybrush of Vallejo Model Air Chrome and a very light drybrush of Vallejo Model Air Silver for the final highlight. This gave a shiny well maintained chainmail look that will contrast with models like Orcs or Skaven, where I start the metals from a brown underpaint for a much darker and grimier finish.
The wood grain on the shield was Snakebite Leather contrast over a grisaille of Celestra Grey drybrush and White Scar light drybrush. It gave a fairly good wood grain with very little effort.
The leather was started from a Thondia Brown basecoat. I think Thondia Brown is a great paint, and if you’ve seen all the Skaven I’ve been painting so far this year (4 Underworlds warbands of them) then they’ve all started with underpainting them with Thondia Brown for a very dark brunaille (no Flemish technique here I’m afraid). For leathers it gives you a dark rich base to work from if you aren’t going to underpaint using something like GW Cygor Brown over a grisaille. As you can see in the picture a light drybrush of XV-88 gives a nice appearance of worn leather on the boots.
For the arming garment/tunic I used a dark blue (Kantor Blue in this case), as I want these to match my LOTR dwarf army which has the tunics in dark blue as the Erebor scheme from 20 years ago. I then highlighted this with Macragge blue, a nice mid blue that I’ve inevitably got three pots of due to GW trying to make Ultramarines happen since 4th edition.
The Medbury Dwarves are wearing gambesons over their chainmail. Historically gambesons were worn under or over chainmail or plate in Europe, and consisted of a quilted garment (the padding could be cotton or wool, or scrap cloth or horsehair). When worn under the armour it often had arming points where mail or plate was attached (and was often called an arming doublet or arming garment). Quilted armour was seen across the world, with the Scythians using it in the 4th century BCE. Some gambesons included rivets, and the Medbury Dwarves do. The painted miniatures on the Medbury website have their gambeson in a single colour, and while this reflects a lot of historical portrayals (from art of the time, and surviving examples) there are also multi-coloured gambisons (again reflected in art from the time and surviving examples).
Note the buttons/rivets and that the gambeson is over the mail, with another arming garment beneath the mail. I went with Gal Vorbak red for the gambeson, and left the rivets as metal.
Flesh was two thin layers of Cadian Fleshtone, then a 50/50 mix of Cadian Fleshtone and Vallejo Light Flesh, then a very thin layer of Vallejo Light Flesh.
With a coat of acrylic varnish this dwarf is now painted to a tabletop standard, and looks fine at gaming distance and as part of a unit. For additional detail you can pick out some of the armour (like the faceplate) with a contrast yellow, or add wood grain to the axe handle, but I’m happy with it for now.
Conclusion
These models are well sculpted and solid casts, though in comparison to the LOTR dwarf range a little larger (though the LOTR dwarf range has dwarves with a great variety of heights, with the Vault Wardens towering over the Khazad Guard). They look fine mixed in with the LOTR dwarves, adding variety to the posing and fitting in fine unless looked at closely. There is also, as there is an integrated base, an extra mm or so of height.
It’s worth remembering that there were two distinct generations of LOTR Khazad-Dum Dwarves, the metal release that accompanied the 2003 book Shadow and Flame (which comprised of Balin, Khazad Guard and metal Dwarf Warriors and Bowmen) and the 2007 Khazad-Dum book (which comprised the plastic Warriors and Rangers, Vault Wardens, Ballista, Iron Guard and Durin and Mardin). As you can see above there is some variation in the size of the earlier metals and later plastics and metals, and the 2007 models also have a fair number of poses where the models are stood up straight, adding to the perceived height discrepancy.
On the table none of this matters because an extra mm or two from half a metre away is pretty much imperceptible.
I’m in the process of rejigging my Khazad-Dum force for the new edition, and adding some more poses for non-GW events I may go to suits me quite well (bear in mind GW events require GW only models, and I have been going to a lot of Warhammer World events). The Great British Hobbit League has multiple events every month where you are fine to use non-GW figures.
In terms of cost I paid 18 DollaryDoos per four models for rank and file, which works out at £8.82 in real money. This means that they’re actually pretty cheap in comparison to other metal manufacturers, who are often £3-6 per figure. I had to pay shipping from Australia but kept the total value under the de minimis amount for the UK (£135 at time of writing).
I like the models; they’re a very good price, they paint up nicely and they make good generic dwarves for fantasy games. The only real difficult part is drilling the hands for the spears/banners, and while it’s annoying, it’s in no way a deal breaker.
It’s a thumbs up from me.
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