I smell man-flesh!

"We learn from old traditions that their origin was as follows: Filimer, king of the Goths, son of Gadaric the Great, who was the fifth in succession to hold the rule of the Getae, after their departure from the island of Scandza...found among his people certain witches. Suspecting these women, he expelled them from the midst of his race and compelled them to wander in solitary exile afar from his army. There the unclean spirits, who beheld them as they wandered through the wilderness, bestowed their embraces upon them and begat this savage race, which dwelt at first in the swamps, a stunted, foul and puny tribe, scarcely human and having no language save one which bore but slight resemblance to human speech."

Thus is described the history not of Orcs but of the terrible Huns. A mostrous breed of witches with demons. It's interesting noting that Tolkien's Orc comes partly from Latin Ŏrcu, or Orcus, demon from the underworld. It doesn't stop here. Jordanes, the Goth historian in 6th century Italy also wrote:

"They made their foes flee in horror because their swarthy aspect was fearful, and they had, if I may call it so, a sort of shapeless lump, not a head, with pin-holes rather than eyes. Their hardihood is evident in their wild appearance, and they are beings who are cruel to their children on the very day they are born. For they cut the cheeks of the males with a sword, so that before they receive the nourishment of milk they must learn to endure wounds. Hence they grow old beardless and their young men are without comeliness, because a face furrowed by the sword spoils by its scars the natural beauty of a beard. They are short in stature, quick in bodily movement, alert horsemen, broad shouldered, ready in the use of bow and arrow, and have firm-set necks which are ever erect in pride. Though they live in the form of men, they have the cruelty of wild beasts."

[EDIT:] While Ammianus Marcellinus wrote:

"The people called Huns, barely mentioned in ancient records, live beyond the sea of Azof, on the border of the Frozen Ocean, and are a race savage beyond all parallel. At the very moment of birth the cheeks of their infant children are deeply marked by an iron, in order that the hair instead of growing at the proper season on their faces, may be hindered by the scars; accordingly the Huns grow up without beards, and without any beauty. They all have closely knit and strong limbs and plump necks; they are of great size, and low legged, so that you might fancy them two-legged beasts, or the stout figures which are hewn out in a rude manner with an ax on the posts at the end of bridges.

They are certainly in the shape of men, however uncouth, and are so hardy that they neither require fire nor well flavored food, but live on the roots of such herbs as they get in the fields, or on the half-raw flesh of any animal, which they merely warm rapidly by placing it between their own thighs and the backs of their horses."

  
  Yay! As such I advocate orcs that look like cartoon huns:

 I smell man-flesh!

In the meantime, I received my North Star Oathmark orcs. They answer well enough to my vision of orcs. Actually they're about perfect! Here's a size comparison. I think they are great with both the Foundry human and the Grenadier half-orc. 
While certainly not an exact match, they still look acceptable with the Fantasy Warriors plastic orcs.

I painted my two headed hill-troll. Charcoal black skin and dirty stinking yak fur. Find them! Find them!

The Fighting Uruk Hai

I like my fantasy Dark Ages. No plate armour, halberds or gunpowder. Not even crossbows. Like the Lord of the Rings, which was inspired by Nordic sagas. Most of those in turn were inspired by real events from the Migration Period, the Fall of the West. In short, I imagine my armies of men, dwarves and orcs like this:

More advanced weapons and armour should not go beyond Hastings or 1st Crusade Norman technology and even those would be mostly reserved to elves, dwarves and some elite orcs.

One of my favorite ranges of fantasy miniatures is still the old Grenadier 'Fantasy Warriors' line. These were sculpts by Nick Lund, Mark Copplestone and Bob Naismith.
Coppelstone did three packs of 'Half-Orc mercenaries'. With their dark ages gear and style they had something decidedly Tolkien-esque.
These became available again about 15 years ago.

To me half orcs and Uruk Hai are basically the same thing. Orc and human crossbreed. With the only differnce that Uruk Hai are bred on purpose, like pitbulls, while half orcs are more like bastard dogs. 
When Peter Jackson's LotR film came out, the movie's uruk hai reminded me a lot of these miniatures. I suspect people from Weta workshop also collect miniatures and were heavily inspired by these.


In fact, from the Copplestone Castings Newsletter in 2002:

"[...] I thought the film Uruk-Hai were not unlike my old half-orcs so they could be next up in the 2002 make-over line. There are a few things I'd like to make from scratch, but they'll just have to wait."

And so I waited. And waited and waited. But new half-orcs were never released.
A few years ago I started to convert them myself to get some variation. I used Westwind Arthurian seperate headsets and some Dixon Miniatures Samurai heads (I first thought those were Copplestone's but they are by Trevor Dixon).

 

Berserkers made from barbarians. And trolls.

Command group with a squinty eyed half-orc tracker from the Frostgrave range.

 A unit of warriors.

My renewed interest in my orc army was sparked by the upcoming Oathmark orcs from Northstar. The six metal orcs are sculpted by,  you guessed it, Mark Copplestone. In fact in style they fit perfectly with my Uruk Hai.

 They remind me also of the old Fantasy Warriors plastics.
Doug Cowie, at the time manager of Grenadier UK, wrote a while ago on Lead Adventure forum:

"These were not sculpted by Nick [Lund]. When we at Grenadier UK were planning the contents of the FW boxed set, the inclusion of plastic miniatures was a priority. We decided on orcs and dwarves. Nick was the master of both races. However, he was fully involved in writing the game and, furthermore, had no experience in sculpting for plastic. So we got one of our other sculptors to make them in the style of Nick. I guess it worked pretty well."

"[...] someone asked who the sculptor was. It was Mark Copplestone."

So I guess I'll have to put these also in my army now!

 An army of Uruk Hai of course also includes human Dunlendings and I'll use these Frostgrave and grenadier barbarians as a command group. 
Rank and file are Crusade Miniatures byzantine Varangians and Irish axemen as skirmishers. I may add the recent Saxons/Franks.

Also the trolls will get reinforcements.

 

Citi-Block proto-Necromunda rules

It's well known that the original 40K universe is a blend of several iconic books, comics and movies from the 70's and 80's. Most notably Frank Herbert's Dune and the 2000AD/Judge Dredd universe and as far as Genestealer- and Chaos cults are concerned obviously H.P. Lovecraft.

Games Workshop used to have the license to produce games and miniatures in the Judge Dredd universe around the time Warhammer 40.000 Rogue Trader came out and in the beginning there was much overlap. The Citi Block floor plan set was in fact produced for both games.
Included in the box of 2D floor plans and street furniture, was a booklet with a chapter covering rules for using hive world gangs (as opposed to Mega City 1 gangs) in the 40K universe. This was several years before Confrontation was published in White Dwarf, the gangwar RPG usually considered the predecessor of Necromunda.
I obtained a PDF of scans of these rules and here they are, cut in bits for easy reading. Note the Willpower and Cool stats that apperently are making a comeback with the new edition of Necromunda.
Enjoy:

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The basic gang stats you don't need anything else!

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The Empire of Man

Okay, back to Mankind. Back to a forgotten desert planet on the very fringes of the Imperium of Man. 

Here's an Imperial Guard Jetbike. Lowriding as I don't see these things flying in the air unless they're assaulting.

Here a few righteous Imperial citizens of the Western Fringe Puritan Shrine.

A subhuman Squat space dwarf. This is a Wessex Panzerfauste dwarf from their WW2 fantasy line. I tried to paint him not like a german soldier but more colourful likethe old illustrations of squats.

In progress a gang of miners or smugglers. Two guys in civilian power armour. Armed with autoguns and pistols. I even used a RTB01 space marine head which is more or less equally sized as the Mordheim and Sentinel driver heads.

And old White Dwarf cover I'll loosely use as a starting point for my Imperial Guard platoon in progress.

 

Orktober!

It's Orktober and I've been painting!

These are the orksies I have painted over the last years

I finally painted this monstrous painboy. One of my favorites, looking much more savage than other orks. Stripped and repainted several times but this time I'm quite happy.

Next is Bubbles, the mad bolshevik Bloodaxe boy, here with a new piece of scenery or objective marker, a pink flamingo.

 The old Warphead, another I've had great difficulty with in the past to find the right colour combinations.

At last some old plastic orks. GW has come a long way whith their plastics, it has to be said. 
I painted these very fast. All together with the same colours in a few hours, as I actually never liked them at all. Still pure nostalgia in this case though. The bodies are original that came with my battlewagon. I couldn't even be bothered to strip them. The heads and arms are from an unused lot I got last year which is why they look so fresh and new. Drastic Plastic cannon-fodder!

 
 
 

Tech-Priest, Chaos Renegade and More!

I've been really busy this last week and quite satisfied with the results.
First of all, here's my new Tech-Priest. Its an old artificer-armour marine (formerly known as armour variants). By Copplestone of course.
Back in the days the only Tech-Priests were the Bob Olley ones, but they didn't match the style of the rest of the Imperial Guard. 
Only twentyfive years later I figured this marine could do the job.

This miniature, based on an illustration in Rogue Trader, has the eagle with a human skull icon as shoulder pads, marking him clearly a Marine. But I figured these could be honour badges of some kind, while the man himself is just a normal human being. He does have the size of a standard human. The guy is a bit more tech and not gothic, fitting the direction I want to go with my Guard, allied with Tech gang hive militia.
His main job is maintaining the penal legion and detonating human bombs.

Next is a very old-chool Chaos Renegade. The miniature is from Space Crusade, the Milton Bradley boardgame.  I painted him with Vallejo Black Glaze mixed with green ink, over a grey undercoat. I think  it worked quite well for the original Renegade Giger-esque bio-mech look.

I got carried away with another side project, the Space Bastards. An initiative from the esteemed gentlemen on the Emporium of Rogue Dreams.  These are left-behind space marines. Psychotic fighting machines as in the book, but reduced to warlords, mercenaries and pirates (and ninjas! and lasers!). Some use broken down equipment and gear. 
I succumbed and got myself a bunch of second hand RTB01 beakie space marines. Here converted with Grenadier barbarian torsos and Kalashnikovs from the Assault Group. 
These guys realy dig the Bee Gees.

 "...We drink and rob and rhyme and pillage!"

Last but not least a new pic of a conversion from some years ago. The underhive miner is of course a plastic terminator stripped from it's skulls and baroque goth brooha.
The head is  a ball bearing with sculpted details while the screw is from an ancient Playmobil spaceman powertool.

Brony "the Unicorn" Rabban

Here a quick and dirty conversion I did the other day. The unicorn beastmen head I had lying around for ages. For reasons forgotten in the mists of time, I completely dismembered this beastman miniature only to leave the parts for years and years, doing absolutely nothing with them.
I should have worked on the hair, sculpted it a bit around, but I wanted to finish it immediately.
Kind of works with the emo bobline. Photographing white is difficult and the picture is a bit crap.

This is Brony "the Unicorn" Rabban, infamous underhive mutie.

Mutie Scum

Here's a new converted miniature. A mutant bomb. An old concept from the times of the original Genestealer Cult armylist.
This one is for my tech gang though, or the Planetary Defense Force's penal battalion. 
The body is the old IG human bomb with a head from a Grenadier barbarian. The claw is from an old Blood Bowl starplayer. I had this claw lying around for ages as I cut up the poor sod before the dawn of the internet. Finally found a good use for this all-Copplestone mutie bastard (except for the arms of course, which are Mordheim human and skaven arms).

Dud Samsa, mutant bomb. (Evil Eye, Furry, Razor Sharp Claws) Dud the mutie initially got equipped and sold by the local tech collective. The client returned him after he failed to explode and miraculously survived a military operation. Now he's a border guard on the outskirts of Tech territory.

 

 

Congregation Voodoo Queen

As it happens one or two times a year, I got sidetracked by a new project. This time it's Dracula's America. An Old West Gothic Horror skirmish game released by Osprey with miniatures by North Star. Miniatures by Mark Copplestone and Mike Owen that is. Just as the Rogue Star game last year and Frostgrave before, I'm basically in it for the miniatures. Copplestone did some amazing vampires and voodoo cultists. The latter are called the Congregation in the game.
I'll probably never play it but that doesn't matter. I finlly found a way to repurpose some Foundry Darkest Africa miniatures I had lying around for ages.
Here's the Voodoo Queen with her following.

I also bought some Foundry Old West miniatures. Who would've thought. I really never cared at all for cowboys and indians and the only western movies I like for more than the soundtrack are Dead Man and El Topo. Return to Cold Mountain isn't bad either.

That said Vampires, zombies and voodoo cultists are pretty cool.
Here's a mexican vampire ready to waste a drunk moonshiner

I also found a purpose for this great Bob Murch Ghast from the RafM Chtulhu range.
A Wendigo, an evil man-eating spirit from native american myth.
The parallels between Lovecraft's ghouls and ghasts and indian wendigo are actually amazing. More or less the same thing really.

I even made some scenery, two (of three-) abandoned slave cabins on a devastated plantation. The hide-out of the Congregation guerillas. I'm very happy with the result but it really took a long time to built, cutting out all these pieces of cardstock. Boring!

Next (hopefully) another cabin, a big barn for the voodoo celebrations (with all the symbols painted on floor and walls) and maybe a burned down plantation house.

Rogue Trader squads

Here be a bunch of teams and squads painted months ago for the Lead Painters League on the LAF forum.

Space marines in desert camo. All Copplestone sculpts. Death Eagles and characters.

Marine scouts in Harkonnen colours.

Space ship crew of the S.S. Zarathustra. 20 years of Copplestone sculpts.

Imperial Navy officers with Astropath and Xenos advisor.

 Kevin Adams Rogue Trader and retinue.

Human mercenaries.

Space Orks.

And at last some Fallout style Vault Dwellers.