Black Orcs - Addendum

So after opining on Black orcs and looking at the classic picture from Warhammer Armies, you all saw that I found two Marauder Giant Black Orcs.

For a lark, I went on solegends and found this picture.

From: http://www.solegends.com/marauder/mm27giantblackorcs.htm

So it looks like I have old B and C. I see that on ebay I can find the four of them plus Eeza Ugezod for $65 or even an in the box Mother Crushers for $75. Seems like a lot more than £2.99 for 2, even with inflation.

Aside from a missive against these robber barons of lead, it seems to show that people were painting Black orcs green even at the time.

Someone on facebook pointed out that they didn't understand the whole green skin for orcs and goblins. It just occured to me that maybe the Green Goblin from Spider Man was an influence.

From: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/6/66/Green_goblin2.jpg

But for me it was just the pictures in the White Dwarf, rulebook and Warhammer Armies that caught my imagination. If green was good enough for "The Goblinmaster" it's good enough for me.

Id also like to welcome:

Christopher Regan who doesn't appear to have a blog but is on facebook and was kind enough to send me some Dark Furture figures as part of some diabolical plan.

And Orlygg Jafnakol most famously of Realm of Chaos 80's. If you don't follow this blog I don't think you can call yourself an Oldhammerer ;). But seriously I feel honored to be on his radar. I truly admire the work he's done and the joy for the game his writings have rekindled in me.

Box of Holding - Christmas in April?

So I've had these three boxes, two skull crushers and on man mangler, sitting in a box of figures for many years now. Imagine my surprise when I found they held much more than what was pictured on the box.

Looks like three Orc crossbows, six Orc engine crew, five Bretonnian cannon crew and some parts of the Man Mangler and maybe one Skull Crusher Wheel.

An Orc General and his Boar, Dwarf Shields, two skull crushers, some man mangler bits, two spear chukkas and a rock lobber.

Another orc crossbow, two giant black orcs, a bombard, orc engine crewman and four orc archers from AC '91. Oh, and a shield with a rat on it.

Thanks for looking.

How "Black" are your Black Orcs?

Prufrock got me thinking about Black Orcs and how to paint them. Do you remember that picture from Warhammer Armies?

I remember originally planning to paint my black orcs in black skin tones, but honestly back then I'm not sure I would have known exactly how. In looking at this picture he has almost the same skin tone as my 40mm zombies. That is all shades of grey with a slate green top highlight.

I generally try to do my goblins lighter than my orcs and I did my "black" orc general a tad darker. But they are all green.

So let's look at how I do it, sort of a painters note book if you will. (In doing some research for this I am finding it maddeningly difficult to find what look like the right names for the paints. Of course all of mine have had the labels fall off.)

So lets try some look at it forensically. If I recall correctly, when I started out it was with a base green, green ink wash, followed by a brighter green dry brush. I want to say Goblin Green as the base and Bilious Green as the highlight.

Now I use these paints mostly:

The three Hauser greens are what I use the most. For 20mm (1/72) I have used the Anita's Olive green as the base. I'm pretty sure that for Nar (Eeza Ugezod) I used the Black Forest green to go darker. Of course a year later I think I used the middle three Hauser triad for the rest of the Mother Crushers. For many of the goblins I used just Hauser Light green with a grunge wash and then Hauser light green highlights. For some I think I used medium green, grunge wash and Hauser light highlights. This method tends to look a little too similar to the Hauser green triad.

***Edit***

So here we see the old school Orc Musician, painted with the aforementioned citadel paints and Winsor & Newton ink. Then the two "Black Orcs" painted about 9 months apart. Next is the regular Orc, painted somewhere between the two "Black Orcs" and finally two goblins who were painted in separate batches with slightly different techniques. The one on the extreme right is only Hauser light green with a wash and re highlight of the base. The one to his left is Hauser medium green, wash and thinned Hauser light highlights.

For completeness I have also included the 20mm(1/72) Orcs and Goblin. The Orcs have a base of the Anita's Olive green, with perhaps a highlight of Hauser medium green. I think it is more evident on the rider. The Goblin is in the still of the last 28mm goblin with only Hauser light green. The main difference is all these figures were undercoated Black, while the 28mm were all undercoated White.

I'm also trying out adding my blog logo to pictures. I'm not overly fussy about copyright, but do think maybe I should "sign" my images.

***/Edit***

Perhaps in the future I will try using white, black and flesh colors to mix into these greens. I still need to do some Half Orcs and need to figure out how to do a greenish cast to normal flesh paint.

If you have any tips or tricks, or any questions for me, feel free to ask.

I'd also like to welcome two new followers to the blog.

Lee Brady of Harold's Revenge, whose blog is not listed in his friend connect but I think is mentioned in his profile. A fellow Oldhammerer who was lucky enough to go to Salute and looks like he's playing some fun games of Saga with zombies.

Blue in VT of Blue's Marauding Miniatures who really needs no introduction. Great painter and early self identified Oldhammerer. Looking forward to meeting him at Oldhammer USA Weekend.

I'll have some amazing finds from the Box of holding next.

I'm all booked for Oldhammer USA Weekend

Now the real work begins. I dug through my collection and found that I only have four finished regiments, and those all painted in the last few months, except for the Trolls.

First almost finished regiment.

Broken Bone Boyz. They seem in pretty good shape except for the standard bearer and one lad.

"Battle of the Hill" report over at Talomir Tales

I finally finished the report on my Rally Round the King battle for the Talomir Tales Campaign. You can read about it here.

I used one of the muslin backdrops I bought for doing portraits and I think it worked pretty well. I think what I really may need is more space to game. The loft area, where I do all my hobby stuff, is a little cramped with a 6 x 4 foot table.

We had fun at the Phoenix Invitational track meet yesterday. The only issue was we got there way too early. We only had one event, the 800m, but we didn't want to miss it like we did on our first meet. So we got there at 7:30am and waited until 1:30pm for the boy to run his race. This event has 1000's of competitors from several states. No results yet, the boy came in 6th in his heat.

In Oldhammer news, I got a pass to go to Oldhammer Weekend USA. \m/ So now I just have to figure out all the logistics.

To the Strongest - updates

Hi All,

Just a quick update on some information about To the Strongest, Simon Miller is releasing v1.1 of the rules soon. There will be a printed copy available and, if you already purchased a digital copy, will get the updated pdf. Pretty sweet.

Another thing that came up in the newsletter was a link to this post from the 1000 Foot General. I have had a similar idea, as the though of marking up my gaming mat seems like a pain. Especially if I want to change grid size or go from squares to hexes and back again. My idea involves washers and velcro dots.

There is also a To the Strongest facebook page here. I had a hell of a time finding it by doing a search on face book. Hopefully this link will make it easier for you.

I'm also halfway through my Talomir Tales battle, sorry Ruarigh. Tereken has had a stroke of bad luck and lost their leader after successfully dislodging the Knights of Treyine from the central hill feature.

I'd also like to welcome two new followers:

Solo wargaming-on a budget! of Solo Wargaming in the UK. Looks like lots of scratch building and maybe even Warhammer 3rd Ed. I need to check this one out some more.

Toturi of Beer & Ink as well as a fellow contributor to A Tale of Several Gamers. He's got some nice looking Dwarf Clansman painted up.

Off to the trenches before yet another day slips by.

"Old"Hammer and Talomir

Hi All,

I've let the hectic, reactive nature of my life get the best of me of late. So I'll try to do better with updates.

Here is the Oldhammer stuff I referred to.

I picked up this 2006 edition book at Half Price books. I just wanted to get my imagination flowing from the fluff bits. I know that some feel the later development of Old World fluff was too confining, but there are some aspects of t that I like. I never follow things exactly anyway, so it gives me something to riff off of.

What may be hard to see is the bag of plastic Skaven heads, graciously donated by JamieM from the challenge. He sent them to me after seeing my plastic goblins painted up.

I'm all set up to play out the next Talomir Tales battle, I just took a slight detour to assemble the stuff I needed for the Potion Pilferers scenario for Knight's Quest.

Since I hurt my leg yesterday I should have more time for games. Can't seem to run injury free theses days.

Analogue Hobbies - Peoples choice Poll

If you haven't had a chance to peruse the work that was done this past December through March, head on over and cast a vote for your choice for the Peoples Challenge.

I was remiss in not voting for the Challengers poll. Apparently we can also vote for the peoples choice.

I must say that narrowing things down to a top three is really difficult, as there was so much great stuff to enjoy during the challenge.

In other news, I hope to have some battle reports and an Oldhammer post very soon.

Heraldry using Inkwell Ideas COA

Hi All,

Sorry to be so quiet. The track season is in full swing and we had another meet yesterday. Hope everyone had a Happy Easter today, but I'm a tad worn out. As one other parent put it, "I'm exhausted and I didn't even do anything."

Anyway, I have my Talomir Tales battle to fight and a game of Knight's Quest to play. While I was cooking dinner tonight I decided to make some shield designs for the heraldry of Messrs Chicken and Waffles using Inkwell Ideas Coat of Arms creator.

Very similar to what I was creating myself with GIMP but much faster with the Java program. Good fun and easy to use.