ponders getting some of his 28mm fantasy figures off the shelves and onto the tabletop.
The last time we met like this, I said that I thought there might be more Volcano Dwarves somewhere on my workbench, and I was right…
Last time I wrote, I was finishing off the last of the Volcano Dwarf guns, and now I find myself with an assortment of what seem to be magic-users, leaders, heroes, and a standardbearer.
When I bought these figures, they were from Grenadier; that manufacturer is long gone, but the same figures are available today from Mirliton (thank goodness, because these figures stand the test of time!).
A glance at the modern Mirliton website reveals that most of these figures today come in two packs: Cleric and Command and King of the Caverns Command.
The Dwarf waving the pole around is, I presume, the aforenamed cleric; here you can see I've given him some warriors for protection.
I know people tend to get… ahem… a bit religious about their preferences on Dwarves and magic: this figure could be a cleric, magic-user, runecaster or even just a standardbearer, depending on your preferences.
Here we have another base – same idea, different warrior figures.
I should mention, once again, that these were painted by our friends in Sri Lanka – Fernando Enterprises.
Here, I've placed a heroic figure, standardbearer and drummer together to make a command or subcommand base. The commander has some kind of decoration on the front of his helmet (which the painters made red, works for me); he also has a long black beard.
The banner is just 'basic black' for now, but I may get artsy with it at some future date.
Here's the cleric again, but this time with only one warrior – that's useful if I ever need to designate different levels of cleric in the army (the guy with one bodyguard must be lesser rank!).
As I've explained in the earlier articles, once the painted figures arrive back on my workbench, I mount them on 1" x 2" plastic Mighty Armies bases and flock them. The yellow edges make it easier (well, OK, blindingly obvious) to distinguish this army from others.
Speaking of basing to cover all my options, here I've put commander, cleric and drummer all on one base. Just in case I ever want a unit that can both lead and runecast…
It's good if I can think of all the options I might want now, rather than having to buy more figures and paint them up later for future options.
I think these might actually be the final units for the Volcano Dwarf army, but I'll double-check the workbench… you never know…