Dwarven christmas painting

Rumour is that 2014 is going to see the release of the much anticipated 8th edition dwarf army book. On top of this a number of resculpts and new units should hopefully be joining the dwarven ranks. In anticipation I finally got around to painting a number of my models, though in truth I have an entire battalion box to put together let alone paint the 30+ more warriors (maybe longbeards) I need to paint.

 So first up I painted my small unit of slayers. Its a small unit for a couple of reasons. Firstly everything I've read about slayers and even my own gut feeling has always been that they are just not very effective in games, not matter how epic they're fluff/background is. Secondly I have know for a few years that when they did redo dwarfs (which if I'm honest I had hoped would have been sooner but hey) that they would redo the metal models, i.e. slayers, hammerers and ironbreakers. So I got this bunch second hand and I'm'm pretty happy with the way they look. technically I have 2 of the deamonslayer models in the unit (you can see a photo of one of them below) so I may leave it as a unit of 10 and have the deamonslayer hiding somewhere, not sure. Also in this batch is a dwarf slayer from the oathsworn kickstarter (see link below), he's a fantastic looking model, and encouragingly he fits in reasonably well with the other slayers, despite being a little more normal in proportions than those old models used to be (dwarves with big heads and hands). It's encouraging because the newer plastic models will if I'm' right look closer to this oathsworn model than the current ones do, so hopefully I can just buy a regiment and mix and match happily. Of course all of this depends on how they change the rules, so here is hoping for some runic tattoos for ++ invulnerable saves.  (http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/oathsworn/oathsworn-heroes-of-the-dwarfs)

I had some old school dwarf warrior back from early 2000, and then I also got hold of some more because I was ambivalent about some aspects of the newer dwarf warriors (which were rumoured to be replaced, though my gut tells me not). I've put together 20 warriors with great weapons (and i'm tempted to put throwing axes on their backs to potentially make them rangers). Another unit is armed with hand weapons and shields, and contains about ~25 models. I painted the line models first which is why the command models are at the back.

This is a single model close up shot. I've based the models with the mournfang snow texture paint.

Lastly I painted a regiment of Ironbreakers. Personally these were my favourite to paint, partially because I love the models, and the also because they were probably the easiest to paint. I'll be interested to see how the new models look. I can see them being pretty kick-ass, but likeliness is it is a shared box with hammerers, and as i don't have any of those and anticipate them looking epic i'll likely make them as hammerers. Either way though i'm pretty excited. I've included a close of the champion (cannot remember his name right now, I want to say Lodewarden but that might be Miners)

 (Grombrindal the White dwarf is accompanying this unit, which is somewhat coincidental as news that the old white dwarf magazine is changing to a weekly event with the warhammer visions taking the monthly role having been sprung on us yesterday (or rather that was the first announcement, it had been news for a week beforehand)