Khazad!

I rarely buy any Lord of the Rings miniatures. It's by far my favorite work of fiction and I love many of the GW sculpts, but the high price tag proves a big barrier to assembling any armies. However, I've been in a Tolkien mood lately, re-reading LotR for the tenth time, so I treated myself to some Khazad Guard last weekend and got them all painted up!

I really like these sculpts. For the inspiration, the sculptor appears to have gone back to the Silmarillion, in particular the Dwarves of Belegost at the Nirnaeth Arnoediad.

The miniatures, as befit Dwarves, are covered in armor, including the face-masks mentioned in the Silmarillion. I think the armor turned out really well and will make them stand out against the primarily dark-clothed Orcs that they will be facing.

Many people paint the armor in a mixture of silver and bronze- while this looks good, I wanted to stick to a more realistic, almost Anglo-Saxon palette.

I used more muted colors on most of the clothes, to try and ground the armor. On all of the models there is a sort of arrow-shape on the greaves- I painted these all alike to serve as a sign of the Dwarves' house or lord.

These models are useful for pretty much any dwarves from Middle-Earth's long history, whether fighting the Goblins at Aznulbizar, or aiding the Elves before the gates of Thangorodrim.

Baruk Khazad! Khazad aimenu!