MATT HASTINGSHOMEFRONT END PHILOSOPHYPROJECTSTHREE HAMMERS
Art · Sep 24, 2026

The Sharpshooter, five headings out of eight

A rifle unit with a shield, and an honest sheet of the attack frames that did not work.

The Ironforge Sharpshooter's animated candidates, which headings passed, which fired sideways, and why the sheet of failures is the normal output.

Dwarves in this campaign have early black-powder firearms; that was a setting decision made on day five ("they need a rifle unit for sure"). The Ironforge Sharpshooter is the Bronzebeard route's rifle unit, trained at the Foundry Annex, and the open question was what it carries with the rifle. The answer, given on the Codex side of the project and recorded from there: a shield and a rifle, not a shield and a bow.

Back row: guard, shieldguard, rifleman, bowman, guard, rifleman, shieldguard. Front: the Sharpshooter idle, firing south-east and east, and walking. Shown at two times play size.
Back row: guard, shieldguard, rifleman, bowman, guard, rifleman, shieldguard. Front: the Sharpshooter idle, firing south-east and east, and walking. Shown at two times play size.

What came back

The look is a flat-topped, brass-rimmed pot helm, steel pauldrons, a blue heater shield on the left arm and a long rifle. Walk and death animate in all eight headings. The attack is clean in five: one readable release, a muzzle flash along the facing, the shield held, then a reload beat.

What did not

In the south, south-west and north headings the model levelled the rifle toward screen-right regardless of where the unit faces. Those three are flagged, not imported, and the lane stopped at 39 of its 40-generation budget rather than roll the dice again.

The attack strips for the four re-rolled headings. The red box marks the release frame. South-west and south fire sideways; north only just reads.
The attack strips for the four re-rolled headings. The red box marks the release frame. South-west and south fire sideways; north only just reads.

This is what most art work on the project looks like: a sheet with the failures on it, measured (foot baseline, canvas per heading, stride, team-colour recolour), and a decision about what is good enough to go in the game.