This may or may not have shown up here before.

Miniatures of the North, one sculptor's branch on Anvil Industry, are in the slow process of releasing a full range of evil dwarves tailored to Lotr's 25mm scale and Dwarven proportions. Inspirational source was eastern dwarves serving a Dark Lord, in some fantasy setting based on Tolkien's.



This might be particularly interesting because 4/7 great dwarf tribes migrated eastward to the Orocarni mountain range. They'd occupy a grey area of sorts, since we know that all races except elves fought on both sides during the Last Alliance, and vast swathes of the eastern and southern lands were under Sauron's sway; yet all seven dwarf tribes sent forces to cleanse out the Misty Mountains of goblin infestation, brutal style, ending with the battle outside Khazad-Dûm.

These fallen dwarves could in other words make an allied contingent for evil forces in general, including orcs (particularly since Nogrod dwarves in an early draft of the Silmarillion employed orcish mercenaries to take Doriath...); easterlings in particular because of neighbour alliances; or westerly dwarves. You could also play out some brutal mayhem in the distant east, with territorial contests and skirmishes between orcs, fallen dwarves, easterlings and variags of Khand.

Range currently consists of pickaxemen, crossbowmen, command group and a sorceror. Elite dragon guard, spearmen, some character/s and (Greek fire) flamethrowers are to be released.

In my opinion their style fits well into Lotr, though their shields in particular could have made do with more details, or at least rivets. The use of Chaos Dwarf-inspired curlybeard, Babylonian style, is not unwelcome.

What say you?

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Admiralty Miniatures

I like it! Cool idea, more type of armies in the game would not hurt in my opinion. But they have to have big differences from the "good" dwarves in details and models so it is kinda clear that they are not on the good side.

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"That still only counts as one!"

I think the guys who are doing the sculpting have a WIP page on the site actually. That or someone was following their progress. Either way I think they look pretty nice for an alternative dwarven force. Though they do look a bit like the warhammer universes chaos dwarves with those beards.

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"Draw your sword with a heavy heart, but swing it with a heavy hand"

I think that "evil" dwarves aren't really evil, they're just mercenaries working for someone who happens to be evil. If they ever decided to do "evil" dwarves, I think that they would have to do it in such a way that they can ally with certain factions on both sides. For instance, I figure that they would be willing to fight for any human or Dwarf army, but wouldn't ally themselves with elves or Goblins, and wouldn't be too friendly with orcs either.

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"Leave Sauron to me."
If you're in the Raleigh, NC area, let me know.

Indeed. I was recently reminded that no dwarves ever fought willingly for Melkor or Sauron, whatever the tales of men claim. However, difference in armour style doesn't make them raw evil. It's just a cultural equipment style difference. Paint them in bronze armour, and you tie them nicely in with Easterlings. Avoid all-dark Mordor colour schemes, and they will look like distant cousins to the western dwarves rather than some downright evil stunties who never would side with softies.

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Admiralty Miniatures

Received an order and painted a couple of Fallen Dwarves to try things out. Gotta paint every now and then in between sculpting rounds!

For Lotr, these are intended to be Orocarni Naugrim, a.k.a. Red Mountains Dwarves, from a large mountain range far off to the east off the standard map of 3rd Age Middle Earth, where 4/7 Dwarf fathers awoke and started their tribes. One would expect contact between these easterly Dwarves and the human Easterling peoples to be frequent, particularly since some snippet in Silmarillion made it clear that western human groups had their languages and culture influenced mostly by Elves, while eastern groups got the same from Dwarves (and incidentally also displaced nomadic Elf wanderers).

Painted in bronze and red to match Weta Workshop's Easterlings:



They're nice miniatures, but their detail level is slightly insufficient in the basic miniatures. That was easily fixed by sculpting a piece of belt gear (pouch, bag), adding bowstring and arrow to the crossbow, and adding random shield rim details to the shield. Rivets would perhaps have looked better, but sculpted rivets fall off. Either they're cast on the model, or you go for something with larger adhesive area.

These models are warmly recommended and will make neat allies and enemies alike to both western Dwarves, Easterlings, men of Dale, Khand and roving Orcs. A small warband to add to some larger force should prove a manageable little addition to the Lotr collection, and a lesser purchase. Looking forward to future releases of Fallen Dwarves!

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Admiralty Miniatures