3 Mini Warhammer Dioramas – Spring Clean 2025

As the title says I’ve started the painting on each of the three dioramas. Rather than work on a single piece to completion I’m switching between them as I wish, doing the larger messy parts first as it gives quick results and gets the general feel of each piece in place fast.

I think the dwarf will probably be the first to be completed. It’s the simplest and the gold and metals are just about done. The rest is really just about filling in the details.

I’m mostly working on the base and background terrain first before I start on the chaos marine lord later. I’ve just about worked in the base coats and next will be washes and details to finish this off.

I haven’t really done much with this so far apart from some priming and basic drybrushing to see the detail.
I’d like the keep to painting of the bat as I’m pretty happy with it already. It was repainted a few years ago to use in a game of Rangers of Shadowdeep.

After making sure I was happy with the placement of all the parts and adding a few extra loose coins around the main treasure pile I glued everything together and pinned the dwarf to the base.

This was then primed with Halford’s finest (old formula, I’ve heard their newest cans of grey primer use a different solvent based formula which could potentially be unsuitable for miniatures). I then gave the model a drybrush to bring the detail out and to help with what I’ll be painting.

I was happy with the placement of everything for the Chaos Space Marine diorama so that was all glued together apart from the miniature. I pinned his feet and checked the placement but as the terrain behind would block access for painting I temporarily glued him to a base.

Then this was all primed and drybrushed.

It was time to take one last look at my 30 year old paint job of my vampire lord miniature before he went into the detol.

A day later he rose up out of the detol completely a new (with a little help from me, a toothbrush, and some scrubbing).

I glued, used filler and ground texture, and pinned everything together, leaving only the vampire’s cape off.
Now I just need to prime this and I can start painting.

For the undead I wanted to use one of the very first vampire models I ever owned. I think  I’ve had this guy since 1993 or 1994, sometime around then. I’ve been meaning to repaint him for ages now so this is the opportunity.

Of course having him in a cemetery raising a skeleton would work well so I quickly mocked up something that would fit onto a 60mm base.

The skeleton you see here is one of original cream coloured plastic skeletons from the Skeleton Horde box I bought when I was still at school in the early 90s. I didn’t want to use one of my intact miniatures so this old broken one I kept would once again see service.

The grave was a resin piece I got (along with many others ) for my Garden of Morr project last year.

That bat (an old metal miniature from the bat swarm blister pack) rounded off the composition.

Oh, and the shield if from an old regiment of renown miniature that I’ve had in my bits box long after the original miniature was sold. I once had a fantasy chaos army in the late 90s.

I quickly settled on an old second edition, or third edition (I cannot remember) metal chaos lord character who was general of my army since I bought him new many years ago.

Looking through some bits and old terrain I grabbed a piece from the first Kill Team Box and cut it down to side to provide a good backdrop. The grid floor was cut out from a fish tank base (I have a big bag I got from eBay a few years ago) and I added plasticard to taste. I later removed the green wires after priming as they distracted from the floor pattern.

Last year I sold my old Dwarf and Vampire Counts Warhammer armies after keeping them stored away since the end times in the vain hope that they’d ever see the battlefield again. I realised that it was time to sell when Warhammer The Old World was released and I felt nothing towards it, or to going back and playing a previous version of Fantasy Battle again. I kept a hand full of miniatures, ones that I either liked and wanted to paint or ones that could be useful in games that I play now.

A year later it was the turn of my Warhammer 40k armies, a Tau Combat Patrol and my large Chaos Marines force, again keeping just a hand full of chaos marines that I liked.

Below are some photos showing the models I didn’t sell for each army. The only miniatures missing are the ones I ended up using for the dioramas I’m building for this project.

Recently I was going through my old miniatures when I thought that I’d like to finally paint my old dwarf general, an old Dwarf Wars king from West Wind Productions that I used for my old Dwarf army for years.

Looking through the same box I found my piles of resin treasure I had spare from a Frostgrave project a few years ago. I quicken sorted through my bases and found that an mdf 60mm base would be suitable to have the dwarf king with his pile of treasure, a fitting retirement for an old general. The idea then progressed to why not do a similar thing with an old undead character and a chaos marine character.