Hobby Dungeon

Barak Thingaz (The Forest Gate in Khazalid) is a fortress built south of the Black Mountains and Karak Hirn, in the land of the border princes. For dwarfs, it is a very strange place. Many aspects of dwarfen life and culture that do not normally mix can be found to inhabit this holdfast. In the first place, the fort is not built into a mountain - it is built around a stone tower in the middle of a dark forest, with stout palisade walls of massive timbers. Dwarfs are not normally known as forest creatures, but these dwarfs have found some advantages to living away from the mountains. The hold was founded and is currently led by an engineer named Ogam Oathkeeper, who was forced out of Karak Hirn for his dangerous engineering experiments. The king of that hold feared Ogam would explode the entire mountain on accident and exiled him to practice his engineering away from the ancient dwarf lands. Around his engineering workshop a variety of industries sprang up. A distillery and brewery we...

This post is going to be something of a ramble, as I’m working through my thoughts on the current dwarf army project I am embarking on. On a recent episode of Hive Scum, there was some discussion about coming up with lore and story for armies on the table. One of the suggestions that I really liked was having names and histories for each unit. This helped resolve a bit of an issue I have been having with my dwarf army. Most of my army has been recently acquired, and I have more models than I know what to do with currently. I wanted to develop a narrative for my army, but I’m trying to figure out how to bring it all together. I will probably be playing predominantly The Old World, so I picked up the Arcane Journal for the Dwarf Mountain Holds. In that book, they list two armies of renown (I think that’s what they were called), which are themed lists. The two lists are polar opposites, but they each get at something core to the dwarf sensibility. The Royal Clans take no gunpowder...

I've been quiet for a few weeks, but I have still been busy working in the dungeon! Stepping away from IG has been restful, and it has inclined me to also take a step back from a lot of other obligations in my life and re-orient some of my priorities. I've been enjoying my quiet time and have been using that extra time to read through The Old World rulebooks which I picked up on a lark. I've played a fair amount of OPR Regiments over the last year (and have loved it so much), but something about the crunch and the character drew me back into the world of Warhammer Fantasy. I've been building lists, theory crafting, and digging my old dwarf army out of storage and bits boxes. In fact, I've been buying and sourcing dwarf models from anywhere I can find them (huge shout out to my bud Rory for giving me a ziploc full of dwarf warriors). My existing dwarf models were on a mix of 20 and 25 mm, and a mix of square and round bases. They are also painted in...