How to Paint Dwarfen Mountain Holds

Dwarfs reward a slower recipe than most rank-and-file armies, because you need fewer of them. A dwarf unit is twenty models where an equivalent human one is thirty, the models are dense with detail, and the army has no cavalry to eat your evenings. That makes a Mountain Holds force one of the few places you can paint a whole army the careful way and still finish it.

The other thing to know before you start: a third of each model is beard. Plan the beard first, not last.

The signature look

Deep, slightly greyed hold blue on cloaks, hoods and tabards. Warm bronze and gold on helms, buckles, tankards and rune plates. Heavy, unpolished gromril steel with a lot of shadow in it. And a beard that carries the model's only bright colour, whether that is ginger, white or blond.

The whole scheme is a warm-metal-against-cool-cloth trick. Everything else is detail.

The blue

1. Basecoat Kantor Blue, two thin coats. It is darker than it looks in the pot and gives you room to build.
2. Shade the deep folds with Nuln Oil. Dwarf cloth is heavy wool, so the shadows should be genuinely dark.
3. Layer Macragge Blue across the raised folds.
4. Highlight Altdorf Guard Blue on the fold tops, then a fine edge of Fenrisian Grey on hood rims and cloak edges.

Speed route: undercoat Grey Seer, one coat of Ultramarines Blue, then drybrush Fenrisian Grey across the raised wool. Two steps, and the drybrush does the work of two layers on a heavily folded cloak.

Vallejo painters can substitute Imperial Blue into Magic Blue; Army Painter Fanatic gives Deep Blue into Crystal Blue.

Bronze and gold

1. Basecoat Balthasar Gold.
2. Shade Agrax Earthshade.
3. Layer Sycorax Bronze on the raised faces.
4. Highlight Runelord Brass, or Auric Armour Gold where you want a richer metal.

Lords, thanes and rune priests should outshine the line. Start those on Retributor Armour instead and finish with Liberator Gold, and the command group separates itself without a single extra colour. Hashut Copper is worth keeping to hand for tankards, horns and lamp fittings.

For centuries-old bronze, thin Nihilakh Oxide into the recesses of a gyrocopter boiler or an ancestor shrine, and touch a little Kabalite Green onto the flat panels. Verdigris is seasoning; use it on one or two pieces, not on everything metal.

Gromril steel

Leadbelcher basecoat, Nuln Oil all over, Ironbreaker on the plate edges, Stormhost Silver on the very sharpest corners of axe heads and hammer faces. Do not brighten dwarf steel too far - it is cast and hammered, not polished.

For dark gromril on Ironbreakers and Irondrakes, undercoat Abaddon Black, drybrush Leadbelcher hard from above, then edge Ironbreaker. It is faster than the layered version and better suited to those kits.

Beards

Pick one dominant beard colour for the hold and let two or three models per unit break the pattern.

• Ginger, the classic: Mournfang Brown, shade Agrax Earthshade, layer Skrag Brown, highlight Troll Slayer Orange, then Fire Dragon Bright on the plait tips only.
• White, for elders and longbeards: Celestra Grey, shade Nuln Oil, drybrush Longbeard Grey, then White Scar picked along the outermost strands.
• Blond: Zandri Dust, shade Agrax Earthshade, layer Ushabti Bone, highlight Screaming Skull.
• Black: Abaddon Black, drybrush Eshin Grey, edge Dawnstone.

Whichever you choose, work along the direction of the braid rather than across it, and finish by picking out individual strands with the final highlight. A beard is the one place on the model where a slightly scruffy, uneven highlight looks better than a tidy one. Gore-Grunta Fur and Wyldwood each give a decent one-coat beard over a bone undercoat if you are batching.

Runic shields

Runes are freehand, but they are the friendly kind: straight strokes of even width on a flat surface.

1. Finish the shield face completely - basecoat, shade, highlight - before you touch the rune.
2. Sketch the rune lightly in pencil. It wipes off with a damp brush.
3. Thin Balthasar Gold with Lahmian Medium and lay the strokes in, keeping every stroke the same width. Two thin passes beat one thick one.
4. Highlight the inner half of each stroke with Auric Armour Gold so the rune looks engraved rather than printed on.

The reverse also works and suits Ironbreakers: a Leadbelcher shield with the rune in Mephiston Red, edged Evil Sunz Scarlet.

Tips and common mistakes

• Beard before face. Paint the beard, then cut the flesh in above it. Doing it the other way round means tidying a hairline you cannot reach.
• Warm metal, cool cloth. If the bronze drifts silvery or the blue drifts warm, the scheme collapses into one muddy temperature.
• Do not highlight the blue too far. Hold blue should stay deep. Stopping one step short reads as heavy wool; going one step too far reads as sky.
• A small army earns a slower recipe. Twenty dwarfs painted properly beat forty rushed, and you will actually finish them.
• Ration the verdigris. One green-crusted boiler is characterful. A whole army of them looks like Nurgle got in.

When you are happy with the palette, open this scheme in the generator to swap paints between brands, nudge the mood or add a secondary colour.