Bow-wow Bow-wow

Ok, so here we continue with models relevant for the Orc’s Drift campaign. What you see here is the orc champion Grashak Kra, who was already presented last week, and his pack of wild hobhounds rushing towards Ashak Rise and the dwarf miners working there. Something which takes place during the second scenario of the campaign.

I don’t think there is a colour-canon for painting hobhounds but some Google searches confirmed my general impression that people mostly have approached them very traditionally. I wanted to add something to the miniatures, making them slightly weirder and perhaps even a bit wilder. The minis themselves have a certain monkey-like look and this I took as a que for the baboon-like heads and combined it with fur inspired by hyenas. The result is pretty strange but also very dramatic and drama is, I think, what these minis need in order to work well. Because, honestly, the hobhound minis have a certain goofiness to them, which counters the very idea of them as being the fiercest, meanest sort of warhounds around.

Nevertheless I’m rather pleased with them and it certainly took some time to gather ten of these pre-slotta beasties (from 1984 I believe). Luckily Mr. Phreed kindly provided me with the last three I was missing. There was, I think, only produced three different hobhounds and as you can see I ended up with six of the same dogs. I could not bring myself to do any conversions on them. Although I considered adding some armour here and there.

Next up is the dwarfs from Ashak Rise.

 

 

Severed Hand Personalities

https://wordpress.com/It’s been a while since I posted anything on the blog. It’s not that I haven’t been painting rather the opportunities for taking pictures (I haven’t advanced beyond using natural lighting yet) and finding time to actually write the posts have been limited lately. Life you know… Well, what I have been doing is painting stuff for and from the legendary Orc’s Drift campaign from 1985 for Warhammer Fantasy Battle 2ed – the first large campaign-box Games workshop produced – which you of course all know.

What you see here is the orc characters for the second scenario “Ashak Rise”. First we have my take on Hagar Sheol – the leader of The Severed Hand Tribe. I was debating myself for some time what to do with this character as it gradually dawned on me that I probably would not be able to lay my hands on the original scenario model anytime soon.

The Hagar Sheol scenario model. A rare and expensive Little chap

Thus I started looking for a replacement. However, once I accepted that I would not be able to use the original I thought why not try to make my own Hagar. So that’s what I did. I rummaged through my pile of unpainted orcs and found a suitable model to convert and set out to make the model resemble Gary Chalk’s fine, fine portrait of Hagar on the cover of the Orc’s Drift scenario booklet. I must say that it was an extremely fun project, but the collector-part of my brain is still nagging me and I’ll probably never be complete at ease before I tracked the original Hagar down. Nevertheless I must admit that I’m very fond of my version.

Frontcover of the Orc’s Drift booklet with a drawing by Gary Chalk

The other orc is a ‘scenario model’ who goes under the name of Grashak Kra. A fierce, cool orc champion of the sort I love; punky, wild and wicked. He also appears outside the Orc’s Drift universe as an ordinary orc champion and is very easy to find and thus not expensive in any way.

That’s it for now. Stay tuned for more Orc’s Drift stuff coming up soon.

 

Cheers

Martin