Mantic Dwarves

Or is it dwarfs?

Anyway, I've long been interested in a dwarf army.  Even when my wargaming consisted of nothing but 40k, I was interested in fantasy and had plans of starting an army.  My first aborted attempt at a fantasy army was when I picked up a box of the brand new, state of the art plastic, mono-pose high elf archers back when 2nd edition 40k was current.  That army never went past that one box.  Later during the height of my 40k period, I grabbed three army books to explore the possibilities of starting Fantasy: Orcs and Goblins, Empire, and Dwarfs.  Ultimately, the lack of Fantasy players in NE Tennessee discouraged me from beginning, but dwarfs were always a favorite of mine.

Ten years later, I am sitting on two Fantasy armies (Tomb Kings and High Elves), and even though both are getting quite large, I still find myself adding to them.  I also have limited play time (one tournament per month and one day of weekend gaming per month), and finding the time to play both armies is challenging.  Nonetheless, the siren call of a new army is always strong, so I decided to take the plunge.

However, I did not want to sink a lot of money into them, so I set a limit.  I decided that if I couldn't get a fully functioning army for under two hundred dollars (US) I wasn't going to start one.  Mission accomplished.  Using the Battle for Skull Pass sets from GW, a heavy helping of Mantic's dwarf models, Ebay, and an after-holiday sale from the Warstore, I was able to put together the following list for a grand total of $107.25:

Runesmith (Reaper Margera)

40 Dwarf Warriors
30 Quarrelers
35 Hammerers
2 Organ Guns (all of this from the Mantic Dwarf boxed army and one extra box of Hammerers)

20 Battle for Skull Pass Miners (dirt cheap on Ebay)
2 Battle for Skull Pass Cannons (a little more expensive on Ebay)

At this point, I have about ninety more dollars budgeted with which to get 2 grudge throwers and some character models, which I think is highly doable. 

My biggest concerns with starting this project were appearance based.  I didn't know how well the Mantic models and the Skull Pass models would mix together, and I wasn't sure how I would like working on Mantics figures.  I have one painted now, and I'm pretty happy with the model.  Here's a shot:

As for the first concern, I think they will look fine together.  Here's a comparison shot:

You can see that the Mantic model is actually more bulky, but not outlandishy so.  The two models' beards also are strikingly different.  I will say that the beard was my favorite part of painting the GW model.  However, I do like the braided beard look of the Mantic figure.  I did an informal taste test with some non-gamer friends and family, and they actually preferred the Mantic model, saying that "he looks mean." Ultimately, I think that people will notice a definite difference in the two company's models, but no more so than when old GW figures are mixed with the new (and larger) ones.

As for working with the Mantic mini, I have no complaints.  They are not nearly as customizable as the GW ones.  Most of them are basically two or three part models, so you end up with fairly similar poses throughout the army.  That's no big deal for me as I think dwarves should be fairly orderly.  That minor quibble aside, working with the models was very easy. They were very clean of mold lines, and they went together easily (very quick construction).  Overall, I found them to be excellent models, and you really can't beat the price (and I'm really looking forward to seeing what they do with their new Sci-Fi game).

Here's another comparison shot of the two figures:

That's it for this week.  I'll be playing a tournament this weekend.  There's no comp rules (except for no power scroll and no special characters) and no painting score in this one, so I'm going to take what I think is a powerful high elf list to see what kind of damage I can do.  I'll post a report sometime next week.

Tournament Report (6/11 ~ Cornelius, NC) and Dwarf Miners

So, I took the High Elves to a tournament at Parker, Banner, Kent and Wayne in Cornelius, NC.  It's the first time that I've played a tournament here, and I really enjoyed it.  There were close to thirty players, and every fantasy army was represented. Painting wasn't judged, which is always disappointing, but otherwise I thought the organizers did an excellent job of running the event.  I'd definitely be willing to make the drive again.

One thing that I was most excited about was the discussion of expanding the Warhammer community in the Southeast.   The organizers made a couple of announcements of note.  First, they will be hosting a GT in Charlotte in October.  This means that we will have two two-day tournaments a year in NC (Brawler Bash is in April) about six months apart.  They also made an announcement about the Masters event that they've hosted the past three years in December.  In the past, local clubs have run mini-leagues and sent their champions to compete.  This year, they will be expanding to encompass other SE states (especially SC and VA).  They will also be opening it to winners of RTT.  In addition to these new or expanded events, they've developed a new website (WarNC) to facilitate discussion between the various areas.  I think that the website helped to contribute to what seemed to be a good turn out at the tourney.  All told, I think that these changes harken an exciting time for the hobby in NC and the Southeast.  Maybe some of my old friends from Tennessee will come over and join in the fun.

Anyway, here's the list that I took:

Archmage (F. Robe, Talisman of Saphery, Jewel of Dusk)
Archmage (Seerstaff)
BSB (Armor of Caledor, Dawnstone, Great Weapon)

40 Spearmen
20 Archers

19 Phoenix Guard (Banner of Sorcery)
30 White Lions (Banner of Discipline)
Lion Chariot

2 Eagles

Both the archmages took life so that I could use the Seerstaff to double life spells.  I wanted to buff the heck out of the White Lions and use dwellers when needed to soften the opposition and take out problem characters.  I had mixed results:

Game 1 (v. Lizardmen):  In this game, everything went pretty much as planned.  I dwellersed his Slann in oblivion, and my buffed unit of white lions pretty much massacred his whole army.  In addition, the dice went very poorly for my opponent, so the game pretty  spiraled quickly out of control.  In the end, I had picked up max. points and felt pretty good about the list.  I figured the only thing I had to worry about was a good dwarven or empire gun list.

Game 2 (v. Dwarf): So, when I traded lists with my opponent, I knew I was in trouble.  High elves have trouble with shooting lists anyway, and I had eliminated all the fast moving elements from my list.  Essentially, the only strategy available to me was line up straight across the board, march as quickly as possible, and hope for some irresistible force spells.  Unfortunately, I wasn't able to get double 6s, and his magic defense was pretty stout (Master Rune of Balance, Rune of Spelleater, 2 x Rune of Spellbreaking).  In the end, I was down to a handful of troops by the time I made it across, and his blocks of greatweapon dwarfs made short work of them.

As part of my post-game therapy, I came home and finished my first dwarf unit, some BfSP Miners.  I started painting them because I thought they were horrendous models, and I wanted to see what I could do with them.  I'm pretty happy with the results, and they don't look nearly as awful painted up:

Game 3 (v. Empire):  With a loss under my belt, all the pressure was off, and I was just looking for a fun third game.  Unfortunately, I showed up at the table to find even more war machines than the dwarfs had had: 3 mortars, 2 cannons, and a volley gun.  Despite the wall of shooting, this game ended up close.  I absorbed the empire shooting a little better than I had the dwarf guns, and my elite troops bested his.  If my chariot had made it into his warmachines (it dodged three canon balls before being dropped) or if my spears had been able to get through his flagellants a bit more quickly (40 spears and 30 flagellants spent the better part of three rounds wailing away on each other), I might have been able to pull it out.

In the end, I paid for eliminating the fast moving elements from my army.  I hadn't seen much in the way of shooting lists in 8th edition, with most opponents favoring large blocks of troops.  Ultimately, this was a good lesson in the need for balance in list design.  Anyway, there's another tournament in Mocksville on 6/25.  I'll post a report in couple of weeks.  Hopefully, I'll have more luck there.