ORCTOBER - Challenge Compete (Just)

At the beginning of October I set myself the challenge of painting up 500 points of orcs for Fantastic Battles using my old 6mm Irregular Miniatures collection.  Bodvoc agreed to join in with elves, as he has quite a few.

To make it easy on myself I chose to use my already painted minis and see if they were worth salvaging.  With a bit of a wash and some extra highlighting they turned out fine.  

I did have a bit of a setback with the samples I tried first.  When I last showed them they had had an initial wash to deal with the rather bright and flat painting.  

But then I gave them my standard 'orc wash' of 50:50 Army Painter Soft tone and Strong tone washes.  This gave a far darker effect than I was looking for, but a bit more highlighting helped rescue them.

As I was working through my already painted stuff, I knew that I wasn't going to produce a particularly effective army.  I was able to look at most of the painted stuff and see how I could use it, giving me something I can add to in the future.

The Finished Army 

So here it is, my 6mm orc force.  Using the traits I'm experimenting with, it works out at 673 points.  This is, of course, subject to change as I try them in battle.

Characters, the larger 20mm diameter base is the Warlord, the middle sized base (actually a button) are is a captain on wolf, and the single minis are two rogues, one orc and one warg.

Warriors, these five companies are made up of strips and part strips from the orc command, archers, warriors and spearmen.

Wolves, these two companies are wolves I painted ages ago.  Their strips are wider than most of the infantry, so have been cut up to allow repositioning and to provide the lone warg 'rogue'. I now paint my wolves/wargs much darker using a palette of greys, as seen in my 10mm LotR Mordor army.  I may repaint these at a later date (this is also why I didn't get the wolf riders ready, I wasn't sure if I should repaint the wolves.

Artillery, these companies were previously painted, I simply gave them a wash and added a few highlights. I do want to revisit these to add some ammunition (boulders and giant bolts) to the bases.

Chariots, one of these four companies was already painted.  I retouched the paintwork and painted up the other three from scratch, can you tell which one was the original?

Trolls, these were painted up from scratch, and are done more in the style of my larger scale minis.  They have a lot of character, and I can't decide what the little orc riding the trolls' shoulders is doing.  Is that helmet some sort of control device?  I have to admit that the reason I did these was to garner some easy points in the challenge.

Terrain Too

The challenge included producing a piece of themed terrain.  I struggled with this, partly because 6mm themed terrain doesn't always work well when the minis are based in companies.  Forts with battlements look odd with a 25mm wide wall walk.  I'm also short of any 6mm terrain, so it seemed a bit indulgent to work on something that only one army would get to use.

But then another root through my box of 6mm stuff turned up 4 huts.  I'd painted these years ago, but I've completely repainted them and they'll do nicely as an orc village.  I haven't based them yet as I want some slightly bigger bases to add a bit of extra decoration, like looted standards and other trophies. 

Future Additions?

Initially I planned to rescue some orc archers for a company of bows, but I decided to include them in small numbers among the warriors to represent the irregular nature of the orcs and explain the minor short range shooting attack they have.  I will rescue more of the archers and base up some dedicated companies of bows.  I also have a couple of companies of wolf riders which I never finished, they will have to wait for now.

I've also got some of the Man-Orc range, which make suitably impressive 'elite'.  None of these are painted yet, but they'll make great Formed Companies of slightly better quality troops, and I can take advantage of the different weapons options rather than just lumping lots of different types in an irregular company.

I've got a lot of 6mm goblins which are already painted. When I did my dwarves I also based these up as an opposing force. While they are well enough painted, the strips are difficult to cut up to give an irregular look. I'm not sure if they should be a separate army or a part of the orc army.

So that's another Orctober challenge done, and it's got me well on my way to having another Fantastic Battles army. It also makes inroads into the Lead Mountain and helps me decide what to keep and what to move on. Like the dwarves, I'll probably aim for 1000 points, perhaps with a few options. I've certainly got sufficient 6mm fantasy stuff for this, and I've several more armies to start too.

If you want to see how Bodvoc did, his elves are on his blog.