Dwarf Marines

This post is copied from one of my other blogs online. I work professionally in the games industry as well as being a hobbyist myself. This is meant to be the first post in what will hopefully be my outlet for the hobby side of my work as opposed to the professional side.

So, what’s this Dwarf Marine thing all about? It’s my most recent hobby project that is a bit of an ongoing thing that seems to get bigger every time i do work on it. Why am i creating it? Well, that’s because i don’t have enough projects in my life and i love the hobby. I started playing D&D at the age of 10 with my closest friend, which lead on to Call of Cathulu, Space Crusade, Hero Quest, and Rogue Trader. A lot of my youth was spend reading up on law, rule sets, creating scenarios and backstories for my characters and forces as well as drawing and, in some cases, converting the physical representation of my characters from readily available models and putty. Though my passion ended up being animation (the subject of my degree) it wasn’t that much of a surprise that my work-life took me back to miniatures and games. I never stopped converting models and my armies have always been heavily converted.

With a huge part of my job being sculpting and casting, along with the advent of readily available 3D printers, it has meant that not just my work has been able to evolve with things, but also my hobby time has jumped forward with a lot of my projects involving both traditionally sculpted/modelled and 3D printed components.

 

Why did i start this project?

With the way that GW has gone with their 40K models i became a bit bored with the standard marines and decided to resurrect an old project, albeit from scratch. With butty and printer at the ready i started to put together my first few Dwarf Marines, initially for a Kill Team force. It wasn’t too long until i got the bug and have now started to create a full Dwarf Marine 40K army. It is my intention to make at least one of every Marine 40K unit type, both vanilla and Primaris in Dwarf form and in my own style. Where possible i will use GW bits for the weapons etc, but i want it to fit to my vision of how a Dwarf Space Marine army would be. I am also using a lot of models from my own miniatures range that i think will fit the overall aesthetic of my planned army.

Anyway… i’m aware that i’ve prattled on for quite a bit now, so let’s get to what you want to see. The Miniatures.

Caveat: At this point i have not painted any of the models.

The first force created for the Dwarf Marines including a Lieutenant, 2x tactical squads, an Infiltrator squad, Tartaros squad and Contemptor Mortis Dreadnought.

 

Lets have a closer look then!

You can see here in the first force image that i have used a lot of GW bits. The Tartaros models are using the legs from my Bahara Initiative EVO armour veterans that you can find over on the gydran.com website. The Contemptor Mortis is using various pieces from the Robot & Drones range of models with the HBR model being used as the base. The legs for the tactical squads were sculpted using the White Dwarf in Primaris armour as a reference for size and shape. The Infiltrator squad was created using 3D printed backpacks, so they are to scale, and i sculpted a Phobos pattern primaris armour in Dwarf scale from scratch and cast up to make a lot more squads.

The first Lieutenant for my force sporting a grav pistol and power sword.

The Tartaros pattern Terminators used a mixture of Forge World parts, GW parts and my own EVO trooper legs.

The Contemptor Mortis utilised few GW bits (the head and some icons) and relied mostly on and HBR body with two Darri Pattern Battle Mech arms that i had lying around the studio.

The first of the two tactical squads using mostly GW parts with a few cast components.

The second tactical squad, and i’m really happy with how they turned out.

The first of the Infiltrator squads i’m planning to do. The second squad is already selected and i just need to spend some time putting it together. I may convert the second squad a lot more.

Other models ready to go…

Since creating these i have started on quite a few other models that will be joining the ranks of under-painted models very soon. This includes A Phobos Librarian, two Dreadnoughts, a chaplain in terminator armour (conversion), Primaris (phobos armour) apothecary, Veteran squad, Eliminator squad and scout sniper squad. There are also some vehicles i’ve been working on that include some of my future releases for my range that i already have a plan to convert as well as some bespoke models just for this project, but they will be in a separate post all together. For now though i’ll put some of the finished ones below.

This is the first of the two dreadnoughts i have done for my force, already primed up and ready to go. This uses the Heishi Corp Battle Robot from my range of miniatures as a base and a few GW bits.

The rear view of the robot. Its mid section was cut shorter to make it look more Dwarf-like in stature.

Using the same base model (or rather a miscast one i had lying around the office) i put together the second one using a R&D missile launcher array i had on my desk and other GW bits to bring it together.

The other arm was a Space marine plasma cannon that i converted to fit on the arm. There’s still a little detail to do on the cannon, but the other part has already been undercoated since taking this image and ready to go.

This one was a lot of fun to do. There were a lot of GW bits used with a 3D printed backpack. It works pretty well and just needs a little bit of undercoat to add it to the queue.

You can see that the Dwarf Marine librarian uses a mixture of GW parts, my own cast Dwarf Infiltrator sculpt, 3D prints and green stuff sculpting.

This has been a bit of a long post so far, and i think we’re now up to speed on where we are with the project. The next post will be a lot shorter i promise.

 

What’s next on the list?

Currently there are plans for a Hellblaster squad, a second Infiltrator squad, Reavers, Intercessors and assault squad. I have also started work on converting a Phobos pattern body into a Gravis armour body so that i can add Aggressors and Eradicators to the mix. There are so many options now though and by the time i’ve completed the extensive list i already have there will no doubt be more to add as GW add to their ever increasing list of unit types for 40K. Vehicle wise, there are quite a few things that are in the works and i will be making the next post all about these and where i am with them at the moment.

For now, that’s it and i will catch you in the next Hobby Time update.

Howrith