Organising Oldhammer

If you've been reading my blog for a while, you'll know that I've been slowly painting my few remaining Oldhammer minis, especially dwarves. I can use them in Fistful of Lead, but that only needs around a half dozen minis a side, so I don't really have any larger goal.

You may also know that I paint much more effectively if I have a vague hobby goal to work towards, but I've been struggling to find one for my Oldhammer collection. After chatting with Ben (of The Quest for Stillmania) I realised that I can assemble a couple of Dragon Rampant forces harking back to the early days of fantasy wargaming.  In these early games, armies tended to be a mixed bag of Good vs a mixed bag of Evil; I particularly remember a Warhammer scenario from Tortured Souls magazine based around an evil Runesword. The Good side had captured it and had to keep it out of Evil hands while it was purified. Both sides were a mix of the appropriate races, and the story background made it great fun.

I'm unlikely to ever collect enough Oldhammer style minis to field, say, a purely dwarven army, but a unit or two in a Dragon Rampant Good army is definitely achievable - especially with reduced model units. I'll begin with units of four (unless they are obviously heroes, wizards, war machines or monsters). If I get enough of anything I can expand to six, then maybe even twelve (I like to keep the unit size even numbers so it's easy to tell if the unit is Battered).

So now I have a rough plan, and I have enough to make a start with a unit of elf archers (Light Missiles with Sharpshooter), an elven repeating crossbow (Heavy Missiles) and some dwarf warriors (Offensive Light or Heavy Foot).  I'm sure I also have a few old Empire minis that might just squeeze in as Oldhammer, and I know I have an old Bretonnian cannon that will be fine.  That's plenty to start with for the Good army.

For Evil I have a few goblins and orcs, though I'm not sure how many (how I regret selling off my collection years ago!).  I've also got a smattering of Undead, Chaos and Dark Elves, certainly enough for reduced model units.  I've also got some of the original Golfag's Ogres Regiment of Renown, which I'll probably use as a group of mercenaries available to either side.

Here are some examples of what might be coming up.

Classic elves

More nice stuff. The Skeleton knight can lead the zombies. The Necromancer is a unit in his own right. 

The lovely old Empire Flagellants will make a unit of Bellicose Foot 

This is going to be a long term project, and I'm certainly not rushing it.  I will keep an eye out for any interesting minis to add to the collection; I would eventually like to have full model units, which is usually twelve in Dragon Rampant, but that seems unlikely, especially with the way prices are going on evilbay at the moment, and initially I'll probably want two Reduced Model Units of six rather than one of twelve.

Reaper Bones 77454 Ogre Clubber, 77455 Ogre Smasher, 77456 Ogre Guard - Palette Cleanser 8

I've not posted as much recently. I've been very busy painting, but of the room decorating variety rather than the fantasy miniature variety. Hobby productivity will be down this month, but the house will be better for it, so I'm not complaining. I'm between rooms at the moment though, so time for another blog post.

My latest Palette Cleanser is another completion job, this time three jolly ogres.

"We be ogres three, pardonez moi, je vous en pris."

Ogre Clubber

Ogre  Smasher

Ogre Guard

The Smasher was already more or less finished. The other two were at the basecoat stage. When I started these three I'd planned to properly shade and highlight the flesh, being the most obvious area on each ogre. I started with the clubber, blending up from Vallejo Extra Opaque Heavy Skintone, adding increasing amounts of Vallejo Game Color Dwarf Flesh and then VGC Elf Flesh. However, the end result was chalky and didn't look right. I know the fifth edition D&D ogres are quite pale, but I wanted something darker. I tried a wash of Vallejo Flesh Wash. The result was much better, and the reddish tint kind of ties him in with my 15mm ogres.

I never got round to finishing the other two ogres, so when I grabbed the guard out of a box of bones it seemed a good opportunity to finish off all three.

This time I just drybrushed the flesh before giving them a wash, using the same colours as I used for the Clubber. I'm not convinced there's much difference in the end. The various bits of clothing and equipment were painted fairly simply, just a dark basecoat then a couple of highlights.

Varnishing and basing was as standard.

Now these are lovely minis, possibly my favourites for D&D ogres, but they have a lot of little details, straps, bits of looted stuff, shields etc. The Clubber even looks like he has stuffed a crumhorn in his belt. They look good and tell a fun story, but they do not make painting them a quick job. This might be partly why I left them unfinished before.

Anyway, they are done now, and will be very useful once we get back to face to face gaming. I have the set with the female ogre shaman (shawoman?) and the leader in heavy armour, along with various goblin servants, and I've also got another set of the clubber, smasher and guard. Altogether they should make a great series of encounters. I might do a bit of conversion, such as weapon swaps, with the second set to give them some individuality. I can also see them coming in useful in the fantasy version of Fistful of Lead. Maybe I should include the rest of the ogres as a mini project in the near future?

Kings of War Ogres (an revision of an original post from 2018)

Just a quick note to say that this post is a rewrite of the original.

I have (as of January 2021) tried to update some of the photos on the blog, but unfortunately using my phone to edit I have managed to delete the original post, though not the comments oddly.

Anyway, here are the first batch of ogres I painted for my 15mm Kings of War army. 

I talked about how I chose them here, along with some of them part painted. 

First up is a regiment of ogres, or half a horde, should I choose to field them that way. 

I wanted something to add to the bases to emphasise the scale. I thought about some animals, or perhaps some sort of human sized equipment, but then I remembered the old Warhammer ogres with their accompanying goblin helpers (noblars?). I had some of the very nice Ral Partha Demonworld goblins, and I thought they would do nicely, especially since Kings of War Ogres are accompanied by Red Goblins (named for their clothing rather than skin colour or politics). 

Ogre Warriors regiment, complete with Red Goblin helper/mascot/emergency rations.

And here's another regiment of ogre warriors, together they will make one horde. 

These chaps have a braver Red Goblin

To lead them I have this excellent hero. I like his commanding pose. He has his little Red Goblin helper as well. 

War Chief Brak-na-Hak

Some magical support in the form of a Warlock.

Wise Old Kafiri. 

And the heavy hitter, Guthrum Mane the Rock Giant. Yes, he is straight from the Orc's Drift forces, as seen here, I've simply finished off his base. 

I actually had quite a few of the Demonworld goblins, and since they worked so well on the ogre bases, I painted up a regiment of spitters. These were simple to do. I used three different skin tones to add variety, all the cloth was red (so the ogres can quickly identify 'their' goblins in the heat of battle) and the whole lot based together, since a regiment is the smallest sized unit of them. 

I think sixteen goblins look fine as a regiment

I painted this chap up to go on an ogre base, but then I realised that Red Goblins can have 'Biggits' as heroes. 

When I say goblin hero, don't expect too much

And finally, a group shot of everything so far. 

I can't use it all at once as a legal army, I need some more ogre units to unlock that many heroes, but I can certainly get a small force on the table now.  I'm very pleased with how these look, and I'm already planning some reinforcements. 

15mm Kings of War, the Ogre Army

As I mentioned previously, I'm taking a short break from painting ogres and red goblins, but I thought it might be nice to show the whole of the army as it currently stands.

Of course I have plans to expand it. More Warriors, both with shields and with great weapons. More Berserker Braves. More missile troops, I've enough plastic blunderbusses for another regiment of Boomers, and I'd like to do more Shooters, though I'll probably use the Naiad harpoon gun rather than crossbows.

I've some ideas for conversions for Hunters, and a slightly different take on Chariots. The giant needs re-basing as he is now a Titan, or I might paint up a bigger giant, I've got a suitable old GW one somewhere. And there's always more Red Goblins.

I'm gonna need a bigger box.

If you want to follow my blogs about the ogres, you can find the post talking about the initial idea here, the first lot of painted minis are here.  The next lot of minis are here, and further reinforcements here. The Ogre Siegebreakers are here, the Army Standard is here, and the final lot are here.

15mm Kings of War Ogres, yet more progress

I've been working away steadily on this army and I've another two heroes, a horde and a regiment to show.

Firstly the heroes.

A Sergeant, very useful for Inspiring, and no slouch in melee either. I tend to use a sergeant to lead in small battles, but until now I've had to field the Warlord mini.

He is from the second set of Caesar 20mm Orcs, and is meant to be a character as there are only two in the set. I added a greenstuff shield made using a press mold as I did for the second horde of Warriors here.

Now a Boomer Sergeant. I was experimenting with how to do Boomers, so a single mini seemed a good idea. The original mini was an archer from the second set, the same mini I used here as a Sergeant with Heavy Crossbow. After removing the bow and arrow I used the rifle from a Mantic dwarf Ironwatch. Looking at it I felt it didn't look like something that would dish out 4 attacks, so I dug out some old GW Empire Militia sprues and cut the end off the blunderbuss, swapping it for the end of the rifle. Now I think it looks the part.

His companion Red Goblin Powder Monkey was originally a Ral Partha Demonworld goblin archer. The bow was removed and the hand drilled to take a length of wire to act as a ramrod. The right arm was nicely posed to rest on a wooden barrel (an 'N gauge' model railway piece from Knightwing) and the quiver was trimmed and covered in greenstuff to make a bag. I'm very pleased with this piece, though I note from the photo that I need to dot in the goblin's eyes and teeth.

And here are some more units for them to lead

More Berserker Braves, mostly because I have loads of the minis and my regular opponent, Merlin, really enjoys watching them chew through his goblins (usually).

The second regiment of Berserker Braves.

A regiment of Boomers.

As I mentioned, I've been looking at ways to model these. The base minis are the two archers from the first set of orcs, just as I used for the Shooters here. Again I used the militia blunderbuss, but this time I used the whole thing, carefully carving off the hands holding it. The bare-chested mini is reaching back to draw an arrow from a quiver. I cut the feathers off so it could be a ramrod and altered the quiver shape with greenstuff so it became an ammo bag.

Here's the Ogre army neatly packed away in a Really Useful Box. There's getting on for 3000 points there, depending on artefacts and spells etc, and I think it's actually a legal army.

I'm putting them to one side now. I'll return to them soon, I'm sure (I have some more Red Goblins on the way, taking advantage of the Ral Partha sale), but I want an empty box for a new project. More on that when I've got something to show.

15mm Kings of War Ogre Army Standard

I've just finished an Army Standard for my ogres. I've actually had him painted for some time, but I didn't like the actual banner. The original banner was quite small, and hung perpendicular to the pole, despite the pole being held at an angle. It just looked wrong.

I've finally got round to replacing the top of the pole with a new one made of copper wire and a banner made from wine bottle foil.

I wanted a design that suggested a successful and fairly cultured mercenary company rather than a rag tag bunch of savages. After sketching several designs I decided on an axe, since many of the warriors carry them, on a red field, echoing their skin colour, with gold coins around the axe. I added some battle honours as well.

The new banner hanging properly.

I'm getting very close to finishing the ogres for the time being. I've still got some heroes to finish the basing on, and I've another horde and a regiment nearly done too.

Once I've got the ogres done I have another small scale project planned, more about that another time.

Kings of War, More 15mm Ogres

I've been steadily increasing my 15mm Ogre army for Kings of War. My motivation is the campaign that Merlin and I are playing. For the next battle my Ogres are assaulting his Goblins who are holed up in a stockade. I thought a unit of Siegebreakers would be ideal for this, so set about making some.

Unfortunately, one of the Red Goblins has been adding his own 'artistic touches' to the shields.

The Siegebreakers were a mix of minis from the two orc sets, indeed I have used one pose in the warriors with two handed weapons unit. I gave each ogre a more impressive weapon, using hammer heads from Mantic's dwarf Shieldbreakers. The big shields were made from thin plastic from Renedra bases with a wood grain scratched on the back and a hole drilled for where a handle would be. I used half round plastic beads from a craft shop for the shield bosses.

Two of the ogres are holding their hammers two handed, so I used goblins with spears to prop up their shields.

I had thought about painting some sort of symbol on the shields, but I couldn't think what design to use. The large black shields look rather plain, so I added a red goblin graffiti artist and some of his work to one of the units.

I've also done another hero, this time with a heavy crossbow. The crossbow is taken from Mantic's naiads sprue, and I think I might replace the unit I have already done with similar weapons.

I have now done, or have in progress, most of the different ogre units.