Orc spear unit

The idea for this unit came about when I realised I had loads of spare dwarf spears left over. The Oathmark dwarf spears are very long and remind me of pikes, a few spear head swops with nasty looking pole arms and you have a new orc unit.

As well as weapons I had quite a few dwarf torsos left over too. The shape of the Heavy dwarf infantry poses meant I couldn’t cut some of them down to size to match my Asgard metal ones. This left me with a box full of Dwarves I couldn’t  use, well not anymore… the have been converted into foul goblins . The scale armour on these dwarf models should look great as dirty orc armour.

The long pikes are the dwarf spears with a new end stuck on with plastic glue. I had a pack of nasty looking pole arms from Fire forge and these made for good orc weapons. 

I have modelled all my other orc units as blood thirsty mobs so far, apart from a couple of skirmish bases. So it’s nice to make a purely spear armed force. They have their own stats and rules in Oathmark so that will be fun to play, it should separate them from the howling mob.

This orc is made from an Oathmark Heavy dwarf and the head of a Warlord Games orc. The weapon head is also off the same orc sprue. The spike on the helmet is one of the old spear heads that was cut off, use everything waste nothing!

The new heads from the Wargames Atlantic goblin box really helped with the look of this unit.

Making a unit out of spare bits does throw up the odd problem, like a shortage of shield arms. I got around this by cutting the bows off some archer arms and using those. This works quite well because the outstretched arms look very long and so very orc like. They hang down almost to the ground and really look the part.

 This punch dagger spear top is from the Wargames Atlantic goblin sprue like most of the heads in this unit.

Update; this morning I created some more. It was fun trying to find evil looking blades for the spear tops. Some of these were cut from old GW goblin weapons. 

‘Awwwww Dad!’ This orc teenager gets told to do something he doesn’t what to do.

This orc officer has a GW elf spear from the bit box.

This orc has a GW Beastman’s weapon

A motley lot, this could be my favourite unit to date, as it captures my vision of orcs in the book. 

It might be time to break out the Oathmark metal characters too, for so reason I have hung on to them until now. Maybe this unit is worth their presence.