Chaos Dwarfs: A friends interpretation of them

With the release of the new Forgeworld book containing the Chaos Dwarf army list, it is not surprising to see so many CD armies popping up now.

This is another one, that my mate from Izmir has stated up. We have talked, chatted, and investigated what would be the easiest avenue for him to build, paint and ultimately play CDs. Normally a Dwarf player anyways, so it is not a complete stretch for him to branch out into Chaos Dwarfs as his second army.

So for this to look vastly different from his normal Dwarf army, we looked and picked up the Mantic Abyssal Dwarfs. At first glance they remind me of really old Games Workshop dwarfs. Where pieces were slapped on to make them chaosy. And to a lesser extent that is what Mantic has done.

The basic form of the Abyssals are that of their Dwarf range. From here, they have metal pieces that can be added or replaced to make them more in line to a Chaos like appearance. At first glance of the parts, we were both a bit confused, and worried. The parts did not seem to fit very well, seemed odd, and we were not impressed that they were just add ons to existing models.

That being said, the assembly of the models was not as hard as we had thought, though still time intensive, and the final results were quite good. More so with the paint scheme we came up with for them.

With the mentality of making them get painted quickly, I did a bit of research online for a bronze like color that could be painted quickly. Fortunately, the internet is a vast collection of people putting our their opinions, and we ended up with what turned out to be the answer to our painting prayers. Though, the recipe was followed, my friends interpretation of some of the conditions were a bit off, but only added to the result in a positive way.

The recipe was simple, and consisted of few colors.

• Armor: Basecoat prime of Silver ( local spray can variety ), Heavy wash of GW Sepia, Heavy wash of GW Ogryn Flesh, finished!
• Cloth: GW Merchite Red, GW Badab Black wash, GW Blood Red hightlight
• Skin: GW Tallarn Skin, GW Ogryn Flesh wash, GW Dwarf Flesh highlight
• Weapons: Silver primer, GW Badab Black wash, GW Silver highlight. 

Now when the above stated heavy wash, this was shown in the photos to be that you put several layers on the model, and let them dry in between. Darkening the armor, but not completely overshadowing the color scheme altogether. Unfortunately I cannot find the original post that showed the recipe, and their examples, but I can assure it, it looked nothing like what my mate did. This is one of the downsides of trying to explain something over a long distance via Gtalk. 

That being said, his method of "Heavy" wash worked in the end, and gave a really great and unique look to the models. Instead of doing it in layers, he did all but dump the model into the GW Wash pots, and let them dry overnight, before doing the second dip of washes. Once dried, it gave the originally very bright silver, and after 2 levels ( can't call them layers with his technique ) the end color is a very bright bronze color, without actually using bronze paint. I have to say again, that everyone we have shown within our gaming groups are quite impressed with the end results. More so since it is taking so little time to get them all finished up. 

On top of that, he even made his own lava bases! The young padawan is growing up so quickly here.. They were created simply by cutting up balsa wood into strips and pieces, gluing them to the bases, and painting grey, and painting up the lava directly. We have since looked at tying in the layers of the lava better with GW Ogryn Flesh wash, but will see what it looks like after a few more "Light" applications of it.. but initial tests look good so far. 

So far he has 9 of them finished for the armor, but not all the rest of the pieces done. So they are looking a bit monotone, but still.. a scary sight of bronze made real when standing on the table.

So what does everyone think of them? Any comments on the scheme? Would love to hear in the comments!