Half-Orctober Eve

With much thanks to Hobgoblin from the LAF, I am now up to 16 of the Hobgoblin Despoilers to be used as half-orcs.

I also stumbled upon an old unreleased model from Knight Terror Games also unreleased game, "Warlocke", who I think may make a decent half-orc hero. I don't remember what he was originally supposed to be.

So that's brings my total unpainted but prepped horc horde to...

Something Old, Something New

I'm not very good at this "not buying new minis" thing. But at least I'm still keeping it to a minimum. And these were both hard to pass up and bargains as well...

I've wanted the Serpentine Dragon since I was a teen. The other is some sort of Kickstarter exclusive mini from a boardgame, and is very fitting for the Meat Hating Robot Pirates.

Horc Solo

In my quest for more half-orcs (”horcs”), I've considered the idea of sculpting some half-orc heads to put on other minis. Over the weekend I realized I had a few heads I had saved from converting the Reaper orcs into Fomorians. So I trimmed one down and put together a a body from Citadel Empire militia bits, and...

...not exactly what I was a after. This will probably be the only one I do with this combination of bits. So you could say that this horc is a solo... Hmmm... Horc Solo...

Not sure where I got the idea to paint him in a white shirt with black pants & vest.

I'm sure I'll still find a use for him. Maybe team him up with a tall, furry companion. Will have to figure that one out. (Owlbear? Werewolf? Or...?)

This latest creation is brought to you by Daemonium. A bit too sweet & sour for me. Not what I like in a Belgian style golden. I'm not oppsed to beer in cans, but a Belgian ale in a can seems odd, too.

Polymorph

I cast polymorph cheap dinosaur toy into skeletal owlbear!

*Poof*

Got a couple of skeletal triceratops toys in a package from Shadespyre a while ago. With a little work I think it turned out OK. The post-surgery beak-like skull, size and stance made me think owlbear.

My first drink in over a monthd due to prolonged illness. Imperial stout brewed with cacao nibs aged in bourbon barrels. Not bad. Only bought a single bottle to give it a try. Also taking it easy (plus it's 9.5 abv.) I'm fimally starting to recover from the plague. My daughter (also mostly recovered as well) and I went to Girl Scout day at the zoo today. Good to finally start getting back to LIFE after a month of being sick & isolated at home and hospital!

Postscript: Had a few beers, got a bit drunk, woke up feeling better than I had in a month. First time I can hear clearly out of both ears in almost as long. Clearly I require booze for a healthy life.

Half-Orctober Prep pt. 2 (Plus Day Dreaming of Sculpting)

The rest of the half-orcs, aka Citadel's RR15 Despoiling Hobgoblins of the Darklands, have been prepped. That should be the last of the half-orcs. For now... Would love to find 4 more troopers for this regiment.

For some time now, I've been daydreaming about two sculpting ideas. One is to sculpt up my own oldschool style "regiment of renown". The other is to either sculpt & cast some half-orc heads for converting other minis. Maybe I should combine those ideas and try sculpting a half-orc regiment.

Mind you, my sculpting skills are still rather amateurish. But I'm not going to pressure myself to sculpt masterpieces, so that's OK.

I've been trying to dig through my old boxes of minis, organize, and perhaps even get rid of some dead weight. But spurring me on in terms of sculpting, I think I've now unearthed all of the painted vulture creatures I sculpted, as well as all of my remaining unpainted casts of the one that was briefly in actual production. Again, not masterpieces. But they're OK for a rank amateur, and give me enough confidence to try another sculpting project.

There are seven unpainted castings in the little bags. I'm contemplating some sort of trade or give-away for each of them. Maybe I'll hang on to just one for myself.

Half-Orctober Prep

I figure my desire to make a big push on painting up half-orcs will coincide with "Orctober" so I cleaned & primed the next unit, plus the old standard bearer I stripped. I'll also prep the Hobgoblin Despoilers, er, ahem, old Citadel "half-orcs" next, and then I should be set for some painting next month.

I think I mentioned in a previous post that I will end up with right around 1000 pts of half-orcs based on WFB3. This has got me thinking about other mini-projects. I've already been doing a few individual mercenary units, but I like the idea of these small 1k forces as well. It give me a nice variety to paint and could be fun if I start gaming again.

So I've already been thinking about getting in on the next Old World Army Challenge, which involves painting a 1k force over 6 months. I've got two potential options for that. One are some old wood elves, half of which are painted but I've been wanting to strip & repaint. The other are Sea Elf allies I've long planned for the Marienburgers. These are all unpainted or in need of stripping from previous owners (well, except for one test cavalry), the bulk of which are old 4th ed. plastics I picked up on the cheap many years ago.

Thinking about further 1k projects, I've got a couple of ideas. I have some of the old Tom Meier lizardmen/trogs that I stripped of their 1980s paint years ago, but just haven't got around to repainting more than a single figure. I've got a small unit of each, but now that they're available again from IWM, that could be a fun 1k project. It wouldn't necessarily fit into my Wasteland campaign ideas/theme, but I can totally rationalize after recently re-reading some of the Warhammer background... Marienburg and the Sea Elves are both involved in trade from the New World, so how about plans for some small games/skirmishes there? I've never been crazy about the Slann, so I can just go full lizard for my own use. Of course, that gets me thinking about more ideas... what else could I justify in the New World? Since I'm skipping the Slann, how about some fantasy Aztecs? Something else...?

On the other hand, I'm still trying to restrain myself on starting any new (or New World?) projects until I've caught up more on what I've already got -- like the Marienburgers, undead & undeadish, and especially the halflings/JTC.

Adjustments, Lead & Digital

I've finally tweaked the widths on the blog to properly display my default image sizes at full size instead of reducing them online (which results in worse quality vs. me reducing them prior to uploading to the blog) But now I need to fix my header image, which I will get to soon. Soon-ish. Sometime.

It's going to irritate me until its fixed. So it probably won't be too long.


I've got another unit of half-orcs waiting in the wings. Old Grenadier/Mirliton minis. They're great figures, though there's limited variety. That's OK, since it's only one unit. But I did want to mix it up a bit. The original range is armed with sword and shield. There's an additional pack of spearmen, which I think were added later by Mirliton. They look a bit different, sort of midway between the original Grenadier sculpts and Peter Jackson's orcs. Still great minis. Except I don't want spears. (And I don't like the shields.) So a bit of chopping, drilling and pinning, plus some swords looted from old plastic Skaven clanrats (5th ed.) and...

The two on the left are the originals, the two on the right are the re-armed spearmen. I just need to find some new shields for them. I think they turned out well. I've got one more to re-arm in this manner. plus two more complicated conversions. The last two from the spear pack are holding their weapons in e strange two handed grip. I may try re-equipping those by turning the spears into battle-axes.

(See pic of unmodified minis from Mirliton web site, below.)

Half-Orc 2

Squeezed out a few minutes throughout the day to speed through another Reaper half-orcs. Both of these were admittedly really easy to paint. The second one has been slightly modified. I cut off the ridiculous blades from her armour, and gave her a more humble shield to hopefully look better with the rest of the half-orcs. You can click here to see the original mini at the Reaper site.

Half-Orc

I liked in my last entry. Well, it wasn't a lie at the time. I rage-painted one of the Reaper half-orcs I started a bit over a month ago. She will probably go in the upcoming unit of warriors I have planned next.

Edit: I took a quick look at the numbers, and by the time I'm done painting the half-orcs, it should land me right around a 1000 point mercenary contingent in WFB3 by the ol' Armies book.

Where Did August Go?

Not much new here. August just flew by. The last two weeks my daughter and I have both been home sick with some sort of plague (both still sick.) Otherwise same old shit taking up all my time.

Today I was rummaging through some old boxes and found what is probably one of the earliest painted minis I've still got. Painted with enamel model paints, before I discovered acrylics. Grenadier orc.

As much as I'd like to keep him around for nostalgia, I dropped him in the paint stripper as I think he'll make a fine, if ugly, addition to my little half-orc project. Besides, I've got an even older mini that I keep around to remind me of the early days:

Other than that, the only gaming related stuff I've got going on has been getting lost in my fever addled head, thinking of new scenario & campaign ideas. There's one in particular that I've really fleshed out, utilizing minis I've already got but encouraging me to paint a few last items. It's based on something familiar, but different. Different-ish. I'm going to call it Vengeance of the Witch Blaster! I'll just need a few players. And a piece of terrain. And like one or two more units painted up.