The Dwarfs of Whatever

So despite my opinions on the Oathmark Dwarfs in my previous blogpost I soldiered on and assembled the whole box of figures. The problem was I had no clue what rules I'm going to use with these figures. Now the actual rules doesn't matter as much as the army lists for said ruleset which dictates how many figures you need in a unit and how many figures you can have a maximum of.

My top contenders for the rulesets are, in alphabetical order:

• Dragon Rampant
• Dux Britanniarum (with the unofficial Dux Arda mod).
• Oathmarks
• Warlords of Erehwon

I'm actually not counting Games Workshop's Middle Earth Strategy Battle Game because I think they sort of jumped the gun with the Hobbit movie rules, and I have no interest in forking out £35 for the new rulebook to see if they have changed anything, and then £35 for the army book of each army I want to play. (I'm not criticising their business model but I already buy the big expensive books for 40k so I'm thinking enough is enough.)

I arranged the figures into units while assembling them.

Taking a look at the sprues I decided to build all the standing bodies (there are two variants) with spears. With six sprues this would give me a unit of twelve spear dwarves. Looking at the army lists for the rules I know this seemed to work well:

• Dragon Rampant has units consisting of six or twelve figures normally. 
• Dux Britanniarum has units of six figures, with the exception of skirmish missile troops and cavalry that are four figures per unit. 
• Oathmark I know nothing about, except that it uses square bases, so presumably blocks of figures. 
• Finally, Warlords of Erehwon have units of five to ten figures (except for Cavalry that are fewer figures). 

Do you see the pattern here? If I build a unit of twelve spears and a unit of twelve hand weapons I can use them as is for Dragon Rampant or split them into four units of six figures for Dux Arda, and if I take away two figures they work for Warlords of Erehwon. The remaining six figures could be built as archers, making a small unit for each of the games.

So the plan was to build twelve spearmen, twelve axe/sword/hammers and six scout/archer types. Then I remembered the metal figures I also bought. So I decided to use two of them as champions for my big units, giving me a further two skirmish figures. They would be of no use in Dragon Rampant, but could bolster the archers in Warlords of Erehwon, and in Dux Arda this would give me two units of skirmishers.

The unit of Swordsmen. They are on 20mm bases, but I have spaced them out as if they were on 25mm square bases.

I cut out all the bodies and glued them to 20mm MDF bases I had left over from another project (Undead for Kings of War, if you must ask). They had holes for using magnets to secure the bases to a movement tray. I arranged the bodies in to their respective units to keep track of what weapons each body would get, but also to try to ensure that I varied the heads in each unit enough. I plan on ordering unit trays for these if I find the Oathmark rules interesting. That way I can ensure the unit get a big enough footprint although the figures are based on smaller round bases. (Foot prints are important in Rank and File games.)

The unit of spearmen

With the plan ready I got cracking. I didn't do many conversion, but I used some bow arms as shield arms to vary the poses a bit. I gave the unit of swordsmen all helmeted heads (except for a grumpy bald one) but mixed things up a bit with the spearmen, giving some hoods. In contrast none of the skirmishers got a helmet.

The unit of archers

When I assembled the archers I dug out some unused Frostgrave bits to try and tart them up a bit. I wanted to convey that ranger look. Then it got into my head to have some fun with the last two bodies, so one of them got a big hammer from the Frostgrave cultists sprue and the other got a pair of hammers. I was thinking of giving them bows across their backs and a quiver, but I thought it would look too over the top so I didn't... I also made up two left over frostgrave soldiers, one of them turned into a zombie, oh dear.

It's hammer time! Also a comparison between the Oathmark dwarves and Frostgrave soldiers.

A couple of backpacks, a small axe and a pouch with a dagger were gifted to these dwarfs.

A small pouch, another small axe and a potion (or is it booze) give these dwarfs some character.

While looking for the bases I also dug up a couple of Dux Britanniarum movement trays so I went ahead and took a couple of pictures with the figures in Dux Arda mode.

Two units of dwarfs in "blob" formation -- "formering skithög" as it is known in Sweden.

The spearmen in a Shield Wall formation. Looks good with all those spears and shields.

The two units of skirmishers.It doesn't matter that a couple of them forgot their bows, they can still skirmish!

And finally a comparison with a couple of GW LotR figures. Unfortunately the Oathmark dwarfs are built a wee bit more robust, especially the heads.

"It was the first time Gloin encountered the giant dwarfs."

In all fairness the Oathmark dwarfs look good together in units.

Happy gaming!