Mordor Orc Archers

I picked these up online recently, in a GW made to order week for some old Lord of the Rings metals. Let me get a grumble out of the way first - I do wish they would run the made to order for longer periods than one week.There was a good number of items I would have liked which all came up together, if you have a limited budget like me it would be impossible to get all of them in one week. With the funds I had I bought the Mordor orcs and some dwarfs.

Back in the day, when Lord of the Rings was first released (2001?), I was a Warhammer player - I played that one game and that one game only, so while I quite liked the range at the time it was not on my radar. Nowadays my tastes have changed and my gaming worlds have expanded to encompass Mordor, Rohan, and many others. I have picked up a few plastics from forum sales mostly, but the long out of production metals are quite hard to obtain for a reasonable price. So I was pretty happy when these orcs were made available (subject to the above grumble).

I thought they would add some variety to the plastic archer poses, but in truth they are all quite similar - I guess this is fairly inevitable in archers. Still, as luck would have it, the number of the unit is now up to 12, which is ideal for games of Dragon Rampant and Saga.

It felt a bit wrong speedpainting them, I would usually lavish time on figures that were hard to come by and relatively expensive - £3 per figure is expensive in my book. However, having painted the plastics up in one way, it would be foolish to paint up the newcomers in a different way, so I blasted through them in a couple of hours. The end result blends in and is good enough for gaming I think. More Mordor orcs to come at some point, though it could well be next year before I get a time slot.

Rohan In Flames

Orcs bearing the red eye have been seen wandering the furthest fringes of the Eastfold. How they managed to cross the river undetected is a mystery, but they must be stopped, driven back and destroyed. A couple of remote farms have already been pillaged and now they are making their way westward to bigger settlements. A small contingent of Rohan troops have set up defences to try to hold them back, a messenger rushing west to raise the alarm and muster reinforcements. 

This was a clash we played in Matt's dungeon using Dragon Rampant rules, which is designed for smaller games than ours, so we add a few tweaks to make it workable. When a unit fails to activate, the player turn usually ends, but we allow three failures before passing over to the opponent. This allows the ten or so units per side to be involved in most turns, turning a scrappy stop-start skirmish into something a little bit more epic.

Orcs trample crops as they press forward

They close in on the hastily erected defences

The bulk of the orcs push forward on the right

Reinforcements arrive for Rohan

The troll slaughters the archers in his path and lumbers on, orcs pouring into the gap in the defences

Fierce fighting in the farmstead sees the brave Rohan defenders slowly pushed back

The troll is peppered with arrows from all directions and staggers around in confusion

Orcs torch a farm building and are then thrown into the conflagration by enraged defenders!

Another building goes up in flames before the orcs are finally pushed back

A most enjoyable battle, Dragon Rampant really works well in games like this. The orcs made most progress on the right flank, the troll punched through the light defences easily enough, but then was the sole target for a lot of Rohan archers. More orcs tried to follow through but were hampered by rough terrain and harassing archery. In the centre, a single unit of Rohan defenders did well to hold out for so long, finally falling back as the orc leader and his troops rushed over the barricades. With the central farm undefended, it was soon roaring in flames. On the left flank, a unit of warg riders and a couple of light orc units struggled to push back a fairly meagre force of Rohan archers. As their numbers depleted, the orcs finally lost impetus and pulled back from the attack.

Two out of five building were destroyed, so technically it was probably the forces of  Rohan that won the day. But the orcs are many and slunk back into the marshlands, no doubt planning to return and wreak havoc again another day. It might be interesting to fight the next battle using a different ruleset, to see how they compare, maybe Erehwon or perhaps Saga. It would certainly be interesting to continue the tale.

Coming Soon? The Orcs Strike Back

Cave Goblins

The cave goblins are among the smallest of their kind. Living underground in almost perpetual darkness, with little to eat but mushrooms and the occasional insect or unfortunate comrade, they tend to be small, scrawny and undernourished. In isolation, they are rarely a danger, but in numbers they can be dangerous foe. When forced to the surface by their bigger kindred, they huddle in packs, preferring spears or bows, in order to attack their enemy at range - then run away and hide if the boss is not around to stop them.

When I first started collecting the goblins, my eye was on the standard goblins released in the early 1990's, which was when I started playing Warhammer. When I saw these night goblins on a forum sale, they were not my first choice, but I didn't want to look the gift horse in the mouth so I snapped them up despite my dislike of duplicate poses. These are mainly night goblins from around 1992, with the two slightly bigger models being common goblins from the same era. The shields are a selection of spare bits from various sources.

They have been really pesky little things, painting them has been difficult. I knew I did not want them in black robes with green skin in the traditional manner - it's been done by so many others. I also knew I wanted to have some variation in the skin tones, hoping that this might detract from the identical poses. My main inspiration was to paint the hoods red, after reading about the redcap from folk tales. After many stops and starts, I finally got them to this stage. The shields are mostly painted in leather hide shades, which helps to tie them together but without being too uniform.

In game terms, they are destined to play as levy troops in Saga (twelve per unit), or as light infantry in Rampant (twelve per unit), or in games of Erewhon (up to ten per unit). I expect them to cause very little damage to the enemy and then run away, any better performance than that is a real bonus.

I have the next goblin unit assembled and ready to be primed. This time, I have a much clearer idea on a palette and should blast through them quickly. So the next batch should come bounding (maybe lumbering) into view much quicker.

The real Mines of Moria

I have recently returned from a holiday in the wonderful city of Krakow, Poland - well worth a visit if you ever get the chance. One of the things we did while there was to visit the salt mines of Wieliczka. As usual when sightseeing, I slipped into nerdy mode and explained to my wife (in my best Gimli voice) that we would soon be treated to a "right royal welcome by my cousin Balin" as we entered Moria. As usual she rolled her eyes and we joined the tour. Of course I had just been joking, but when we finally made it down the 350 steps to a depth of 135 metres below ground, we really were in a dwarf mine.....

And here is the entrance, the dwarf statues here are a little tall, but check out the hammer above the entrance and those distinctive dwarf like columns. Note also the salt in the rock. Salt was a precious commodity in the days before canning and refrigeration, for thousands of years it was used in food preservation, and some historians believe that the first city in Europe developed around a salt mine. Food for thought. But enough of that, let's take a look at the dwarfy bits of the mines.

Dwarf Royal Guard

Balin's Tomb

Dwarfs read from the Book of Grudges

Anvil of Power

Dwarf apprentice (no beard!)

Dwarf treasure pouch

That's me sorted for salt for the next few years, I brought this 1kg bag up from the depths. It was a fantastic day out, interesting in a historical and a nerdy way. It's given me lots of ideas on how to develop the Oakenhammer dwarf story and collection. The next unit to be painted will definitely be the salt miners. After the goblins of course.........

Goblins WIP

Things have been moving slowly on the hobby front, and will not speed up much for at least another week, so I have just a WIP to show for the time being. I have around twenty of these old goblin spear figures which I was hoping to get finished for the end of the month, but two things have been slowing me down.

I cannot quite settle on a palette. I do not want to copy the old style, it's not really me and I don't see the point in trying to replicate what others have done before. I am aiming for a cool skin, warm clothing look, but I cannot decide if the result is interesting and varied tones, or just a mess of too many colours. I probably should put the ground and shields on to make the decision easier.

The other thing that is bothering me is the duplication of poses. There are five different night goblins holding a spear, I have four of them, but multiple copies of each. It's a bit clone wars, probably looks better in a disciplined army like elves or dwarves, but not so much in a rabble/horde like goblins.

The big news is that I managed to find a giant on ebay that would not need a remortgage to buy. Prices on old metals has gone through the roof recently and have reached a point far beyond my budget. So I was pretty happy to stumble across this when browsing during a coffee break. A lucky break, in this case. The paint work is too bright for my taste, but it's nicely done and the face is particularly striking. The oily goblin from the previous post makes a good contrast. On that front, I have suspended experiments in oils on the goblins, I need bigger models to practise on. I will come back to oils at some point. I feel a need for a change, to reinvigorate my hobby.

Oily little git

I don't usually post work in progress shots on my blog, they are usually dumped on to my facebook page. This place is where I tend to post fully finished work. However, this is a completely new technique for me, so I thought it would be worth recording. This is an oily little goblin. And I mean that in the literal sense, as it's been painted in acrylic, then washed in oils. It's a technique I was vaguely familiar with, I know that it's used on vehicles and some folks use it to paint horses.

I was inspired after seeing this amazing video by Marco Frisoni. I am all for achieving effects quickly, and like grimey paint work, so I thought I would give it a try. And for a first attempt, I am reasonably happy. I can see how it could help me to speed things along with my goblins, which has to be a good thing.

I learned a few things on this first experiment. The oil paint has to be much thinner than I used. And I would not use a pure black next time, probably try a range of browns. Below you can see the goblin before he got to this stage. I primed it brown, then painted on basic tones, then smothered it in the oily mix which was too thick. Even with this blunder, it produced an interesting result - the desaturation from the original colours is quite marked. I will try again with more colours/oils for sure, there are dozens of little goblins waiting to be painted.

First stage - basic colours (acrylic)

Second stage - oil "wash" which was more a tarring!