Blake's Lord Gromson's Imperial Dwarfs - A tribute army to Wayne England

Most of you probably know who Wayne England was...and his army that appeared in White Dwarf 135 launched thousands of dwarf armies upon the world. I always wanted to paint up a unit like the longbeards from that issue. I covered the hardship I had finding Bombo (Or Axe 17 in the catalogues!) (two of which Wayne used - and I could never find).

Then Wayne and I had reconnected, and I had helped get some of his shirts here for Oldhammer USA, and art prints that he sent based on his new gobbo artwork. He was talking about getting them made into miniatures (Earl and the gobbos would have been incredible!). He was kind enough to send me some original artwork, and I was thinking of taking the new minis, painting them up and making a cool triptych with two pieces of art and a box with glass for the extra unit.

When we all heard the news that Wayne had passed, I wanted to do a tribute unit, painted like his WD 135 unit. I thought that could take place of the Earl minis that I had planned to use. He had confided in me that he had sold that unit off to someone at the studio (or at GW I believe, and I don't think he remembered who), and regretted it. When the Old World Army Challenge came up, it was perfect because after a year, thanks to Brian Kirkell, I had finally assembled the entire unit.

So I am going to do dwarfs, and to be honest, so I can work up to this, I'm going to try to end with the Longbeard unit. I just did a massive project for a game I ran at Gencon for Mantic Kings of War (55,000-60,000 points) painted entirely in the army painter method (about 10 days of painting, not counting assembly and basing). There is almost no detail in the entire army. (It still looked good on Rusty Gouldman's boards though!) So this is a completely different challenge. Paint them all as well as I can.

I also love the old style imperial dwarfs with lots of splashes of color. Of course, like Wayne, Blue will have to be in every unit.

So here is my army list that I am committing to paint:

20 Crossbowmen - 260
20 Warriors - 200
20 Longbeards - 280
Stone Thrower - 54 (+ crew)
Cannon 69 + Crew
Level 20 hero 168 (Lord Gromson)

Total 1031

* Note will be painting up the required 40 Warriors, only need 20 with the Longbeards for the 1000 point challenge though. Also, Longbeard unit will have Prince Karadim, Level 10 hero, just like Wayne's unit.

I'll be Using a Goblobber for the Stone Thrower, and I dug around in my old dwarf bag to find a bunch of different models (trying to get as little repetition as possible).