I made up a few of these guys last year, but then I kind of passed them by. I was wrapping up my Middle Earth project for the year and I didn't really get to review these guys. Well, I fancied painting up some orc filth and so I broke open the box again.
These chaps are heavily armoured as the name suggests. They have some great characterful heads, I tend to use the armoured ones but it's nice to have options.
There is a nice bit of Angus McBride influence in the style of the armour which is always good. The poses are also quite energetic and animated, so they work well for an advancing front line.
The figures come with the option of a hand weapon and shield or a double handed affair. There is also a scattering of belt knives and axes to fill them out.
These will be the start of my Gundabad force just to make them different, they will be re-enforced by Wargames Atlantic orcs when they finally get released.
It's always nice to paint a few orcs every now and then, you can never have too many. I will add some green stuff to these once the glue is dry.
A couple of scale shots for good measure.
Short legs and long ape arms, these make great Mordor Uruk-hai.
Creating a standard from a wet wipe. Once the shape was cut out I coated it in PVA so it will dry hard.
Quick, easy and effective. The ragged edge should look good when it's painted.
A simple shape was cut out with scissors and I pulled at the bottom edge with my fingers to make it look torn and tatty.
So simple to do, I'm going to use this style for my Gundabad orcs and paint them red. The red colour will make them stand out from the other orc forces.
UPDATE:
Well as always, I got carried away with the orcs again. I couldn't resist adding some other makes to the Oathmark plastics.
My absolute favourite thing still is creating orc weapons out of brush bristles. Orc weapons are crude and nasty, these bristles once flattened with pliers can become a number of brutal weapons.
A new thing I tried today is scoring the plastic so it looks like wood and adding some fixings under the blade. This is done by scoring around the bristle so it looks like binding.
The spear shafts can be chewed by the pliers a bit to make them look more orky. Dents and grooves in the wood looks good and takes away that smooth platic fiinsh.
I love these crude hacket looking blades. I just squeezed the very tip a bit more and it flared out, making a great orc weapon.
The same was done for this one, the result was a very filmic weapon from the Lord of the Rings trilogy.
An oversized mace gets swopped out to a crude simatar.
Simple but effective.
These plastic bristles are tough and take super glue really well. There is no breaking or popping off with these hand made weapons.
I ended up dipping into a box and grabbing some other makes. They all go really well with the Oathmark ones. Scotia Grendal, Oathmark and Ragnarok miniatures.
I started to play with the idea of the new Gundabad standards. These will be pendants rather than hanging banners.
Creating leaders from the Scotia Grendal range.
Now it's time to start personalizing these figures. My green stuff is old and was a nightmare to sculpt with. It didn't want to do as it was told, but I pushed on and made orky looking garments.
Simple looking cowls and capes, all with holes and rips.
The pendant banner was made from a wet wipe again, washed with PVA. I couldn't resist adding so green stuff to the metal figures too
This cloak is interesting, it looks like heavy leather.
These banners will make Gundabad stand out for sure.
Crude and rude.
I think the putty just helps cover some of the joins and add more character.
The first banner man gets a fur cloak to bulk him up a bit.
Another officer from Scotia Grendal.
I did try to create different looking furs. I will have to order some new green stuff as this lot is past it's best. I didn't realise it had a shelf life.
I also dug out some resin figures I bought a couple of years ago. If I don't paint them now they will never get done. The resin figs are a good size and fit in well. There is no need to add any putty as they are already very detailed.
The resin orcs from eBay fit in perfectly with the other makes.
A lovely crude orc spear, it certainly looks at home in those greasy paws.
These cloaks were hard to do with my old putty, but the results don't have to be Elven quality with orcs.
I ended up with quite a gathering when I finally put the putty down.
These look good together charging forward.
Just to add some variety, I swopped this orc's big axe for a plastic sword. Many models sculpted in the ninties have oversized weapons, so it's good to tweak some.
