Some miniatures for Song of Blades and Heroes (ogre bodyguard for Mordheim)

[Hobgoblin]

Thanks, all! One great thing about those Grenadier orcs is that they have nice big shields to paint - unlike their Citadel contemporaries, which were blighted by those awful plastic shields!

There's also a good essay by Shippey on light-elves & dark-elves, and what Tolkien makes of them, in his collection Roots & Branches, which you may know.

I didn't and shall investigate. Many thanks!

Apropos of nothing, I just opened volume 2 of Grimm and came across a reference to a medieval writer, Heinrich von Ofterdingen, making a pair of dwarves ride on goats... and here was I thinking this was a nonsense of more recent origin. But Grimm notes briskly that, unlike these later works, "the Edda nowhere represents either alfar or dvergar as mounted", which is probably as it should be.

Ha! That's interesting, though: it could be interpreted in a manner that's much more The Witch (along these lines, perhaps?) than Jackson's Hobbit.

The whole dwarves-and-beer thing is indeed vastly overdone (and I am as fond of beer as the next man, or moreso). I remember being rather disappointed by this in the original Warhammer Forces of Fantasy supplement, which was the first Warhammer item I bought rather than borrowed. It makes them both more trivial and, as you say, much less uncanny.

Couldn't agree more!

One of the very good things about Dragon Warriors, incidentally, is the way it presents goblins (and hobgoblins) as malevolent folkloric tricksters rather than "the infantry of the old war"; although it then rather spoils this by introducing orcs, as a separate species, in the "infantry" role... I suppose we blame Gary Gygax for this, at one or two removes...

I think the publishers are to blame in this instance. I seem to recall reading somewhere that orcs, halflings and that balrog surrogate the Malgash were forced upon the authors. Certainly, Tim Harford's views on DW on Dave Morris's blog make for interesting reading in this regards.

[Hobgoblin]

Here's a little more work in progress on the black orcs. "Baron Dullgore" and the Acropolis goblin leaning on the club are just about done. The reason I'm posting this shot is that the Acropolis' goblin's face shows Spooktalker's no-highlight-black approach working pretty well, I think. I hope to get this first batch finished tonight. I'm not really thinking of theses as orcs, but as minor demons in a Young Kingdoms or Hyborian setting. It strikes me that Matakishi's Crom would work really well for a Moorcockian game of a few heroes vs all manner of nasty entities, and I've got a few of the old Citadel Eternal Champion miniatures kicking around ...

[Severian]

Orcs (or whatever they are) looking good; great work on the robes!

I reckon Crom! is a grand set of rules for all manner of things. Was there supposed to be a revised or expanded or tweaked version on the way? Think I read this somewhere, but I forget the detail. The rules are great as they stand, but were there issues with missile fire, or something?

The no-highlight-black thing is interesting; a couple of years ago I painted some warhounds for a dark ages game and just made them black with no highlights. Mostly this was sheer laziness but I thought they looked OK. I'll dig them out and have another look; but certainly highlighting black with another colour never seems to work as well as it's supposed to...

Thanks for the Tim Harford/Dave Morris link, btw; lots of fun things there!

I've been idly looking about for more dwarf lore, too...

[Dr DeAth]

I reckon Crom! is a grand set of rules for all manner of things. Was there supposed to be a revised or expanded or tweaked version on the way? Think I read this somewhere, but I forget the detail. The rules are great as they stand, but were there issues with missile fire, or something?

Don't think there are any problems, but Matakishi commented before that we wasn't too happy with the missile fire rules he'd written and wanted to improve them.  He's also posted on my thread (http://leadadventureforum.com/index.php?topic=103486.0) about the Deluxe Crom! rules (bottom of the first page)

[Severian]

Great, thanks - knew I'd seen it somewhere. And good to see your excellent 15s again!

[Hobgoblin]

The first batch of black orcs is more or less done. I'll take a look at them in the morning and maybe add the odd detail, but they're meant to be a retro blaze of colour and darkness, and I think they're just about there - barring a good slathering in gloss varnish. I've got a good lot more underway too, including some very early Fiend Factory Citadel and Ral Partha goblins.

[jambo1]

They are lovely, really nice contrast of colour with the black skins, superb!!

[Hobgoblin]

Thanks!

I'm now eyeing up all my FF Citadel and Acropolis goblins plus the various Chronicle wolfriders I have lying around, and wondering if this technique would allow them to be quickly mustered into a HotT army. The Chronicle wolfriders are great, but their faces are fairly rudimentary, so they might respond quite well to this treatment: they've got sufficiently prominent tusks, lower lips and eyes to add interest to the jet-black approach.

Severian: I can imagine black warhounds looking pretty good without highlights: the sort of glossy black pelt you get on a doberman or the like would be quite hard to paint conventionally, I think. As you say, highlighting black is a tricky business. I've occasionally seen orange recommended as a good highlighting mix, but have yet to try it.

[Hobgoblin]

Also: in Heroes for Wargames, there's a photo of a hobgoblin shaman designed and painted by Aly Morrison. It's done with red robes and glowing red eyes and jet-black skin. I've never been able to detect highlights on it, but its hard to tell from the photo. In any case, it looks amazing.

[Gibby]

Those look really sinister. I can tell you love painting shields, too! Keep up the great work!

[Jagannath]

These look fantastic mate! So that pic above is before the gloss varnish? Definitely looks to me like the black works well matte too, might try this on some wee beasties. Shields are fantastic, really good.

[Hobgoblin]

So that pic above is before the gloss varnish? Definitely looks to me like the black works well matte too, might try this on some wee beasties.

Yes, they're all matt at the moment. The gloss will cover a multitude of sins ...

[Severian]

Excellent effect individually and en masse!

Curious to see how they look after glossing; I reckon this will go very well with the black. I'm thinking of doing a test varnish of a warhound or two, maybe in satin as a sort of uneasy halfway house...

Keen to see how your FF goblins turn out - fond memories of that range.

[Hobgoblin]

Thanks!

Here are some repurposed miniatures from the very first page of this thread: Caesar C20 ratmen rebased for 15mm, where they act as giant "rat horrors". We played D&D (Whitehack) again this afternoon, and these creatures played a part in the session's second act, when they were discovered breaking into a saint's tomb. (The first section involved repelling a goblin/wolf attack on an isolated inn). Despite being really quite tough, they were despatched fairly quickly through a succession of critical hits and sneak attacks. They spoke to each other in peevish, spiteful tones and had truncated Biblical and classical names: Zekiel, Lysses, Nezer, Irgil and Viticus.

[Hummster]

I was really interested seeing the blue skinned dwarf - nice to break away from the orthodoxy on them. Good to see plenty of nice stuff again.

Hopefully when I get some more time I might try some of your techniques on my lead and plastic pile.