Frost grave Demons as Warrior Orcs

Well when I saw the new box set from Frost grave I obviously thought of one thing... orcs! They match the heavy armoured Moranon orcs from Peter Jackson’s films very well.  So they could serve as the elite warrior class for the Mordor forces. As there is not really meant to be plate armour in Tolkien’s works, I might try to paint them as black leather and see how that looks. 

The new sculpts are quite large and make for good elite looking warriors no matter what colour you paint their armour.

The Demon shields make for very good orc shields too with lots of sharp points and rivets.

Some of the Demon sculpts come with classic Demon goat legs, so I had a go at swopping these with ones from Warlordgames orcs. Quite tricky but it does mean you don’t loose figures from the sprue. They also alter the height of the orcs which is good for variety.

I added some simple fur cloaks to try and change things up a little and make them look a bit more orcy.

There are some Demon helmets on the sprues and these make for evil looking orc helms too. Quite well made for orcs so these guys must be favoured among the masses.

The Warlordgames orc heads are very characterful and lend themselves well to these Demon bodies.

This arrived this morning and I wasted no time in chopping up the sprue to create some more orcs types. 

 The Uruks come in at a nice size for large warrior class brutes, the backbone for any orc assault.

Custer update

Custer is painted and based up. In ‘Men who would be kings’ a cavalry unit is made of eight troopers. I’ve based my companies with three on the command base, two bases of two and a single guy on a single base. This should allow me to remove casualties easily.

I had to do a bit of research into the size of Custer’s personal guidon. In the end I opted for one slight larger than the normal guidon. 

The guidon carrier is a casualty figure with a head swop. I was impressed the way the gorilla superglue stuck the head to the body, this will definitely be useful going forward. It will lead to a whole host of options and variety in units.

I cut up some spare horses from the horse holder set, I think it just helps to add a little drama and atmosphere to the bases, especially Custer’s. These horses have been shot to use as cover from the swirling hostiles.

28mm meets 20mm.

The companies so far, I think the basing looks okay, they are definitely spaced out in a skirmish formation. The first three companies here could be Reno’s with which he attacked the south end of the Indian village.

Major Reno is created from a converted horse holder, there are a splattering of other ACW figures in there for variety. It’s nice to have a couple of kepis in the mix.

 

Basing up the 7th

I’ve chosen to base these guys on round bases to represent a skirmish formation. I’ve used a mix of 40mm and 35mm round bases just for variety. The mounted troopers will be mounted on 40mm square bases as these will look the best in column.

Two figures on a base should be quite easy to remove casualties and keep track of wounded.

A rough and ready skirmish line. I’ve placed a couple of casualties in bases these do not count as lives, they just make the bases look better.

I bought these kepi equipped figures from eBay, This horse holder will make a good standard bearer.

I extended the blue paint below the belt and gave it a black line at the bottom, this produced good looking soldier tunics.

Having all the troopers in shirts and braces just isn’t right so a few tunics really helps break things up.

The old plastic bristle pistol trick turns this horse holder into an officer.
 

Reference for Little Bighorn

Another load of reference material showing the 1876 uniform. 

I have just ordered a few civil war cavalry with slouch hats, hopefully these will look good mixed in, the tunics will help break up all the shirts and braces in the Newline 20mm range.

 

Painting the 7th Cavalry

I’ve pushed on tonight in to the small hours to get some paint on these little chaps. They have been sculpted with Hollywood webbing braces, I’ve tried to ignore them. However, with the ink wash they are very noticeable, I may have to paint them in. Also they have Hollywood neckerchiefs, I did try very hard but in the end I caved in and painted two yellow.

Apart from the 60’s film characteristics, I found them really fun to paint. It was great looking through books and copying characters. The white shirt, blue waistcoat combo was a particular favourite. 

After all the colours had been blocked in a wash of brown ink was added. This will do as the minis are so small I don’t think it is worth going too crazy with detail.

Most of the troopers I painted in the grey shirt as you can see their braces.

They make for quite a rag tag bunch, very 7th Cavalry.