New unit of Boyz

 Here´s another project that was started a few years back and only finished today. Twenty one classic Ruglud´s armored orcs. I remembered having 12 of these painted when I took the bull by the horns and decided now it´s time to complete a unit of 20. When finished I set everyone up for some photos and it turned out that I ended up with 21 tin clad commandos. But that was a happy suprise. They look good in three ranks of seven orcs each.

The whole unit. As I can´t paint much free hand I used transfers for those shields.

And from a different angle.

A close up of one of the troopers. Armor is Typhus corrosion on black base with

Ryza rust and leadbelcher dry brushed on.

Musician, standard bearer and champion.

Cross bow arrer boyz

 All nine trooper models, Harboth and the converted banner bearer are now ready. With no more cross bow lads it´s time to call this unit finished. Suprised how good it felt to paint some greenskins after a long break. Might dig out some more from my pile of shame in the near future.

Harboth, nine troopers and a standard bearer. The picture

is from the Bayeux tapestry. Printed on paper black and white and then painted on as I really

have no free hand skills to mention. Suitably big and ugly thing for orcs IMHO.

A really silly little update

 There was some discussion in the Oldhammer Forum regarding the miss packed orc arrers blister I got a few weeks back. Quite a few wondered how those orcs would look with elf spears. So here he is: an orc arrer posing with an elf spear.

So this would be a front rank guy. Not too bad if one ignores the elf hand

on the spear shaft. Remove that and it should look quite good.

On guard or back row guy. I´d add a shield to his right hand for better looks.

And here´s the miss packed blister itself.

Arrer boyz with cross bows

 Had to scroll down all the way to orctober 2020 to find my previous green skin posting. But as it happened I got my hands on a non opened blister of cross bow armed arrer boyz and with the few models I´ve had for years I was in a situation where I can scrape together a unit of 11 boyz inc. champion and a banner. The boyz in the blister were cross bow using orcs but there was no xbows... we´ll get into that later.

Presenting the first five of the eleven models I have for this unit. The standard

bearer is an easy conversion of a bolt thrower team leader. Now I just need an idea

for his flag. 

I like browns, yellows and black on my orcs. But there are one or

small two red details in each to give them some uniformity.

And yes, that´s Harboth himself back there.

So here the afore mentioned blister. Orc arrers with elf spears :D

Clearly a miss pack here. Had some extra plastic cross bows so no problem really.

Happy Orctober 2020

 My most modest contribution for this year´s Orctober are these two orcs brawling over a bottle of booze. Both have sat undercoated on my paiting table for too long and now I sort of forced myself into splashing some color on them.

Both are from the C15 / ORC5 / 0508 Orc Villagers series. They will join the orc

baggage train with some of the models I´ve painted earlier.

The bottle is a very crude green stuff thingie I came up with. 

To be honest I did not enjoy painting these that much. The details are somewhat shoddy and the face of that knocked-out one is just a complete mess in my opinion.

Some fantasy for change

The Finnish baseball season is running at full steam right now and with my son playing I´ve been less paining and more doing spectator sports outside. And I´m giving myself a bit of a break from IG too.

I did aquire a couple of bottles of those new cotrast paints at the beginning of july and geve them a try with some orcs. I had painted some Rugluds´ before and just wanted to try and find a speed painting method for them.

 The nine models I´ve completed so far. I tried using the contrast paints for skin and leather parts at first but that really didn´t works out too well. I didn´t like the skin tone that Ork Flesh produced. And the white base coating meant that I had to repaint the armor bits black after base coating. That took time and worked agains my speed painting idea.

So after a couple of models I went back to black base coating. Metal parts are Typhus Corrosion drybrushed with Ryza Rust and Leadbelcher. Skin is Warboss Green highlighted with Skarsnik Green. Mournfang brown washed with Agrax for spear shafts and different browns for leather parts.

I tried to achieve the original idea of the equipment being looted from some ancient tomb and being in corroded shape. I´m happy with the over all result and these will be good enough for me to be played with.

Here´s a pair of wolves that I painted using those contrast paints. It´s Snakebite Leather on white base highlighted with Ushabti bone. Works well enough for me.

Long time no gaming - O&G vs Dwarfs battle report

I think it´s been almost two years since my previous game of 3rd edition WFB. My usual opponents live half way across the country and things like work have prevented me from traveling there. Luckily I found a new oldhammer enthuastic via forums and facebook groups with whom we found time to play last week.

It was Orcs & Goblins vs Dwarfs, 2000 points of each side and pitched battle. Here´s some pictures and a shortish battle report about that game.

My orcs & goblins battle line. Goblin chariot, wolf riders (behind whom two O&G civilians who did not participate in any way), gobbo horde, two trolls, war boar mounted general and army banner, orc arrers, two more trolls led by goblin shaman, orc boyz, goblin arrers and two bolt throwers.

 The dwarfs left flank facing my goblins. Three dwarf cannon, hammerers, gyrocopter, iron breakers, flame thrower and quarrelers. My intention was to engage the elite dwarfs with my gobbos to keep them away from my main orc unit and trolls. I possible I would try to get the cannon with goblin chariot.

Rest of the dwarfs. Next to quarrelers a three barrel organ gun. Then pike armed dwarf warriors, another unit of dwarf warriors, bolt thrower, stone thrower and a small unit of slayers. I planned on engaging the warrior units with my orcs and then trying to break them with trolls.

My battle plan started to fall apart right from the beginnig as both troll duos decided to pick some flowers instead of advancing. And orc arrers fell victim to animosity and did not move. We played on a longish board with some distance between the armies and I knew my green skins would suffer greatly from those dwarf war machines.

Green skins advance. Well - most of them. Trolls are mingling around as they did for most of the first four rounds.

The wolf riders were the first to suffer casualties. Hit by a cannon they lost four goblins and had to roll for panic. That roll was suprisingly passed. They tried to retaliate by shooting at the gyrocopter but failed to hurt the pilot despite hitting him twice.

To slow down the elite dwarfs on that flank as planned (and not get shot to pieces) wolf riders and chariot charged the iron breakers. They would hopefully buy some time for my better troops to break the dwarf warriors.

As expected the goblin were suffering at the hands of the iron breakers and now were in danger of being flanked by the hammerers too. But they had slowed those two units conciderably now.

The dwarfs finally lost something as a warrior was impaled by a bolt thrower bolt.

The dwarf center advenced in good order and found good positions between two houses. They would not be flanked.

My orc line on the other hand was quite a mess. The boyz were blocking arrers advance and all the trolls were doing trollish things still at their deployment area. At top of the picture goblin arrers are sqeezing past the tower and prepare to shoot at slayer they are facing. Gobbo horde at the bottom moves forward behind the wolf riders and the chariot to forther block the dwarfs left flank.

Gobbos can see their wolf riding brethren being slaughtered in the distance.

Gyrocopter is heading for the orc bolt throwers and flying over orc arrers bombs them with a grenade killing several.

On O&G right the lone wolf rider hero is still finghting with the iron breakers when the gobbos close in releasing two fanatics. They move just five and three inches each falling short of their targets. In the next dwarfs round on is pin cushioned with cross bow bolts and in my next round the other rolls doubles and collapses. 60 points well spent. And with clear line of sight the organ gun released it´s barrels at gobbos who suffered roughly dozen casualties but held.

The gobbos bravely charged the hammeres in their flank. As iron breakers were jammed behind them it looked like my plan of holding the elite just might work.

On the other side of the battle field a fanatic and arrows killed all but one of the slayers. But that slayer charged the gobbos and eventually single handedly routed them.

The centers engaged but despite even trolls finally joining in the orcs were unable to break the darfs warrior units. As the last effort orc general himself joined in but it was too little too late. More dwarfs from their left flank (righ top in this pic) were closing in for charge. At this point I saw no hope of victory and congratulated my opponent.

Some lessons learned:

• You really need someone capable to lead the trolls
• Cannons are murderous with rule book rules
• Flying rules are complicated
• I need more gobbos (45 is not enought)
• I need more fire and hitting power

Goblinoids of different size and shape

This will be the last blog text for 2018. My december has not been very productive but with these green skins I´ll be able to close the blogging year the same way I started it - with some goblinoids.

Snotling base. The one on the front row right is actually a Blood Bowl snotling but as I had only four ´normal´snotlings and no other use for him he got a new life here.

A Marauder MM30/2c goblin with a mace and a Citadel C12 goblin Zogrod. These chaps will bulge my goblin horde that numbers 60+ at the moment.

The Vile Rune Tribe Chieftain Fangor Gripe from the Blood Bath at Orc´s Drift scenario. I don´t know if there is another orclops anywhere in any Citadel range of miniatures.

 A group photo shows how small the Marauder gobbo is. He stands just a bit taller than the biggest snots. On the other hand Zogrod is almost as tall a Fangor who would look dwarfish next to modern orcs.

Happy new year! See you in 2019!

Orctober 2018 - Final tally

The green month is almost over and as I don´t think I´ll have time to do more painting I´m going to sum it up here and now. 2017 my only greenish thing painted was a troll so I think I did a bit better this year.

Bolt thrower #1. Skinny and sinewy orcs with very little clothing, armor and equipment.

Bolt thrower #2. Thick and muscular orcs with more of everything.

Two camp followers. An orc villager with scimitar and a bag of loot and a half orc slave.

And of course a Group Picture.

Orctober part II

3rd edition WFB Orcs&goblins have a pretty good access to war machines and  it´s been a shame that I haven´t have any in my army before this. For Orctober I took the bull by the horns and put some paint on one of the war machines I´ve collected over the years - an orc bolt thrower.

 These are some lightly equipped green skins for sure. Each is wearing a loin cloth and not much else. Only the spotted had a side arm while the two other seem to carry just the bolts.

A telescope is a pretty high tech piece of equipment for orcs in my opinion but it makes a nice model out of that spotter.

I will try to complete another bolt thrower during this orctober and then I just might dig out that skull crusher that´s been waiting to be painted for too long. 

Happy orctober aka an orc and a half

So it´s the green month again. I think I didn´t get a single green skin painted last year for orctober so this time I´m taking an early start. Just two models here and one of them isn´t completely green but Now the game is on and I´m sure I´ll be able to post more orcy things later.

The proper green skin is this bolt thrower crew orc. Very quick and simple to paint. Base colors, wash and higlights. Expect to meet the other crew members and their warmachine later this month.

Second half-orc slave for baggage train. Where his half-brother has light green skin and human eyes this chap got himself a more human toned skin but red eyes.

The two slaves together. With the first one´s chains I propably overdid the rust effect a bit and tried to go a tad easier with the second one.

And as last the Vanhaa Vasarointia orctober opening act together.

Orcy pastry

A short while ago I spotted this TTG Tabletop Games Fantasy MP35 "Orc eating a Pie" model on ebay. And I knew I had to get him. Not because he is that good a sculpt but because he reminded me that I do not have a baggage train for my O&G army. So it was decided - he´ll be the first of the camp followers. I only need 14 more and three carts/wagons.

He has taken a bite alright with those bit teeth of his.

Nice raspberry glazing there on top. I think that´s a bag

he´s holding in his other hand.

I tried to make the pie look like a lemon and raspberry cheesecake. A favorite of all orcs for sure. Inspiration came from this blog.