Oldhammer Orc Archers

My latest unit is a collection of orcs with bows. Four of these are classic Kev Adams sculpts from Harboth's Orc Archers (one of the boxed Regiments of Renown) and are recent acquisitions from evilbay. The remaining orc is from GWs first range of Middle Earth miniatures, one of the Orcs of the White Hand. These predate the films and look more like Citadel's Warhammer orcs.  I had a small collection of this range when they came out and I stitched got most of them.  You can see a couple of the elves here.

The new unit of Archers (dum de dum de dum de dum)

There's not a lot to say about the painting, I used my standard orc painting method, but there's a little detail that may not be obvious at first sight.  The quivers on Harboth's lads all have faces on them.  I'm tempted to say that these are the remains of trophies, probably dwarves given the regiment's backstory. They are mostly hidden by the back-slung shield or other equipment, so I just gave them a leathery colour. I might lighten the colour on the two more visible quivers (Trooper 6) to look more like parchment or tanned skin.

Quiver on Trooper 2 (and 9). They even look to have a little bit of a fringe 

Quiver on Trooper 6.  Not a happy face

I stuck with the idea of the orcs taking trophy shields from defeated foes. This time the shields have a pale hand, partly in tribute to the White Hand orc who currently leads them. It also gave me the chance to reference a shield famous in Warhammer history, though I've chosen a left hand rather than a right hand. If I do another unit belonging to this tribe I can switch this round.

There are two duplicates in the unit, but by giving them different skin tones and different shields I hope that's not too obvious.

The White Hand orc

That classic shield

Trooper 6

And trooper 6 again

 

As usual I can say that I really enjoyed these. There are a couple of points that I'm not sure of though. 

I'm also not completely happy with the severed hand. Perhaps it should be bigger on the shields?

I've also given Trooper 2 and Trooper 9 liveried jacks, again taken from their enemies. This does make them look a bit regimented for orcs, perhaps I've gone too far? Let me know in the comments.

I have another five orcs with bows to paint, again including a Middle Earth orc, but also a couple of Marauder orcs.  I might move on to these, either as an expansion of the above unit, or a new unit in their own right.  Then again, I have some orcs with spears, and the heroes I showed in the previous post.

A Goal for my Orcs

Collecting Random Orcs

It won't have escaped notice that I've been painting and collecting orcs recently. Some of these are minis that somehow escaped the purges by lurking in the bottom of boxes or, in at least one case, behind books on a shelf. 

Quite a few are swaps and I've also bought off various Facebook sites and even evilbay (with very strict spending limits).

But until recently this collecting has been random. Simply stuff I've seen that took my fancy or that reminds me of my old WFB orc army (though better painted), and I've really enjoyed collecting and painting them, even if it was in a rather aimless way.

Now I've got a goal to aim for.

Collecting Orcs with a Purpose

I suppose this project has always been in the back of my mind, but there are quite a few specific minis that work well for it, and I'd given up hope of ever owning them (I did sell off quite a few years ago, much to my regret now).

But then I recently got these two for a very reasonable price from a Facebook group.

 

The next day I found this on evilbay and put in a cheeky offer, which was accepted.

I've even got this chap, a purge survivor.

So suddenly I've got a good number of the specific minis, though, sadly, not the one unique (and very expensive) orc mini; I'll have to improvise for him.

But What?

Can you tell where this is heading, if you catch my drift?

Board Game Night - ERA and Top Dog

The MEGAforce played another game of ERA Medieval Age the other evening.

As always, it was great fun.  I thought folks might like to see what the boards looked like at the end of the game.

T'Other One's winning burg. A large walled town which he initially filled with low value housing before adding higher status builds. By the end of the game he had an impressive eleven dice 

My second place  culture rich town. That's a university, a monastery and three churches! Small but (nearly) perfectly formed. I added two of the churches in the final turn and never got to roll their dice.

And joint fourth place. Both the towns have quite a bit of empty space ideal for future development, but the game finished at this point.

We also had a quick game of Top Dog, a kid's card game that was quick, simple and fun to play. Essentially it's about choosing sled dog teams to complete for trophies out of random decks of cards. As the dogs include chihuahuas and poodles, you might not always get a great team.  

I can't see folks clamouring to play this regularly, but it certainly fills in a bit of time at the end of the evening if the main game has finished early.

Actually, the basic system is so simple that I can see the potential to reskin it* to a more fantasy or SciFi setting, perhaps with a little added complexity with extra cards with hazards etc.

If you have the same dog type, their value is multiplied rather than added to determine who wins each race.  Thus the polar bear wins this race 18 to 14.  Players with the same score have collided and are out of that race.

There are various different trophies to win, the overall winner given by the player (musher) with the highest value trophies.

Brian Nelson Big'un Command

I may have given the impression that I really like Brian Nelson's Big'uns when I painted them here. 

Ages ago I was given an orc standard bearer by Bodvoc, when painting the Big'uns I realised that he was from the Big'un command set.  In fact it was the skull on the top of the standard that inspired me to add skulls to all the shields.

I'd stripped him a while ago (sorry Bodvoc) and felt he'd be ideal with my just painted troops. I was thinking of him as sort of joint standard and leader, after all, the rest of the command were difficult to find, and expensive.

Discovery

Then Snapfit (check out his blog Da Green Horde) commented that Games Workshop have re-released them for The Old World, so I quickly ordered them through my FLGS (these re-releases are only available for a limited time), and here they are.

The three command figures. The standard is the original one, but the musician and leader are the new castings.

The musician.  I like the huge skull for a drum.  I was tempted to paint it red, but in the end stuck with a red skull for the beater

Standard Bearer.  I'll do the actual banners separately.  I have something in mind for them for the whole force

The Leader.  He uses an old elven shield.  He has even managed to get a red skull icon crafted for it (taken from a goblin shield sprue)

The bronze scale armour was fun to do, and makes him stand out against his followers

I also found another trooper mini on one of the Facebook trade groups (thanks Ben for directing me to it).  I chose a different skin tone to his twin.

Just like the troops they are lovely minis, a joy to paint. As befits their status there is a bit more detail on them, but still not so much that I got swamped with it or struggled to know what things are.

Painting, of course, was using my standard orc method, with just a bit of extra detailing.  

I've gone for 'trophy shields' again, both are based on some of Bodvoc's elves as visible on his blog here.  I used a plastic skull icon on the leader's shield to make him seem more important.

Once again I really enjoyed them, and now I have a suitable command for my small but growing orc force.

All the Brian Nelson Big'uns together, an impressive looking unit.

More Brian Nelson

I think I have enough of these now, though if any more turn up for a reasonable price I might add another trooper with axe and sword.  But Snapfit has challenged me to paint the accompanying shaman, Nazgob, so now he's in the painting queue. There are a few other bits and pieces before him, but I'm looking forward to seeing what I can do with him.

What Shall We Do With A Headless Orc*

When I showed the second lot of Fantasy Regiments orcs I mentioned that I had one more, but that he was damaged. I said that I had some ideas, so here are my thoughts.

Option 1

Merijn has very kindly offered to search his bits box for a spare head, which would solve that problem. There's still the issue of the back.

Option 2

I wondered about sculpting a cloak out of milliput or green stuff, which should be fairly easy. But I think, given how similar the rest of the rank and file are, it would look odd.

Option 3

I also wondered about slinging history shield on his back, thus covering the damage. But why is he doing this, and why does he have his left fist raised? (Actually, that's easy, he's probably about to punch someone).

Then I realised that the left hand could be holding something else. Although it's next to the body, a staff would nicely fit.

So I'm suggesting a standard. To make him as different as possible I can give him a spare head from one of the newer orc kits and probably change his weapon blade too. The standard pole will be brass rod, and I found a nice topper amongst some odd bits left over from the Battle of Skull Pass starter set (just the Bad Moon, not the skulls and mushrooms).

So that's my thoughts. If you've any other suggestions, or you feel that any one option is miles better than the others, please leave a comment.

EDIT

You can see what I did here.

*"Earlie in the morning"

More Fantasy Regiments Orcs

In my original post about the Fantasy Regiments Orcs I mentioned that I'd found a couple more. Well these are now painted up and ready to join their comrades in arms.

Unfortunate bit of varnish frosting on the shield.  I can paint that out

Painting was pretty much my standard orc method, but as I was only painting two of these I took a bit more time over the highlights, and I think they look better as a result.  I'll admit to being a little unenthusiastic when I did the last lot.  But now these old models are growing on me!

The Unit Grows

The unit so far

Future Plans

These do occasionally crop up online, and for a reasonable price I might increase the unit size.

I do have one more already, but he is in a poor way.  Not only is he missing ahead, but someone (not me) must have glued a shield on his back, so the mail detail is lost in a large patch.

Headless orc (Bodvoc's favourite kind)

and with a bad back

But I have plans for him.  You'll have to wait and see how they pan out.

Fantasy Regiments Orcs

The next addition to my Orc force is from way back in 1987. 

Six more jolly boys

Fantasy Regiments

When it was released we thought the Fantasy Regiments box was rather wonderful.  It contained ten sprues, each holding an orc, a goblin, a Skaven, a dark elf, a wood elf and a dwarf. Each had two head options and the melee troops (orc, skaven and dwarf) had a second weapon option. That's sixty minis in one box!

Although the detail was slight compared to modern plastics, they were great ways of building cheap units. There's some variability with the head and weapon options, and packs of metal command minis were available to round out units. There was also a sprue of embossed shields.

I had two boxes worth plus oddments back in the day, and you can see both the orcs and the dwarves fighting at Orc's Drift here. I remember painting the dwarves, elves, orcs and goblins. I'm not sure about the skaven and I know I never touched the dark elves, though I use some of the heads on the wood elves.

Of course, most of these went in one or other of the culls (though I still have a lot of unbuilt dark elves), but I did find a handful of orcs and a couple of the metal command minis ( Commander Holbrog and Luglud the musician) in my current ongoing clear-out. Enough to build a unit of six certainly, but how well do these old minis hold up today?

Planning 

Like the Big'uns, there's not a lot of different colour choices on the plastic troops. They do have a bit of a tunic below the mail coat (avoiding the chafing that Bodvoc commented on with the Big'uns), otherwise it's skin, metal, belt and a pouch. The command have more choices,  though the only significant amount of cloth is the leader's trousers. I decided to go for blue or red for the troops' tunics, and stripes on the leader's trousers. Both command minis also have 'hair', but I'm going for the WH40K idea of this actually being artificial. Maybe not squigs, but certainly not natural hair. In fact Luglud's hair sort of reminds me of the Beetle wigs popular in the sixties. Anyway, since it's not actual hair, it can be any colour, so light blue for him, and pink for Holbrog's little topknot.

Painting 

I used my standard orc method, but there were a couple of problems. The shallower detail and rather smooth surfaces meant that it wasn't as successful. If you check out the darkest skinned trooper you'll see that the highlights are pretty messy. The idea of extreme highlights doesn't really apply when there aren't any sculpted extremes.

Also I tried a different highlight on top of the VGC Goblin Green, by lightening it with VGC Khaki. This looked okay (subject to the lack of well defined highlights mentioned above) but once the shade wash was applied, I didn't think it looked great.

Still, I'm happy with Holbrog, and I can add better highlighting to Luglud at a later date.

Shields 

My original unit used 'Bad Moon' designs from the included sprue with a few of the larger Marauder shields for variety. I'm honouring that choice, with the addition of some blank shields to which I added a more modern Bad Moon icon. As with the Big'uns here I  gave the shields a 'field' reflecting the original owner. I'll paint some of my other forces using these designs, and I've sneaked in a reference to Bodvoc's dwarves on one of the shields.

That tuft of grass has got to tickle a bit

Commander Holbrog

Luglud

I usually say how much fun these were, and how pleased I am with them. That's certainly true of the metal minis, the leader in particular. The plastic orcs are OK. I think my technique isn't really effective on these, and I certainly didn't try anything like this on the original minis, they'd have simply been drybrushed metals (just chainmail silver, no bronze accents), then flat colours for everything else, Goblin Green skin of course. These are certainly no worse than my original effort.

Anyway, another unit of six, and I've since found a couple more who will soon get painted up to join them. I'd quite like the other two metal minis, standard bearer and champion, but since there's no great visual link between the metal command and the plastic troops, it doesn't really matter.