Look at me - look at the orc

I’ve finally knocked off one of the groups of minis that has been cluttering up my painting tile for far too long:

It’s a selection of orcs and half-orcs that I need for as and when we re-start the family D&D game. The party have fought them unpainted several times, so I figured that as they were likely going to put an end to their activities in the area I should probably get them painted so that they could hit the table finished at least once. However, I’ve been having some difficulty getting any painting done of late, so this took far longer than I had originally intended…

First of all we have the half-orcs, shape-changing leaders of the group:

They started off life as Mage Knight Orcish Builders if I recall correctly - they had a hammer in their hand, but I snipped that off and made them a bone/antler punch dagger out of some bits box odds and ends (I think potentially from Warhammer Wood Elf Dryad bits) and they look the part.

I know, I know, technically half-orcs should surely look less orcish than their fellows rather than more, but I like the feral look of them leaping forwards on their clenched fist so I’m sticking with them.

Next come the more standard orcs, who came from a pair of Oathmark orc sprues. First of all, we have a leader and shaman looking pair:

The leader is stock, while the shaman was mostly cunning use of stock pieces decorated with doodads from Frostgrave sprues to gussy him up. His (slightly wonky) staff is a cut down standard, for example, while his other arm making some sort of cruel magical symbol is actually just a repurposed archer arm.

You can hopefully just make out that the edge of his clothing is decorated with a repeated pattern of three lightning bolts, the symbol of Talos, the cruel god that these orcs worship. His sleeves got a less meaningful pattern of dots and lines, as I just wanted something there to make him look a little more fancy, much the same reason as to why I gave the leader stripy trousers.

The rest of the band is made up of regular orcs, equipped with a smattering of spears and hand weapons:

I didn’t give any of them shields, mostly just because as when I built them I wasn’t thinking about using them for LoTR as I am now. In hindsight as well, I used the same body on the two spearmen, which is a bit of an odd coincidence. 

Finishing these brings the tally to:

50 vs 245 = -195

So now it’s on to finish the other batch of miniatures on the painting tile, which would mean I had pretty much everything I would need to run the first two scenarios for Warriors of Athena and oh no what’s that it’s my birthday tomorrow where I’ll hopefully receive Star Wars Zero Company, a game the anticipation for which has reignited my excitement for Star Wars? I’ve shown my children Episodes 1-3 in the last week, and some other minis may have made their way across the cutting board…