Drakar och Demoner

While searching for images of orcs recently, I stumbled across these wonderful pictures for a Swedish game called Drakar och Demoner. I don't usually like whimsical imagery, but these are just superb.

And finally, a lovely map of the world. Lucky Swedes, that's all I can say!

Speed Painting Mordor Orcs

Step 1: Prime white, I use Halfords white acrylic primer, it coats well and drys matte in a short time. When it's dry, liberally wash all over with a dark colour, I have used various browns, grey and black, mixed together. Not much of this colour will be visible at the end, this stage is purely to remove the white of the primer. Why not prime brown or grey then? I find the dark wash over the light primer shows all the detail of the figure, a bit like instant blacklining.

Step 2: Most of the base colours are applied in this step. I have chosen a feature colour of P3 Sanguine Base, this is applied to the cloth garments of most of the orcs, though not all as these are not uniformed troops. The rest of the cloth areas are various browns and greys. Leathers are a lighter brown, I tend to mix these up on my palette as I go along. After about an hour or so, this got tedious, so I applied all the metal areas and stopped for the day. The overnight break is always a good idea when metal paints are concerned, the later stage of washing would be disastrous if the metals were not fully dried.

Step 3: Any remaining cloth or leather areas are quickly blocked in before the washes. Incidentally, I am using a nice big number 5 brush to apply all these base coats, it holds a good deal of paint and is fine enough even for these size figures, as long as the point is in good condition. I am also applying these base coats slightly watered down, to give a slightly transparent coat. This allows the under colours to show through a little. In this case, the under colours are basically black and white, so the combined effect is to add a colour that has some shading, rather than a flat colour.

Step 4: I mixed up a wash consisting of black paint and Coat d'arms chestnut wash, roughly equal amounts, to which I added a few drops of matte varnish and matte medium. Then I painted this all over the figures with a rough old brush. When I had completed all fifteen, I went back and quickly redistributed any pooling with a small damp brush, putting into areas that need more shade, or just on to the base sand.

Step 5: The skin is painted with thinned pale green, brown or grey. As with many of my colours I put a little of each on the palette and then randomly mix together for some nice pastel colours. A thin coat over the "undercolour" gives a reasonable effect. Any remaining areas not yet painted are picked out - hair/fur is grey,  pelts are brown, etc. Then a final wash of brown plus black over these last areas if they need it. The last thing to do is add some rust, for this MIG pigments are a good short cut. I use dark mud then standard rust. Each of these is mixed in with a puddle of paint left on my palette and thinned with some matte varnish, then just dabbed on to the metal areas.

More Mordor Orcs

The Mordor army is starting to shape up nicely. I have added another 15 "speed painted" orcs, making 27 in total. These orcs I painted over several sessions rather than all in one day like the first batch, but still they were reasonably quick to do. So now I have a decent sized mob of orc rabble, ready for gaming.

The captain and standard bearer are metal figures that I had in my lead mountain, I can't even remember why I bought them, they may have been a present for some long forgotten birthday. I have often thought that I should throw them up on ebay, but I am glad to have kept hold of them now. They add a little variety to the plastic masses. Speaking of which, I managed to pick up the plastics on ebay and the Warhammer forum at a very tasty price. I got 60 orcs and 24 haradrim for the paltry figure of £15. When I add in my previously painted figures of a troll and Gothmog, it seems like a very cheap and quick-to-get-on-the-battlefield army.

The next step is to get this lot totalled up and then work out what I need to add to bring it up to 500 points, this being a nice size to play on a 4x4 board in a relaxed two hour session. I could add more orcs of course, but I would like to give myself a little variety with some wargs or maybe allies of some kind. Whatever I can find at a bargain price will do.

Mordor Orcs

Here's a dozen Mordor orcs I completed in an afternoon of hobby productivity! The figures are nicely detailed and very easy to paint up. A base colour and a wash give you a decent result in a short time - about four hours in this case, so around twenty minutes per figure is achievable. Obviously at this speed they are gaming level and might not stand up to close scrutiny, but sometimes it's nice to sit down for just an afternoon and have something useable at the end of it.

I have been enjoying playing skirmish games in the past few months, games like Saga and Muskets and Tomahawks. I wanted to try something similar sized but in a fantasy vein. There are some fantasy battle boards for Saga on the web, but I thought it would be worth revisiting another ruleset before trying them. The Lord of the Rings Strategy Battle Game (now The Hobbit SBG of course) has a good sized presence on the web and seems to be well regarded. It would be silly not to give it a try. So that's exactly what we did - Matt and I have played a couple of games and we both like it.  Matt has a huge collection of LOTR figures, pretty much every faction in various sizes. I have a more modest collection of 12 men of Gondor and 12 orcs and a little bit of terrain painted up, with plenty more in the unpainted pile. The nice thing about these figures is they are pretty cheap to pick up on ebay.

EDIT And here's the next little batch ready for priming. Fifteen more Mordor orcs to add to the growing army. I will do really well if I get these done in one afternoon, given the increased numbers and the banner, so I will probably aim for two sessions.

Orcs Art Collection Part 3

Some more orc artwork, possibly more familiar to many people as these two artists' work appear in many Tolkien calendars and books. The first is John Howe, who seems to have dedicated most of his life to illustrating scenes from Tolkien writings.

Alan Lee is probably best known of all these artists. The chances are that if you own an illustrated copy of the Lord of the Rings, it will be Alan Lee illustrations.

Both these artists were chosen by Peter Jackson to work on the film trilogy as art directors, so their interpretation of orcs should be recognisable to all gamers.

Orcs Art Collection Part 2

This image and those below are among the first I can remember seeing on orcs. They were included in a book called the Tolkien Bestiary that was first published almost thirty years ago. The artist, Ian Miller, may be familiar to GW fans, since he did some work for them in the very early days, including some illustrations in the Realm of Chaos books.

These illustrations perhaps best encapsulate for me how an orc should look, though finding a description by the author in any of the books is a hard task. They are described variously as elves corrupted by the enemy, as men twisted by cruel devices, or simply as beasts like men but with swarthy features. For those interested in this type of thing, I can recommend this detailed article on Tolkien orcs. I am not even sure if the latter two images are meant to represent orcs, which perhaps is fitting given Tolkien's ambiguity on the matter.

The images are used without permission, no infringement of copyright is intended.