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…

Bzzzzzzzzzzz

It has been a long time since my last post. Honestly, it’s been a long time since I finished painting this batch of miniatures (which were actually painted way back in June I think) but I’ve been really struggling with motivation. Heat plus tiredness and other obligations do not a recipe for happy fun painty time make it seems.

Away from that, and on to the miniatures, which are some tiny giant bees:

They’re the official miniatures for Mythic Bees for warriors of Athena, which are one of the main adversaries in the first Quest in the book. I’d initially planned to make some out of some sort of toy bee, but after playing a demo game of WoA at Salute and seeing how nice they were in the flesh I caved and picked up two packs of the official miniatures. They’re quite tricky to photograph, so here they are from a slightly different angle:

Fun fact - these are the first miniatures I’ve ever painted on flying stands. They were quite a nice little paint job to do, although my initial attempts to carefully line the wings looked terrible, so I fell back on the old reliable drybrushing and they came out looking a lot better. I did try to carefully paint some texture on the yellow stripes though, to make it look like they have furry little bums, which I was quite happy with:

And lastly, here’s a pic with a knight so you can see how large the tiny giant bees are:

So, the Tally. Since last we spoke, I showed my children the Lord of the Rings trilogy, and thought it would be nice to build paint and play some Battle Companies as a family, and so snagged a few little lots from eBay. A ‘few litte lots’, when added to the occasional GW miniature of the month, miniatures that come on the front of a magazine, a box of Cyclopes for WoA and also the fact that I went to Warhammer World through work means that I’ve actually added 78 miniatures to the Tally since my last post. It could be worse, someone gave me a copy of second edition Blood Bowl, but it was missing the minis so it didn’t swing the Tally - plus, I’ve given away some minis to family and friends, which leaves the Tally at:

38 vs 245 = -207

What’s next? Well, I’ve managed to get myself to do some painting at least twice in the last month, so have a couple of groups of miniatures basecoated and washed, so if I can get myself downstairs at a sensible time after getting the kids to bed maybe I’ll have something else to post soon…

Oh, and Warhammer World - here’s a couple of pics of some of my favourite bits: