How I Paint Mantic Kings of War Orcs - Part 1, Assembly

At T'other One's suggestion, here's a step by step guide to how I paint my orcs. Since he requested it I chose his favourite unit, a troop of skulks.
I'll split the process over several posts, beginning with assembly and undercoating.

I built the eight orcs using two of the Ax sprues and one Greatax sprue.  I used some of the metal components left over from the previous skulks (as seen here) and added more bows from Mantic's plastic goblin sniffs sprue.  When I built the last troop, and when I did the Morax, I struggled to find sufficient left arms that weren't holding a shield, but I remembered I have a lot (and I mean a lot) of the Warpath orcs, I was sure they wouldn't have shields, and a quick check revealed that they included a left arm with a rather impressive knife and another that just ended in a stump (designed to have any one of several SciFi type bits attached).  Ideal to add a bit of variety to the skulks.
As before I have added greenstuff fur 'capes' to conceal some of the joins and also to cover up some of the bulky armour shoulder pads.  I trimmed some of the armour plates down a bit as well, especially if they had extravagant ornamentation, and shaved off the fancy decoration on the breastplates of the Greatax orcs so they would look better as leather armour.  Just like the last troop, I added an arrow made from wire to the right hand of one of the orcs.
Note that the orcs are just pushed into the square bases to make it easier to handle them, and when it comes to painting, I'll add some bigger temporary bases to hold on to.

Once the greenstuff was cured I gave them all an undercoat of Vallejo German Green Brown surface primer (RAL 8000).  This stuff is designed to be sprayed through an airbrush, but for small numbers of minis it works just fine brushed on.

Next up, part 2, basecoats, is here.

Fighting Apathy 7- Mantic Kings of War Orcs Morax

The final unit for the orc demo army is a troop of Morax. As I'm not using full model count (10) I can get away with 8 orcs, which nicely fits into how I have been chunking the project.

Mantic do a Morax set, indeed I have one somewhere, but for this I felt I could manage with just the ordinary plastic orcs, as I have done previously when building my original orc army.

The orc Greatax sprue has some empty left arms, though these are mostly designed to hold a pole weapon across the body. The Ax sprue has no separate empty left arms, but one of the bodies has an attached left arm with an open hand. I used a few of these bodies, but also cut the left arm off to use on other bodies (the donor bodies will come in useful when I next build some Skulks). I have enough Mantic orcs that I don't lack for spare axes, though I did cut down a greataxe for a bit of variety on one of the models.

Once built the painting was just like the rest of the infantry. I suppose I should do a step by step guide on this sometime, leave a comment if you are interested.

The whole troop

The front rank

The rear rank

So that's all the orcs painted.  They still need basing of course; I'll show off the whole army once I've done that.

Fighting Apathy 6 - Mantic Kings of War Orcs - Gore Riders

I planned to split this unit into two halves, the gores then the riders, to keep it manageable.  In practice, I painted each up to the highlight stage separately, then glued the riders in place ready to wash them and varnish them as one piece.  This gave better shading from the wash, and the all-over coat of varnish helps keep everything in one place.

Again the painting process was pretty straight-forward.  I pondered what colours and design to do on the shields, in the end taking the skull from the standard top as the design, as it ties in thematically with the ax regiment too.  To mix things up a bit I went for a black skull on a red field. These days I tend to paint shield designs over the gloss varnish as I find the smooth surface helps with any details, not that I'm claiming any great freehand skills. Everything is then sealed by the final coat of matt varnish.

The whole regiment 

The command orcs, the leader has a plastic head from the orc ax sprue to make him stand out a bit more.

As with other units I used varnish drying time to begin the preparation, so while the trolls and krudger were drying, these were being assembled and primed. 

Now I only have the morax to finish, they are already undercoated and if I can keep the same pace up, should be done by the end of the week.

After that, basing, and I have a few experiments to carry out before I start on that.

And there's always the dwarf opponents to paint.  Do I start afresh, as I have done with these orcs, or simply add to my previous dwarf army?

EDIT: You can see them finally based here.

Fighting Apathy 5 - Mantic Kings of War Krudger and Trolls

The demo orc army continues apace.

I assembled the trolls and the Kruder whilst earlier minis were drying.  I use yacht varnish to give a good clear protective coat, and it needs a good 24 - 48 hours to dry properly.

As with the orcs, I've given the trolls different skin tones.  Rather than use the 'basecoat, highlight, wash' technique, I've painted these in a more traditional manner, with a certain amount of blending for the highlights.  If anything, I think they look a bit too clean, and I may add some rust to the metal later.
As with the rest of the army, everything is getting based at the end.

The orc army set I got doesn't contain a Krudger to lead them, but it does have a Flagger.  I've already got a couple of Flaggers in my old orc army, and a couple of the Krudgers too (you can see one of them here in my Vangard warband) so I used the Flagger body as the base for a Krudger conversion for a bit of variety.  Nothing too spectacular; just swap the flag for a plastic arm with axe and the hand with a sword for a plastic hand with shield.  Both the flag and the sword are separate parts, so no cutting of the metal required, though the new plastic arms both required some trimming to fit, and I had to rebuild the elbow armour on his right arm with greenstuff. I was going to add some plasticard spikes and riveted on repaired sections, like the shields carried by the gore riders, but I couldn't find my plasticard.  I may go back and add something later to make the shield a bit more impressive. At some point I'll also use the metal flag and sword on a plastic orc body to make another, slightly different, Flagger.

As with the trolls, I used washes and tried blending highlights on the Krudger. There's nothing too spectacular about him.  The cloak  is lighter than I had planned, but I rather like it now.

He has a friend as well.  I've held off from painting any orclings in the past as I felt they were a bit on the small side for me to do them justice.  However, I realised that they are pretty much the same size as the red goblins I have been happily painting for my 15mm ogres, so I simply used the same techniques on this cheeky chap.  I do like the pose, mooning the enemy while safely close to his boss, and I might even use some of his friends as red goblins when I go back to that army. 

That's four of the six 'slots' of the demo army painted, though all the basing is still to do.  The remaining two units, gore riders and morax, are built and I have already started painting them while the gloss varnish was drying on the trolls.

EDIT: You can see these jolly chaps finally based here.

Fighting Apathy - 4 - Mantic Kings of War Orc Ax

Continuing to try to keep this a manageable project, the next job was half the regiment of orc ax.  With the skulks I found 8 to be a very doable chunk, so I built up 8 orc ax, including the command, while the gloss varnish was drying on the skulks.

The orcs themselves were straightforward to paint, following my usual system and keeping pretty much to the colours I chose for the skulks.

Whilst the first eight ax were drying from the shade wash I assembled the next eight.  These were then painted while the gloss varnish dried on the first lot.  Once everything was at the gloss stage I added eyes and a skull on the shields.

In the pictures below the minis on the square bases are from the first lot, the ones without are from the second batch. Everything gets based at the end as I'm experimenting with something.

I also managed to assemble a Krudger and the trolls while this lot was drying.  Working to a system like this has helped me plod on through the project. Now I've got a troop and a regiment done, bar basing, and am well on the way with the next lot of stuff.

EDIT You can finally see them based up here.

Fighting Apathy 3 - Mantic Kings of War Orcs - Planning and Skulks

As I mentioned previously, I'm trying a new project in the hopes that I can break out of my current hobby slump, this is my current idea.

I've long wanted a box containing rules, two armies, a bit of terrain and dice. Everything to just lend to interested people to start them playing.

When I was a Mantic Pathfinder I had a painted starter set of Dwarves and Undead. The dwarves are fine; solid and dependable troops, but the undead aren't the easiest army to learn to play with, and besides I prefer Orcs.  Perhaps a dwarf and orc starter set would be better?
When Mantic released a free set of Kings of War rules, complete with two sample armies, I was delighted to find they were Orcs and Dwarves.  This was clearly A Sign.

I was originally just going to raid my existing orcs, which contain nearly all the models I would need, and add a couple of units to the starter set dwarves. However, my existing skulks are actually GW Lord of the Rings orcs, and ideally for this project both armies would be all Mantic models.
While browsing eBay for skulks I 'accidentally' ended up with some Mantic orc bargains. Now I had more than enough to do all the orcs from scratch if I wanted, with the advantage that if the dreaded apathy hits again, I can just go back to my initial plan to raid my existing army.

The sample orc army consists of a regiment of ax, a regiment of gore riders, a regiment of trolls, a troop of skulks, a troop of morax and a Krudger. I'm starting with the skulks as they are the one unit I really want that isn't in my existing army.

The Mantic skulk box contains ten plastic orc infantry with sufficient metal parts to add bows and quivers to each one. Some have additional arms drawing the bow, and there are also some heads with hoods, the plastic infantry mostly have helmets.

Now I'm a Yorkshire man, so I wondered if I could spin the one box out to make more skulks in the future. I've already decided that the orcs will be reduced model count units, I'm aiming for troops of 8 infantry. I then looked for potential donors for extra bows as I was thinking about building four skulks straight from the box and supplement them with four ordinary orcs just with bows on their backs.
An obvious source of bows is Mantic's goblin sprue. The goblin bows are smaller than the metal skulk bows, but not hugely so. Checking the rules I see that skulks now have short bows, so I'm happy with the goblin bows. In most cases I cut the goblin bow off including the hand to make it easier to attach to the orc.
I also noticed that skulks are De 3+. Orc axes are De 5+. Leaving off the shields will make them look closer to De 3+, but I'll also paint some of the many armour plates to look like leather armour.
In the end I spread the metal bits around the models and greenstuffed some fur on some of them to make them look more like hunters, and to cover up some of the shoulders where I'd removed some of the armoured pauldrons.

The paint job was quite straightforward. I used my 'basecoat, highlight and wash' method, with an extra black wash on both the metal and armour before highlighting. I also used three slightly different green skin tones in line with how I am now approaching orcs and goblins.
The troop is still to be based, I'm waiting for some MDF to be delivered to make bases from.  I'll base all the orcs at once, and I have had a few ideas how I want to do this.  I'll do a post showing this when the time comes.

I think this is my favourite skulk, I like the almost diffident way he holds his bow. He has a metal quiver and head from the skulk box, the bow is from the Mantic goblin sprue

Another skulk with a metal head, the arrow is scratchbuilt and he holds another goblin bow

The skulk leader holds yet another goblin bow. Note the claws of whatever beast the furs came from.

Group shot from above showing the fur 'capes'

The full troop of skulks

I'm pleased with the results. I think I've managed to get the skulks looking distinctive. The choice of just eight minis meant I could get everything done before I lost the impetus. Given that I can get away with eight infantry for a troop I think I'll chunk the rest of the orcs similarly.

EDIT You can finally see them based up here.

Fighting Apathy 2 - Thinking Outside the Box

Last week's ruined walls really helped me, partly because it was a quick project that gave results, and the ruins will be useful for several different games.

I was still finding it difficult to actually sit down and complete any of my current ongoing projects. The five box system works well under normal circumstances, but these are not normal times.  Now I'm finding the thought of going back to any of the boxes puts me off the idea of doing anything. Everything seems to be part of a huge project that, in my mind, and at my current pace, I'll never finish. What should be a helpful guide has become a suffocating straitjacket.

My little diversion with the ruins recently helped. It showed me I could still do short projects and that perhaps something different might help.

So I'm going to try just that. Something small(ish) and a break from the five boxes. In fact I wonder if I've let the boxes get out of hand with just too much in each that they rarely got emptied.

I'm not sure yet how long this will last (or indeed how long I can sustain my enthusiasm) but I'll show you how I'm getting on tomorrow.