Dwarves on the cheap

I have been wanting to start up a Dwarf Treasure hunter band for a few months now and I have finally decided that I can afford to commit the time and money to it now but I wanted to try not to spend more than £20 ($30ish) on all the dwarfs I could ever want (all the heroes, 2 double handed clansmen, 2 dual wielding clansmen and 4 crossbowers).

After much trawling of ebay I have settled on the command sprue from Mantic's Ironclad (noble and clansmen), 5 sprues of Mantic's Ironwatch (engineer and crossbowers) and Fenryll's Dwarf Demon Skinners (Slayers) all for just £17.54 delivered .

So I was wondering has anyone used any of these manufacturer's miniatures and do they work well in Mordheim? (especially the Mantic dwarves because they looked a bit skinny and they had real full grown legs legs?!)

I've never used them, or seen anybody else use them. But I would have absolutely no problem playing a game of Mordheim against somebody using those dwarves if that helps. As a broke broke college student I 100% understand when people don't want to pay GW prices haha, and those models look fine as far as appearance and scale is concerned.

I found my 14 dwarfs at a local hobby store that has bins and bins of bits...
i collected enough parts to make 1 lord, 1 engineer, 4 guys with crossbows, 4 guys with axes
and I bought my 2 slayers from ebay for $10
total I spent was $20 for all GW models

I'm not a big fan of Mantic models, but yea you can definitely use them for Mordheim
granted you are not playing it at GW store

my suggestion, look for a local store that has bits bins that sells parts

just a recommendation, i love Avatars of Wars' Dwarfs ... check them out, a little pricey though

I bought them (the plastic slayers) from Wayland They're quite affordable there, at least compared to their price in Danish hobby stores They're awesome (also good for making other characters. Loads of bits)

The Mantic mini's are also insanely cheap there I don't really like their style though.

Slayers and Mantic dwarfs links

virtualonmars wrote:

my suggestion, look for a local store that has bits bins that sells parts

Ha, if you find one in the UK let me know, I haven't seen anything like that for almost 20 years since the shop in Woking shut down.

I got some mantic ghouls and i was VERY disappointed in them. never going Mantic again.
I saw them for cheap, 20 models for 20$, saw the models before and thought they were cool, so i bought a pack.
turns out, the pack only has 2 types of Ghoul. pose 1, and pose 2. And since I make custom bases for my mordheim minis, only 1 of the two poses would transfer properly. SO, 20$ later, i got 1 ghoul model that I can use in a warband, since Im picky in that I cant have multiple identical models in a warband. *sigh*

dwarves may be different, but from the pics, it seems to be the same deal. a bunch of models that are identical.


that said...
Avatars of War models are pretty slick got a few of those too, Very impressed.

Stonehaven Miniatures has one of those pledges that become more and more popular recently. The Minis look fit for a Dwarfen Warband if you are willing to pay 25-40$. Maybe wait a couple of days to make sure it is worth it? The Greens the sculptor did for other companies such as GW certainly are of quality...
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/2087444096/dwarven-adventurers-box-set/
http://stonehavenmini.blogspot.de/

Grimscull wrote:

The Greens the sculptor did for other companies such as GW certainly are of quality...

Erm, you should really read rather than just skim stuff you know especially when money is involved (this guy hasn't sculpted for anyone else).

I personally have no interest in cartooney looking dwarves, damned anoyed that I missed the AoW kickstarter for all the dwarven goodness they will be producing though .

Brilliant marketing idea from this guy though, for 5k a piece he could afford to get the figs sculpted by one of the industry best, have thousands of them cast up and still have change left over!

maxxev wrote:

Erm, you should really read rather than just skim stuff you know especially when money is involved (this guy hasn't sculpted for anyone else).
!

Well, english is not my native language, I understood he was a freelance sculptor. Thanks for discretely pointing out my mistake. Nevertheless, the greens in the link are nice. And I only suggest stuff I find interesting and consider to be interesting to other forumites. I take it for granted they themselfes then read closely and make up their own minds. If I was in search of a dwarfen warband, I'd give it a go...

Grimscull wrote:

Thanks for discretely pointing out my mistake.

lol, if it makes you feel any better I did it too, I only actually read it when I wondered why it was a firewarrior in greenstuff (they were digitally sculpted).

So. And I am quite impressed with how good the models look although the mantics are a little less barrely than their GW counterparts(I think they just have longer thinner limbs). And as @zekk says the poses are rather limited with just two bodies/heads + a champion and musician head. But there were a few different arms and with a bit of "encouragement" (with a pen knife) I have managed to make them into 10 unique models which actually look pretty cool (pictures to follow if I can find my camera charger).

Now onto stage 2 of my dwarves on the cheap project: painting but it's been so long since I painted anything I had forgotten that most of my GW paints have dried up/gone that weird shade of brown . So can anyone recommend some cheap paints that work well for plastic/metal minis?

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Had these guys just filling space in my bits box. If you're interested in a trade, just PM me and let me know.