A few more goblins

Here is the last batch of goblins I finished before we played the Blood in the Mud scenario. They are all of a very nice vintage, however, I must admit that the star among them is the standard-bearer. He is, of course, sculpted by the always enigmatic Bob Olley. I love this mini and the two-faced banner, which Goblin Lee rightly has pointed out, is very reminiscent of something Ian miller could have created.

As with the other orcs and gobbos I finished over the last months, I changed the skin tone slightly to make them more diverse. There is really no plan to the colours I choose, which is a bit of a gamble, but in the end, I mostly like the result and I really appreciate the diversity this adds to the gobbos.

Now it is time to work on new painting projects, which I am fairly excited about, as greenskins have started to bore me rather much.

 

Brunhilde Oldhammer-style

One of the many lighthearted minis produced by Citadel back in the day is definitely this so-called barbarian, sculpted by one of the Perry brothers, I believe, and released in ‘87. The model is funny and delightfully absurd it its use of the Viking tropes culled from Nineteenth-Century historicism. The template for the pompous lady is of course the character of Brunhilde from Wagner’s “Ring”, specifically as Brunhilde was portrayed by Amalie Materna (1844-1918). Or at least how Materna later came to be received in popular culture as the archetypical ‘fat opera singer’ as in ‘it ain’t over till the fat lady sings…’ etc. Sadly the mini was not sculpted with the iconic wings on Brunhilde’s helmet, but it is still close enough to be a clear homage.

The glorious Amalie Materna (1844-1918) as Brunhilde.

As to the mini itself I did a fairly simple paintjob, going for a reuse of the same colours on her shield and at the bottom of her robe. A slight unevenness in the sculpting of the face, combined with her round cheeks, makes her face rather hard to finish in a satisfying way. Somehow she looks a bit cross-eyed no matter how you do the eyes, but I guess this is part of her charm. I enjoyed painting her anyway, and I am glad to have her in my collection.

Some time ago Foundry rereleased her along with other classic barbarians from Citadel. Mine is a Citadel original, but it certainly is nice to have her available again at, if not little money (this is Foundry we are talking about), then at least a cheaper price than what we often see on Ebay.

 

 

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!

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…

A few, old gobbos

Here’s three old, early 80’s pre-slotta gobbos finished a while ago. They look rather different from each other, however, the Ral Partha one on the right is really the odd one out. This one is, of course, sculpted by Tom Meier; an old favorite of mine. While painting the Meier goblin it suddenly dawned on me that the little chap is going commando, so to speak. You can almost see it in the photo. Tom Meier sculpted a number of trolls with a bare bottom, but I didn´t know that he did the same with at least this goblin. Perhaps he did more; semi nude orcs? Elves?

I really love these old goblins and the sense of wicked menace they convey. Particularly the Meier goblin is really oozing grim evil, but the other two have something of the same. Most will probably prefer the humor Kev Adams brought to the greenskins, but I really dig this early stuff.

 

  

… and his name was Guthrum Mane

As you perhaps may have seen, I have been very slowly painting the miniatures belonging to the Orc’s Drift campaign and in fact, I was really considering this project finished as I have finally given up on finding the Hagar Sheol miniature. While painting the minis for the campaign my little gaming group has played all scenarios except the last one. The first scenario I think we even have played three times and I have been using a very nice old, giant for this, serving as the drunken Guthrum Mane.

There is little chance for me playing the scenario again anytime soon, but some time ago I got hold of the mini suggested for the campaign as Guthrum Mane and he has now been staring at me from his cave in the lead mountain for a while. Finally I succumbed to temptation and painted my Guthrum in order for him to join his fellow minis from Orc’s Drift.

The mini, as you probably all know, was one of the first, if not the very first miniature sculpted by Kev Adams to be put in production by Citadel back in 1985. It is listed as a ‘giant hill troll’ and despite the rather crudely sculpted face I really love this mini. It has so much cool old school oddness to it. I love the lumbering pose and general dismal look, topped by the mask-shaped knee protector all kept in a not too cartoony style.

Guthrum has been painted by many and you will find a lot of great Guthrums on the web. I followed the idea of others and put him on rocky ground. It suits the model nicely. all in all i am very pleased with how he turned out. Now he can return to his cave and wait for some action to come his way.   

I hope you like him.

 

The Curious Case of the Goblobber

Ok, this may be old hat to you, but I recently noticed something odd concerning the Goblobber while flicking through the 3rd edition rulebook for Warhammer Fantasy Battle. Now, we all know what the brilliant Goblobber and crew from ’87 looks like. A masterpiece by Michael Perry from the golden age of Citadel captured splendidly on the box art for the war machine. 

The glorious Goblobber as we know it

However, on p. 105 of the rulebook we see the Goblobber with the bow-part mounted reversed. What is this about? It is clearly the same model as the one from the box cover. Did something happen to the model between the two photos? Was the bow loose and mounted wrongly by the photographer when taking the picture for the rulebook?

The Goblobber as seen on p. 105 in the Warhammer Fantasy Battle rulebook p. 105.

This is certainly curious. I started googling images of the Goblobber and while most people have assembled their ‘lobbers with the bow in a traditional way, such as this one, brilliantly painted by Jaekel.

The Goblobber painted by Jaekel

But I also discovered this by Orclord on the Stuff of Legends page.

Orclord’s Goblobber

Here the bow or crossbeam is also mounted the ‘wrong’ way round and the caption for the image even comments on this without further explanation.

What is this about? Is there a connection here? how this did happen twice? I am puzzled and I clearly have too much time on my hands when having time to ponder such hobby oddities. Does anyone of you Oldhammer scholars have some info to share concerning this, which can shed some light on the matter

Again, sorry if this topic has already been discussed to death on Facebook or some other forum.

 

Back with the orcs again

Here I am once again with more orcs. I have painted way too many of those lately and they really start to bore me now, but those two I post here and a few more, which in fact are finished, were the last I needed to do at this stage. This means that I will be able to focus on other stuff, the results of which I will be able to show you soon. In fact all I need is some time to take photos of the minis, which sometimes can be a bit of a hassle. You probably know what I mean.

There is not much to tell about the Citadel orcs you see here. Both are really nice models of an orc vintage I love. I chose a somewhat dark skin tone for both of them, which I at this moment seem to prefer over the lighter tones of green I also use. But this varies constantly and in a few months it will probably be the lighter tone I prefer again. This switches all the time.

The orc on the right is of course of Talisman fame. I was not trying to copy the colours used on the character card from the game, but the image must have been on my mind somehow, as there certainly is a lot of similarities.

The orc character card from Talisman, 2nd ed.

I will be back soon and this time not with orcs… or goblins!

Yep, still more greenskins

So here I am again with another mix of greenskins and this time the mix is particularly eclectic. First up is one of Kev Adams’ early 90’s night goblins. I was never really taken with the night goblins from this era, but they are certainly nice and smooth to paint and still way better than the later, plastic incarnations of the gobbos – at least to my mind.

Speaking of smooth painting the next one is an early 80’s pre-slotta so-called Red Orc from the Fiend Factory line. This is a very crude sculpt indeed and somewhat of a challenge to paint, but I must admit that I rather like the odd moon face and the strange body proportions of the red orcs.

Then we have another familiar face from the Fiend Factory line – a pre-slotta goblin archer. The outlandish fishlike face (and feet with only three toes!) of the goblin made me paint his skin tone blueish or turquoise. I don’t know if this was I wise decision but sometimes you just have to go with the flow and see where things end up. This sculpt is in many ways much better than the red orc, but I would still choose the red orc over this fella.

Finally, we return to Kev Adams with a goblin he sculpted for Crooked Claw Miniatures. Like most of his Crooked Claw gobbos this is a fun and wicked looking chap with lots a character. Good stuff.

Luckily I have now finished painting the last greenskins I was planning to do and I am thus now stated painting other stuff. Hurra. However, on the blog the next post will still be showing greenskins as I will post the remainder of my work as well. Nevertheless, bear with me, other stuff is coming down the pipeline.

Orcs once again

As mentioned previously I am all about painting greenskins at the moment for a scenario we are playing later this year. So, as said, be prepared for a number of posts about orcs and goblins on the blog. Hopefully you won’t find it too dull. While I usually get bored when having to paint large numbers (more than four or five really) of the same type of minis in a row, the greenskins do a lot to help prevent burnout due to their fun, diverse nature. The orcs or goblin of the Perry’s and Adams are really an eclectic bunch when it comes to physiognomy and general look. Thus all one has to do is to vary the skin tone in order not having to paint the same green again and again and each orc and goblin by this really turns into a little world of its own; a quality which is lost in lost more recent greenskin models, I think.  

What we have here in this post is troopers from two Citadel speciality sets. First up is an archer from the Harboth’s Orc Archers box, released in that golden year of ´87. I really love this set and always had a thing for bow units.

The second orc is of course from Ruglud’s Armoured Orcs, also produced in 87. I like the armour and iconic, weird helmet on this one, but his face is definitely not, at least to my mind, Kev Adam’s best work. Nevertheless, I think the troopers from this set work very well as a special unit. Their heavy armour does make them stand apart from most others orcs produced during the same era, making them really useful when one wants to portray a special, hard hitting unit, veteran troops or such things. Good stuff.