Short, Plastic and Cheap! EM4 Dwarves

As regular readers may be aware, I'm quite fond of the old Grenadier Model's Fantasy Warriors game.  The original game came with two plastic armies of Orcs and Dwarves, each with three different models - and did it before Warhammer Fantasy Battles did!

I wasn't able to get the game when originally out, but you can still get the models from EM4 miniatures, and they are ridiculously cheap!  I finally got around to ordering some  of everything to bulk out the dwarf and orc armies that I seem to have developed almost by accident.  I got nearly 100 models for about twenty quid, so now I have a pile of grey plastic!

I thought I would start with the Dwarf crossbows.  My understanding is they were sculpted by Mark Copplestone, but to fit in with the style of Nick Lund.  They are cast in a firm grey plastic, which is solid but easy enough to cut, and takes polystyrene cement well.  I did a couple of helmet swaps for variety (these came from the GW Empire Militia and Frostgrave soldiers), which were really easy to do.

Unpainted, they look a bit basic, and they do have a really annoying casting lug on the back.  But the lug can be chopped away fairly easily.  The crossbow is a little odd - the arms are very short, but I think they actually paint up really nicely overall!

Pre painting (you can see the orcs in progress in the background)

 

You can just about see the lug, but it's cleaned up pretty well

Style and size wise they seem to fit in pretty well with my other Nick Lund Dwarves (the difference in flock actually stands out more than the models)!  They look slightly shorter, but I think that is partly because the metal models have an MDF base, and then quite a thick metal base as well.

One issue to be aware of is that they come on a roughly 25mm integral base.  As most of my Dwarfs are on 20mm bases, I wanted them to fit in.  Ironic given recent announcements by GW about the forthcoming Old World!  For a couple of them I chopped the existing base down to size, but realised they were solid enough for me to just cut them off the integral base and mount them on a ready cut base, which was quicker and neater overall.  Could be more interesting with the spear Dwarfs though, as I don't think the pose will rank up well on a 20x20!