The Severed Hand Orcs

I discussed my initial ideas for collecting orcs based around the classic Orc's Drift campaign pack here. My fairly random painting has produced more Severed Hand Orcs than any other tribe so far, so I thought it was time to assess what I have and what I want to complete them.

The Tribe of the Severed Hand

The Severed Hand are led by Hagar Sheol. The champion Grashak Kra has a pack of ten 'Hobhounds'. There are also thirty warriors in light armour; twenty also have shields and spears and ten have bows.

Looking at what I've got painted, I've managed sixteen orcs, half of the infantry.

Half a Tribe

I'll be treating the twenty spears as two lots of ten, and mixing orcs with spears and orcs with other melee weapons.

Ok, the picture loses much of the details, but you get the idea

Here are five archers, five orcs armed with miscellaneous hand weapons and six spear armed orcs.  

You can find more on the individual groups here for the archers, here for the spears and here for the warriors.

Everything But The Hobhounds

The good news is that I have most of the rest of the tribe in the unpainted pile (see below).  The only thing I'm missing is Hobhounds.  I do have one, but even back when we played through the campaign we had to substitute.  I used the old Citadel D&D Blink Dogs as Hobhounds back then, and I still have some of them, albeit not in great condition.

I checked the description of Hobhounds in the Battle Bestiary and they are any kind of dog commonly domesticated by various races.  The original minis were part of the Hobgoblin range.  They do occasionally crop up in the second hand market, but as Hobgoblins are a fairly sought after army, they aren't particularly cheap, especially for something with relatively limited use.  I'll have to improvise with a selection of various dog models, I'm sure I can find something. If you have any suggestions, please leave a comment.

I've read theories that a more modern version of the campaign would replace the Hobhounds with Squigs (Copper Oracle suggests this in his inspirational Old World Army Challenge Orc's Drift entries here, and the OWAC is well worth checking out).  I suspect that's right, GW tightened up their vision of the greenskins as later editions came out.  But for this project I'm sticking with the Old School feel, so Hobhounds it is

Looking forward 

You've seen the painted infantry, here's the rest.

The rest of the Severed Hand infantry, mostly ready for the painting table 

I'm splitting this lot into two batches of eight, which does put a finishing goal worryingly close.  In fact, I've already started on the first batch. 

Good job I've got those Hobhounds to sort out or I'd be in danger of actually finishing something.