The Goblin Host of King Gorgol the Mighty

It took me much longer that I expected but I finally finished re-basing my goblins. This was a much bigger project than rebasing my elves. It didn't help that Christmas limited my time a bit, but the effort of doing these bases in the style I wanted meant that each base needed four different stages of work - adding the basing muck and placing the figures, stones and grit, grassy flock and finally adding the tufts to bring it all together. 

I do think it was worth the effort though.

I'm very happy with the results however, there is still a little bit of work to finish the project 100%. For instance I have a unit of werewolves and a bunch of regular wolves. I've been debating if I should include them in this army or add them to my undead hoard. Same with a bunch of giant spiders: this army or add them to my woodland army? Give me your opinion.

The whole army deployed takes up more than the 6' edge of a table. I had to deploy them deep so that I could fit them in and photograph them (they only just fit the table and I used the photoshop AI function to extend the background and widen the table edges). There are 12 bases of heavy warriors, seven skirmish bases, elite warriors, crossbows, wolf riders, boar riders, giant scorpion riders, mountain orc light warriors, ogres, a giant, a wurm, light artillery, heroes and a couple of shamans.

The Orc King Gorgol the Mighty, an uruk of great stature and evil cunning! This is a Mantic Games figure. He's nice and big and looks like a mean kind of guy. I'm not sure where the drummer came from but he looks cool.

Below is the newest addition to the army. This is my version of a pretty popular Reaper Bones giant. He normally has his right arm extended, parallel to the ground holding his club out. I did a bit of modification and added a bit of (green-stuff) armour to his right shoulder to cover up the modification marks. he looks like a pretty tough customer.

Starting on the flank are some warg riders. These will be classed as light riders with some missile capability. I don't want them to be too powerful but good enough to harass and capable of attacking vulnerable enemy units. The boar riders below will be a more hard hitting cavalry arm. They are from Mantic and they come as a unit of 10 figures so I was thinking of making 3 units of 3 figures and setting up the remaining figure as a hero but the units looked weak so I made two regiment of 5 figures and I'll have to find a suitable mounted hero.  The hero on the dire wolf is better suited to lead the wolf riders in my opinion.

Here's half of the heavy warriors. There are only 10 figures on each base as I wanted them to appear as more of a rabble when compared to my elves. By doing this I also turned my existing 10 regiments of 12 figures into 12 regiments of 10 figures! Two extra units! It meant that I had to make two more standard bearers but that was a pretty easy task (I just converted a pair of existing spear holding figures).

I decided to not give them any formed archers and, instead, made 7 bases of skirmishers. This is a much stronger skirmishing element that the elves who's main skirmishing is provided by javelineers. I think this is good as it will create very different tactical doctrines between the two enemies.

Below are the big hitters of the army - the giant and a wurm/dragon. The dragon is based weirdly. I didn't want to destroy the original base so I ringed the edge of the plastic base with thin strips of bark and added some magnets to the bottom. I then made a square base with magnetic sheet on it. It's very sturdy and I can remove the model from the big square base.

Above & below are some crossbows that I kit bashed using Oathmark Orc bodies and pieces from a Perry War of The Roses box. I'm going to make one or two more of these and they will constitute the army's formed missile elements. There is a noticeable gap in the picture below... I made a 12 figure unit of big tough chaps by doing the same oathmark/Perry conversion. These are designed to be the elite troops: bigger goblins (Oathmark Orcs) wielding two handed polearm weapons. I only made 12 so I need to kit bash more and fill that gap in the line.

A pair of ballista using the great WizKids set - you get a pair of these for about 10 bucks. Bargain! Just add a couple of modifies goblins and they're ready to go.

On the other flank are the poor relatives - The Mountan Orcs. These figures are from Wargames Atlantic and they are very different from the Oathmark figures so I decided to paint them with tan skin and give them a completely different aesthetic. The infantry are light warriors. They also have ogres in their ranks and these units will be classed as regular warriors with added traits to boost their hitting power. The idea of these units can be attributed directly by a quote from Boromir in the Mines of Moria: "They have a cave troll."

The Scorpion Riders came about because I don't like spiders. I'm such a pathetic arachnophobe that I cant even touch spider models that look too realistic (I'm okay with those old, stupid looking GW ones). So I bought a bunch of Reaper Bones giant scorpions and made these. I'm not sure how to class them for Midgard at this stage. I want them to be fast (scuttling) powerful (big snapping pincers) and difficult to control (insect minds), with missile capability.

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And that's it. There is still a small amount of work to do to get this army finished and that will be pretty easy to do. I will add to their numbers in time and I especially want to build up the elite element. I have another box each of Oathmark and Wargames Atlantic goblins so the whole army will grow in time. I could combine elements of my Undead Host with these chaps to give them a boost it needed, but there are enough of them that they can stand alone in any sized battle.

Next thing is to complete the rebasing of my elves.

Cheers and thanks for reading.

It's Orcish Re-Basing Time

I haven't quite finished rebasing my elves but I was getting bored with doing the same bases over and over so I thought it must be time to start getting my orcs into order. These bases took a bit more thought and effort than the elves and a fortuitous trip to my closest wargames supply depot (House of War) saw me buy all the supplies I needed in one fell swoop.

The basic item I needed was a basing past. The one I wasted was European Mud from Vallejo, and I was lucky in the fact that the shop had a delivery and the stuff was put on the shelf an hour before I got there. So I bought two tubs along with a large bag of stony grit and several packs of tufts.

I started with some infantry. I wanted to make the units as looser formations compared to the elves and as a result I only used 10 figures per base instead of 12. This will end up giving me two or three extra units buy the time I get them all done.

The vast majority of the heavy infantry are Oathmark Goblins plastic figures. However, there are a few other figures including a couple from Mantic some conversions of human figures. 

The bases are the same as I used for my elves - 11.2cm blank cup coasters that I get from my local hardware shop. I cut them down to 7cm depth, round off the cut corners and add a 12mm dice frame. After that I slather on the basing past and add stony grit and foliage. I like the result although it is time consuming.

I also did a couple of bases of skirmishers. This army won't have formed archers but they will have formed crossbows.

Next are what I'm calling Mountain Orcs. These are Wargames Atlantic goblins. I initially made these as light infantry but I decided to change them a bit. I have three Reaper ogres/trolls and I could put them together to create a unit but I decided to add them to an infantry unit. I like the idea of a troll escorted by contingent of smaller critters (to make them feel braver) so that's what I did. Sort of.

As you can see I painted these orcs with a dark tan skin to differentiate them from the regular orcs. I think these figures they look better with this skin colour. The idea of these bases is to create a hard heavy warrior unit and not a monstrous creature unit. They will be Heavy Infantry Warriors with a couple of appropriate traits (Spears as Tribute and Brutal).

However, The trolls are not permanently fixed to the bases. I made a plateau using 3mm cork sheet and cut out a 40mm x 40mm square. I put a magnet into the bottom of the creatures bases and a square of thin metal sheet onto the base (after photo). In this way I can actually group the three creatures together into an dedicated troll/ogre unit.

And now, here's in one of my favourite and weirder units: mounted bows on giant scorpions - Scorpion Archers!

Hey, I forgot to add tufts to the second unit and I also forgot to paint the bases edges!

These were made using Wargames Atlantic Goblins and Reaper Bones giant scorpions. I used the saddles that come in the goblin box and fitted them onto the big stingers with some minor modification and some greenstuff. I'll make these Heavy Riders with bows and the traits Fearsome and Spears as Tribute.

I had to put these onto fairly large bases. I tried mounting two of them onto a shallower base but they didn't project the same sense of power and awe as the single base with three. I was a bit sad to have to remove these from their single 60mm bases but the big bases wouldn't fit on to a sabot with the same frontage as the rest of the units.

And, that's it for the orcs so far. I still have a lot to do including warg-riders, boar cavalry, spiders, werewolves and a dragon! I'm sure there are other things too that I can't remember off the top of my heard right at the moment.

Thanks for reading,

IanKH

P.S. Since I began writing this post I've done another 4 bases of heavy infantry bringing the number up to 10 units and I still have plenty more to do.

Some Orcs and Some Elves

I haven't been painting much recently although I have spent a bit of time gluing together various plastic figures. I assembled a box of Oathmark dwarves as well as some some Revenants from the same range. With the Revenants I used the archer arms from the Wargames Atlantic Goblins box. They came out very nice and I'm looking forward to painting them. However, this post is about the figures I've just finished.

I didn't paint all the orcs in the photo above... I painted the ones below and added them to the above band of evil doers. I like these Wargames Atlantic Goblins. They have a very distinctive look when compared to the Oathmark figures. I call all of them orcs but to my way of doing things I call these little fellows Mountain Orcs. They are cave dwellers so they're a bit smaller with paler skin.

On the other hand I call the Oathmark Goblins orcs too even though they have recently brought out a boxed set of Orcs which are a little bit larger... It's all very confusing so I just call them all orcs. So... Below we have a metal Oathmark Orc Captain and a shaman both from the same command set. Both of these are really nice figures and easy to paint. These will be the command element of my Oathmark/Perry kitbashed orc division (I have a second box of them in the post as I write).

As for the elves, I did this pair of metal Reaper figures. The archer will be the dedicated archer figure for my Dragon Slayer game and the other will become a captain for my larger elf army. Both of these figures are very, very nice and they demanded some detailed brushwork. 

I call this character in my army The Prince in the Scarlet Robe after the Michael Moorcock character Corum. This figure will replace the figure below which is somewhat lacking in the dramatic Elite Captain of the Guard stakes. Or he may even replace my elf king if the mood strikes me. We'll wait and see.

So that's it for now. I've moved on to painting some dwarves but I have feeling they are going to take me quite some time. I've been writing a set of fantasy big battle rules for myself and, as a result, I have a feeling I'm going to need to rebase a few hundred figures. All of my elves and orcs are mounted on multi-figure 40x40 bases whereas all the rest of my fantasy armies (woodland folk, undead, dwarves, northern men and my imaginations medieval army - which can also stand in for a fantasy army - plus more...) are all on 25mm round bases and they outnumber the elves and orcs about 2:1. One basing method has to give way and 25m round bases are more versatile. I have about 180+ each of elves and orcs on multi-bases. That's close to 400 figures to re-base. Ouch!

My sanity may be called into question sometime in the near future.

Orcs of The Red Hand - A Small Conversion Project

For a while now I've been back on the fantasy bandwagon. Well, not a real fantasy bandwagon because I'm going my own way and not following any game trends whatsoever. I'm never very good at jumping on to "The New Big Thing." And I think that because that's just the way I am. No matter...

So I'm on a fantasy binge and I decided to get a box of Oathmark Orcs. These are nice figures and pretty much match up with their Goblins, although these figures are a little bit larger. The figures are okay but, to be honest, I am a bit disappointed in the weapons available in the set. They are pretty much the same selection as the Gonlins. An array of twohanded weapons would have better suited their larger stature in my opinion.

Not to worry,: Those Perry Brothers came to my rescue! I had a lot of leftovers from their Wars of the Roses plastic sets so I put them to good use.

From the Oathmark box I made two heavy companies of 12 orcs. One with various pole arms from the WotR infantry box and a unit of crossbows using bits from the European Mercenaries box. The Perry pieces needed a bit of trimming an cutting here and there but I got the bits to fit.

The figures came up looking nice and fierce. I like that these figures fit better onto a 40mm x 45mm base. The goblins don't fit well because of their stances (I had to base them 3 to a base instead of 4). But these guys fit well together.

Thinking along the WotR theme I decided to paint them in a pseudo livery of black and murrey. They looked very nice until I applied varnish. I initially used War Painter Dull Coat which came out about as glossy as it possibly could. It also ruined some of the texture (look at the shield). I applied a couple of coats of mat varnish (GW and Vallejo) but they coldn't quite remove the gloss so now they have a satin finish.

Not. Happy. Jan!

I've had too many disappointments using War Painter stuff. I think I'll just avoid it in the future.

I made the banner using my tried and true method of cutting out a piece of thin plasti-card which I glue onto the pole. It's cheap and easy but the end result looks okay. The cross piece on the standard is from the Oathmark Revenants set. The cross piece in the orc box is pretty crappy and looks like it came straight from a GW skullz and spikes set.

My goblin army has very little in the way of missile units - Just a couple of ballista and a mass of skirmishers. They needed something that would differentiate them from my elves so I decided to give them some crossbows. I'm of the opinion that crossbows are an indelicate, brutish weapon that fits the bill for orcses.

The crossbow arms needed a bit more trimming to get them to fit but I think the effort was worth it. To my eye they look mean, thuggish and slightly bemused by this new-fangled weaponry. Just what I wanted!

There are 30 figures in the Orc box so I have 6 figures left over. I still have an awful lot of Perry bits left over so I figure if I get another box of orcs I will have 36 figures. That's enough for three more companies: two of polearm infantry and one more of crossbows. I already have metal command figures that I haven't yet painted. Altogether, five of these units would make a nice "elite / assault" division for my goblin army.

The Wyrm Gormagundr

In my post from a couple of weeks back I put my army of orcs and their allies on parade to see what I had for a creative photo opportunity. The army itself is a pretty decent size but there was something missing: A nice big centrepiece monster. So to fix that problem I went hunting and found just the thing to fill that gap.

The Wyrm Gormagundr ~ A mighty fire-drake, lured from his lair with promises of treasure, to march into battle against all that is good and wholesome. A ferocious beast with an insatiable lust for gold, fine gems and creating chaos.

I decided to make a crawling dragon for the sake of doing something a bit different and to better tie in with the general Tolkien-esque mythology from the Silmarillion where the dragons are not yet winged. The dragon I used was this one from Reaper Black Bones:

I filled in the large holes on his back where the wings would be mounted and sculpted some large scales to accentuate his armoured hide. This wasn't my first choice of dragon but it was the best one I could get to do the job.

All in all he came out quite nice. I was considering doing more on the base but decided against it. I was going to add a charred tree and some burnt land but I figured that this sort of detail is just the sort of thing that could break with use on the wargames table. So I left it off and opted for a simple approach.

And to give some scale to the model here he is with some mountain orcs. He stands about 3" high and is about 6" to 7" long. Big enough to let his enemies know that he's a dangerous opponent.

And, as The Velvet Fog sang:

"When you're smiling,

When you're smiling,

The whole world smiles with you..."

That's it for now, folks!