Onslaught Miniatures produce a wide selection of sci-fi figures that are available in the UK from Vanguard Miniatures. My interest is in their 15mm Grudd or space dwarf range.

This beautifully chunky range of figures has formed a solid chunk of my space dwarf army since they were first launched, so I was really please about a year ago when they added three types of artillery to the collection. I ordered these, then realised that there weren’t really any crew figures to go with them. I could have used normal infantry, but putting the two together just didn’t look right.

Not one to be easily put-off, I e-mailed Onslaught suggesting they do some crew, and got a fairly rapid “great idea” response. So I added the guns to the lead mountain and thought no more about them.

Until, that is, Onslaught announced the next wave of Grudd were now ready for pre-order…and what a wave it was!

Not only was there a new pack of infantry (Jarlsmen, but more of them at a later date) but a whole new selection of officer types and, drum roll please, a pack of weapons engineers to crew the artillery.

Look at those beauties: not just generic empty-hand types but properly thought out castings that lift the entire range.

I am loving all of the five, especially the chap with the huge spanner and the two with the extra arm. Proper dwarf engineers!

These went straight to the front of the painting queue (although it did take me a bit of time to find the guns again!) joining four of the Big Men types: the Warlord, the Old One, the Engineer Lord, and the Warlord on a motortrike. Here are the Big Men:

I do like the Engineer Lord with his two extra arms!

I’ve also had a chance to produce the three artillery pieces as well:

Cracking models, and I like the idea of the Seismic Inducers. All I have to do now is work out how to chrome them in Q13!

All the Grudd are painted with a metallic car spray bought from Halfords: Vauxhall Nautilus Green IIRC. I use that both as an undercoat and as an overcoat on armour and metal. I then paint various bits of detail using standard acrylic metallics (mainly silver and a dull gold) and then anything else with standard acrylics as well.