Drifting with the orcs again

Here’s some rather hasty snapshots of a selection of the character models from the last two scenarios in the Orc’s Drift campaign pack. I’m sorry for the slightly blurry images – I somehow couldn’t get the camera working right despite the fact that the lighting was good.

First up is the inn keepers father. It’s one of the better minis from Trish Morrison’s line of townsfolk and villagers from ‘85. A line which has caught quite some flak over the years but I must admit that I find most of them charming.

The second model is Mayor Leofwine and while the miniature isn’t exactly screaming “mayor” it has a certain imposing air to it. It’s slightly rough around the edges, but the cloak was a delight to paint.

Speaking of rough sculpting we arrive at Bertolac – a fighter who seems closely related to the Young Fighter miniature from the Adventurers Starter Set from 1985. Especially the head and the face of Bertolac is crudely shaped and a bit difficult to paint, but the I guess he’ll look just fine on the tabletop. The shield motif I copied from Gary Chalk’s rendition of Bertolac in the campaign material.

I also copied Chalk when painting the fabled Osrim Chardz; one of those rare dwarves that can be rather costly, especially when looking at the “Buy Now” prices on Ebay. I could not help myself using Chalk’s rather bold, bright colours from the depiction of Osrim on the Orc’s Drift box cover but I think they work well on the mini and while it certainly was a bit intimidating starting to paint this one I’m fairly pleased with the end result. The model is perhaps a bit too busy on the details, but he’s a cool little piece. The miniature itself seems related to a whole little group of dwarfs with the King Gorrin from the Dwarf Lords of Legend  (1985) and Pulper Spikehead from the Chaos Dwarf Renegades (1986) boxes.

   

Osrim Chardz by Gary Chalk in an ad for the Orc’s Drift box

My personal favorite from the lot however is the old dwarf adventurer who in the campaign material goes by the name Beli. I really dig the seasoned, melancholy look of this guy. In many ways this mini sums up all I love about Citadels dwarfs from the 80’s and I never really get tired of these models.

  

That’s all for now.

Cheers

Martin

 

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