Creating Orc Standards

I want my Gundabad units to be clearly distinct from the other orc formations on the board. To this end I plan to insurt some more flags and banners into them. These Gundabad orcs are all about branding!

I started off looking through eBay for some cheap standard bearers, this wasn't easy, but I did see this guy who was broken. I thought I can fix him up with a standard in less than no time, so bought him.

 

There was also a set of the resin orcs I like, that were marching with pole arms. Luckily, the pole arms were separate and so a flag pole could be inserted instead. Having long, brittle resin pole arms would never have worked anyway, but tough brush bristles are a different story. So I rounded those up too.

To add some variation, I tried different techniques out with the standard poles. I added supports and tried some that were trailing behind rather than the usual cross post.

I started off by gluing these with gel super glue to keep them in place.

I then added blobs of super glue around the post joints.

On top of these blobs I then tied cotton to act as rope. This was nice a crude looking, orcs don't spend much time on such things.

It wasn't long before I had a new group of orcy looking banner men.

I used the odd plastic piece to finish off some of the banners poles.

Poles crudely tethered together.

The next step was to cut up some pieces of Wet wipes to use as the banner itself.

These were soaked in watered down PVA to give them form when dry.

This guy above with the big banner was created a week ago to go with the big war boss character. I had to curl it slightly so the orc could see.

Rough and ready, the more tattered... the better.

I pulled and ripped the edges of the wipes to give them a tattered look.

These will look good when sprayed with undercoat. A few holes in the banner is always a good look.

The wet wipes!

Brush bristles are bloody great aren't they!

A sea of black banners is the idea, one for almost all of the bases.