Savage Orcs: old vs. new

I thought I might show you my previous painting attempts on these Savage Orcs. Guess which one is the old one? I painted them fairly simply over ten years ago. The skin was something like a Scorpion Green(GW) base coat, then an ink wash and finally a drybrush. The lizard skin cloth didn't have any contrast which it defintely does now. I am quite happy with the contrast between the orcs flesh and the cloth. These are sadly taking a while. It would be great to get them finished by February. I am making a trip back to Germany at the end of the month and I could potentially drop these off and gather some unpainted miniatures to paint. Not that I don't have some here to do but I could forsee getting verything here done and then having nothing at all to do. I am unsure if I want to do tattoos on the Savages. I might experiment a little and see if I can come up with something I like.

First Pair of Savage Orcs

Savage Orcs are next on the list to get painted. I bought these when I lived in England many years ago. There was a good second hand shop for miniatures where you could get some really great deals. A lot of my students paltry income was spent there on projects I still haven't finished. I painted a few of these when I got them but they were shelved relatively quickly in favour of something else. I think in this case my first Hordes miniatures. I painted them rather quickly mainly with some drybrushing on the skin and some tattoos to break it up. I will post some pictures of them before I paint over them.

I am happy enough with these two Orcs, I still think that there is room for improvement but as I have to do forty of these there is only so much I am willing to do

. The skin needs a little more refinement. The colour and tone is fine but getting a better defined muscles and facial features would be good. Aalso the fur is really poor. It doesn't have enough of a paintable texture to do much other than drybrushing and washing. I wanted to transition from a dark fur colour to a lighter one. I did that but I think it could have been done better. A lighter tone on top would give a better contrast. I am not changing it now but I will do on the future versions of these models.I didn't want to go with a grey stone for the weapons so I went with brown. I think that worked out quite well so I will definitely be copying that through the rest of the regiment. Again the bases aren't done. I can worry about that once I know if I need round ones or not. I really hope I dodn't need round bases...

Night Goblins finished?

Finally these sixty models are done. It was quite a slog towards the end but I managed to push through. I have refrained from finishing the bases as I may have to put them on round ones all too soon. Hopefully that doesn't come to pass, it would just feel wrong. Then again who knows? It could be great. I am pretty enthusiastic about ninth edition. While it will be a big change I don't think it will be bad. Warhammer needs a shake up, the fluff needs to progress desperately and be maintained in this progress. The armies are fairly static and boring especially if you have played since third edition. Very little has changed and to be honest it is boring to see the same armies hit the table game after game.

I don't know if I will ever need these sixty models. If the game is becoming smaller then larger regiments will probably be superfluous. Maybe it will be possible amongst veteran players to up the points to a level whereby the number of models are similar to before and the game still plays well. We will just have to wait and see. The next regiment up on the pianting block will be my Savage Orcs. I have about forty of these and I have been putting them on the long finger for quite a while. I don't have much more to do during the long dark evenings here in Finland.

Boarboy conversions

I have loads of Boars and hopefully a load of riders for them. I haven't dug through the bits box to see exactly what I have yet but there should be some. I don't really like the old Boars that much so I have decided to make a few changes. As the heads are what most people will see that is where I have focused my work. Firstly extending the tuft of hair on the head makes the boar look a little bigger. I don't have a rider here to see if I went overboard or not but it should be fine. Then some armour allows me to do some more interesting painting on these guys. A large plate on the front will let me do the check patteren I have done on the rest of the armour. I am debating whether or not I should add a blade or a spike. I probably will. I also have to add some rivets but I will only do that once I am completely finished. I have also added some chainmail. I did this before I stuck the head onto the boar and I managed to get the angle of the fall wrong. I will take the chainmail off and redo it maybe with some plates or even some leather. I would like to improve my chainmail sculpting as I may use it on more models in the future. I also want to add a few smaller details such as spikes along the bottom of the facial armour plate, again this needs to have the angle changed slightly and a rivet added. It worked out decently well though and it looks like I can use it on the other models.

If anyone has spare plastic rider legs from the old Orc regiment box please let me know as I will need some to get a nice sized unit of these done.

Belated Spider Riders

I finished these models a while ago but I forgot to post them here. I am really glad I got them finished as I was not enjoying painting them. I can't say that they were particularly hard to do but they just took so long I got bored. I had intended doing ten or twelve of these but five was the limit. I left the rest of them in Hamburg when I came to Finland. I can revisit the regiment at a later date. I have doubts as to their effectiveness in the game. They are too vulnerable to panic tests, especially small regiments. Also they tend to operate away from the general or battle standard bearer so they can't use their benefits. The biggest problem for a fast mobile and useful regiment of light cavalry such as these is the fact that at least one turn of a standard game they will be sitting around doing nothing due to animosity. I don't know if this is really reflected in the points cost of the regiment. Once I get the rest of them painted up I can test them in a few games and see if they really are worth it. I do have forty of these models and so I could do a rather large single unit. I doubt I would punish myself with that though.