I paint, therefore I am: Dwarf Artillery

025 Dwarf Artillery

There are a couple of rules I've tried to follow when building my Dwarf army:

no duplicate figures
no gunpowder

I've stuck to the "no gunpowder" rule (I disapprove of gunpowder generally in fantasy settings), but have broken the duplicate figure rule when it comes to artillery, mainly because of the crew figures.

There are a number of artillery pieces in my army, spanning at least two decades. In ascending order of firepower, the models are:

Heavy Crossbows

I have two units of the old Grenadier heavy crossbows

Bolt Throwers(i)

These are the first generation bolt throwers that Citadel produced. They look quite plain compared to the second generation units, but I still have a soft spot for them. There are four of these in the army.

Bolt Throwers(ii)

I can only find the crew for this one - no idea where the bolt thrower is. From some pictures I found on Google, however, the bolt thrower looks very similar to the original one. At some point, no doubt, I'll stumble across the model in a cupboard somewhere.

Bolt Throwers(iii)

A few years after the earlier bolt throwers, Citadel brought out some new ones. These ones had much more detail, and appear to be modelled after Roman catapulta. I bought and painted up two of these units.

Comparing the original bolt thrower with the latest generation one, the difference in size and detail is obvious.

MadAxe Thrower

I can't find anything about this model on the Internet, so I'm not really sure if I'm using its correct name. It's basically two rows of throwing axes, driven by a belt in the middle.

The engineer with the large spanner in his right hand is a conversion. He was originally holding a gun (or some sort of powder weapon) so I removed it and scratch built the spanner for him.

I built the model (obviously), and painted the crew, but haven't actually painted the model yet or finished basing the crew. I think the prospect of trying to paint the kit put me off, but one day...

Flame Cannon

This is as close as my Dwarfs get to a gunpowder level of technology, and, to be honest, it's a bit more advanced than I'm comfortable with.

When I bought this kit and tried to assemble it, I couldn't get it to fit together. After comparing it to some pictures in the Dwarf Codex of the time (circa. 2000) I found there was a piece missing. After getting a replacement, it went together much more easily (the local GW shop actually let me keep the original model, which I still have. Sadly, with a piece missing, there's never seemed much point putting it together)

It's probably more bronze than it needs to be, but I'm sure there was a good reason for it at the time.