My 3mm Fantasy Project (First Orcs)

[Macunaima]

Steve Salotti of Microworld Games has very kindly sent me sample Orc and Elf armies from his new 3mm line. These are beautiful castings: normal alloy (unlike O8’s tougher, more brittle metal) that are very much in the style of old school Warhamster.

I’m having a blast painting these lovely figs and will be using this thread to document my progress. Here’s the main Elf army to date:

[Macunaima]

Just for context, the army is on a six inch by six inch square.

[Steam Flunky]

Good looking army.

[jambo1]

Very tempted by 3mm and in fantasy you could really have massive Orc hordes!! Nice work, they look great.

[fred]

They look really good, much more detail and definition than I would have expected, they definately have the Warmaster vibe to them

Just for context, the army is on a six inch by six inch square.

That’s is quite astonishing- I don’t think I would ever have guessed they are on such a small area.

[Samsonov]

They look excellent.

How easy is it to clip off individual figures? They look more attached together compared to O8s ancients but some of your sword armed ones seem shorter than the typical eight figures.

[Macunaima]

The one main complaint I have, Samsonov, is that they are cast in mutually supporting strips. This is so that they could be cast in a regular miniatures alloy instead of the whatever-it-is O8 uses.

The ally and casting are great, but the problem is that it is hard to cut strips apart without damaging figures. The Elven swordsmen are no problem: you can ship them apart quite nicely with a bit of care.

The spearmen can be easily cut at at least two points on the strip.

The archers, however... them and the Orc mobs are very har to cut apart without losing a figure or two.

However, because the alloy is soft, it is very easily cut. I reckon that the loss of figure mangled as you attempt to cut apart Orc mobs would be right about the same number as the loss of figures due to clipping O8 strips and accidentally breaking some individuals off.

At 3mm you can go two ways: individual figures and hard but brittle allows; strips of mutually supporting figures and softer, more flexible alloys.

I am advising Microworld to release some packs of regular, individual footsoldiers for those of us who want a more irregular look to our mobs.

Still, the orc masses look irregular enough, even if they are in impeccable lines, if you squish them together in a mass. Given that there are two different orc strips, this is easy to do.

[Macunaima]

The detail on these is ridiculous, Fred. I was lamenting this yesterday whilst painting some elven light cavalry. Each strip needed 14 different paint applications. With O8, I can generally get away with 9 or 10.

Of course, given that Microworld gifted me with these figs, I am trying to paint them as detailed as possible. One could do a much simpler and yet perfectly adequate job.

[Macunaima]

More photos of the army, with a clearer view of the mages (aka The White Council).

[James Morris]

3mm! Those are incredible in both sculpting and painting.

[williamb]

Nicely done.  I am tempted, but already have a large investment in 6mm armies and 28mm fantasy figures.

[Macunaima]

I am invested in 15mm fantasy, William. That will all be rebased for skirmish or small mass combat gaming now.

What people need to ponder is the fact that 3mm is something of a “freebie” scale: for the price of a (small) 28mm unit, you can buy a big 3mm Army. And 3mm allows you to do two things:

1) Small, great looking portable games;
2) Ginormous big epic games.

In the first case, I am building a “DBA in a lunch box” kit to carry with me to the local game pub.

In the second case, my 120cm x 100cm living room table becomes the equivalent of a ten foot by eight foot table for 28mm-centric systems like Hail Ceasar.

What you are seeing in these pictures is rougly 12-14 dollars of troops, max. That’s — what? — half the price of one Games Workshop figure?

Plus, they paint up dead quick to a tabletop standard.

[Warren Abox]

Looking forward to seeing those orcs.

[Samsonov]

Thanks for the detailed information on cutting the strips. I do not mind loosing some figures (I seem to loose about 10% of the O8s cavalry despite the indents!), but my bigger concern is that splitting a figure leaves the adjacent figure deformed. Hopefully the small scale, plus a bit of green stuff, would conceal this.

You see, I have this crazy plan. I love large bases but I also love to see casualty reduction. So I was thinking I could base these on 6cm by 3cm bases, then when they take a hit replace the base with a 6cm by 2cm base and a third hit replaces the base with a 4cm by 2cm base. The reduction in number of figures and size of base would convey casualties, but ideally single figures would be used to convey disruption to the formation as casualties are taken. Creating all these extra bases would add considerably to the time and cost, but doing fantasy properly is something I have wanted to do for something like 25 years...

[Jagannath]

I love this - keep eyeing O8 and MM 3mm celts and germans for a sort of 'barbarian' 3mm fantasy. Really nice.