Three Orctober Orcs

Here I’m back with a quick post showing some orcs I finished a little while ago and thus catching the very end of Orctober. Time slipped away from me these last weeks and I have not been able to find the time for blogging. Hopefully this changes in November. At least I have a bunch of minis to show you, which I hopefully will find the time to photo this coming weekend – not only fantasy, but also Sci-Fi stuff.

But back to the orcs. They are really a random bunch of greenskins. The pictures are not that good. They look a whole lot cruder here than when I look at them with my (old tired?) eyes. I guess you know the feeling. The first one on the left is one of the very first minis ever I have owned. It has thus been with me for quite some years now. Back in the early 00’s I stripped most of my old minis of their paint and this one has been resting in the lead mountain unpainted up until recently. It was accordingly a rather nostalgic moment for me to actually repaint this chap after what amount to 20 years or so. I still love this orc despite this particular mini is suffering from some severe mold lines rather stupidly going through his face.

The other two orcs are of the savage kind. The one in the middle from the early 90’s is completely goofy and over the top. I don’t really like the model, but I painted it anyway and it was actually a nice mini to work on. In order to have some fun with the model I added a big cartoony arrow to the already extremely cartoony model. By the way, what exactly is that thing on his head? I have no idea. The last one on the right is a classic, cool savage orc. You gotta love these savages. So cool and angry looking!

That’s all for now. I will be back soon with more painted stuff and perhaps a battle report from when we played the old Blood in the Snow scenario ’87. Yeah!

This is a stick-up!

A few weeks ago we played a little game of Rogue Trader. The set-up was a simple; a classic objective. One player had to get a transport across the table while the other had to capture or prevent the transport from getting out. To spice thing up a bit we planted two groups of so-called Floaters on the table. They moved randomly D8 inches each turn but were otherwise identical to the Floaters described in the Deathworld Flora of the Rogue Trader rulebook. Having jungle and swamp terrain handy at the moment due to our Isle of Dread campaign the scenario took place in a somewhat similar setting.

The background narrative, feeding into an ongoing story, ran something like this:

The enigmatic gang leader Krulak has had a series of victories recently, not in the least after having dealt a group of orks a severe blow at a confrontation deep within the industrial jungle of Rustville. Krulak’s usual strategy is to take a cautious role rather than actively seeking confrontations, but it has come to his ears the renegade scientist Dr Kitchener is in the process of smuggling some off-world eggs from a rare species down on the planet of Kenwah III. The habour for the eggs is the illegal spaceport, position close to the small rural community of Dusty Meadows. Once on the planet the eggs are placed in a small transport vehicle. The smugglers Dr Kirchener has hired for the job is a group of space nomads from the now destroyed planet of Delborh. Since the destruction of the planet the Delborhrians have travelled the galaxy and earned their living as traders and smugglers. The group of Delbohrians Dr Kirtchener has hired is led by Fylaz.

When we entered the scenario Fylaz and his group of Delbohrians were on their way through the swamps to Dr Kitcheners secret lab in the wilderness. At the spaceport the Delbohrians were met by Dorffs, an ogrynn henchman, who is to accompany them on their way and keep an extra eye on the shipment.

All of this has caught the ear of Krulak’s spies and despite the fact that he has no real knowledge as to the use or nature of the illegal eggs, Krulak has decided to steal them from the Delbohrians. He has thus equipped a small raiding party for the mission, led by his right-hand man The Nazz.

The fight was a close one. The Nazz and his gangers almost succeeded in capturing the eggs, but in the end the Delborhrians succeeded in delivering the eggs to Kitchener. The game was fast and tremendously fun to play because it was so close at all stages. I had actually had the opportunity to playtest the scenario with Thorbjørn, AKA Dr The Viking, two days before, and he helped me fine-tune the scenario – especially concerning the Floaters (Thanks for the lesson in probability calculations!). The Delbohrians also won the first time the scenario was played, but the two games were very different, which in itself is quite fascinating.

Oh well. Good times. This is what the game looked like.

The 4×4″ table

Delbohrians and the transport

On the move through the swamp

Sneaking up on the caravan

Gangers crawling on their hands and knees to be in cover

The Floaters are getting close

Novi Batzer has activated his Camo-Canopy which has power for 10 turns. You can follow the countdown on some of the pictures

The Nazz makes a run for it with the transport

Floaters on the lake

Here it ended for The Nazz

 

Earth Elementals…ish

I finished these two elementals for a scenario we are going to play later this month. The large one is the Citadel Earth Elemental released way back in 1984 (I think) and thus certainly a mini of a certain age. I really love this earth elemental – it is large, hulking and has this great genie pose with a ton of character. It even seems, sort of, to have found its way into the art work of the WFB 3ed rulebook where a very similar earth elemental is depicted om p. 272.

The earth elemental drawn by Tony Ackland

The small one is a Golem from the Night Horrors range released around ´86. He is also sometimes found listed as an earth elemental and I will be using him as an elemental in the scenario, but I have in fact not found him listed as an elemental in any official Citadel material. The tab also reads Golem.

Before painting the golem, I was a bit confused as to what was what on the mini, but after I began working on him things started to make sense and what started as a slightly skeptical attitude towards the mini turned into something way more positive. It is definitely not the greatest sculpt produced by Citadel, but is has a lot of charm and you got to love the power pose.  

Now I really need to get my hands on the fire, earth and water elementals as well. The collecting never ends…