Ironbreakers marching on

Paint in progress

Not quite ready for the warpath yet, but I'm pleased with how this regiment of Ironbreakers is coming on. I think the yellow shields have made a big difference, helping to break up the all-metal impression they had previously. It also adds a welcome splash of colour.

The shields were painted with Averland Sunset (note to self: buy more of this paint), then washed with Seraphim sepia. Once dry, I diluted reddy brown – Skrag brown, I think – to a very thin consistency using flow improver. This was washed over the shield. While wet, I used a clean, dry brush to lift the wet paint off highlighted areas, leaving it in the recesses and towards the  bottom of the shield. It's a nice quick way to establish shading on curved areas; one I usually use for Space Marine pauldrons – so nice to see it works here, too.

Diversity and uniformity

All the modern dwarf models are very similar in pose and equipment – they're differentiated by little more than having four styles of heads and four weapon options across two boxes; but they are cross-compatible. The Hammerer boxed set, for example, also builds Longbeards; but both Hammerer and Longbeard heads fit on the Ironbreaker bodies. It's quite limiting – particularly when I've been spoiled by the sheer cross-compatibility of ranges like orks, marines and guard.

To further complicate matters, I'm rather stuck with particular combinations, as the army is made up of second-hand ready-built units. For example, the models above include ones with heads from three different groups – ironbreakers, longbeards and hammerers. This is partly a blessing in disguise, as it's given a much more believable lack of uniformity to the unit – after all, if you call up troops from your lands and tell them to bring their gear, you're unlikely to have them all equipped with the same style of helm. It also adds some welcome variation in faces and heads, something that often makes multipart plastic kits less characterful than their one-off metal sculpts equivalents.

On the other hand, this doesn't make things easy for playing, so I've been at pains to differentiate the units where possible. This is as much for visual variety as anything else, but will also hopefully be useful when playing games, making it clear where one unit begins and another ends. In addition to the colours of the shields, they also all share an ancestor face design.

If you know you're going to be building an army using multiples of the same kit, pre-planning might be worth it. Picking a particular design of shield (or weapon, or helmet, or body style) for a unit offers a nice way to add some subtle character. You often don't have to be completely exclusive; there are often sub-variants – the standard dwarf kits include a few ancestor head variants. Similar enough to hand together, but not completely uniform.

I also thought I'd play around with some knotwork patterns. I didn't want to go straight for a big banner, so had a play on the drumskin.