More releases for Oathmark? Oathmark Heavy Orc and Elf Infantry

[Ultravanillasmurf]

Not particularly bothered about heavy orcs (I am thinking about an orc - human army using Oathmark orcs and the various viking/saxon figures in the sprue pile - in the rulebook there is an orcs + human attack on dwarfs with a viking vibe).

What has prompted a revisit to the Human Light Infantry was the border dispute in HOTD (Brackens and Blackwoods).

https://ultravanillasmurf.blogspot.com/2024/07/oathmark-human-light-infantry.html

Only thirty militia and five rangers to build (and paint all forty figures).

[Ogrob]

They look nice! I must get around to my box at some point too.

Orc/human alliance was my original army for Oathmark, but I started it way before the Orcs released and then ran out of steam, so it currently stands as a human army with some goblin wolf riders and nothing else in the greenskin department.

[Ultravanillasmurf]

Orc Heavy Infantry  should be on pre-order soon, Elf Heavy Infantry  next.

[Hobgoblin]

The Orc heavy infantry look pretty good.





Nice character models too:

[Pattus Magnus]

Excellent! As alway with the Oathmark sets, there are some pieces that I don’t love, but there are so many options that I’ll get a lot of value out of the box. Will definitely be picking that up as soon as it becomes available.

[Elbows]

Hmmm...interesting.  Can't say I love it, but what strikes me is that it "looks" like a completely different sculptor (though I believe the whole range is sculpted by one guy, correct?).

I really like the normal Goblin and Orc kit, but these don't look nearly as good to me.  Maybe it's just the paintjobs or the way they were built.

[Hobgoblin]

Hmmm...interesting.  Can't say I love it, but what strikes me is that it "looks" like a completely different sculptor (though I believe the whole range is sculpted by one guy, correct?).

I don't know, but the heads look very similar to me - to the extent that some strike me as conversions of those in the previous orc kit.

I really like the normal Goblin and Orc kit, but these don't look nearly as good to me.  Maybe it's just the paintjobs or the way they were built.

I'm just guessing, but I think they've all been built in a way that's fairly unusual for Oathmark and Frostgrave kits. With the two-handed weapons, I'm guessing that the right arm has an open hand and would more typically be attached so that it's hanging down, with the weapon roughly horizontal across the body and the left hand out a bit (as if swinging the weapon up or across). At least, that's how most Frostgrave two-handed arm sets work. In those cases, you can usually get the 'weapon up' posture we see here, but it's stretching things a bit. It could be that the hand near the head is the attached one, but the same point applies to the positioning. The guy with the red mohican might be a more conventional build, but to my eye he would look better with his face aligned more with his chest.

Also, the orc heads have the neck attached and a cavity on the body, so these (presumably) could all be built facing in radically different directions.

I really like these character models.

[Hobgoblin]

On the hand-weapon-and-shield builds shown here, I'd also add that those weapon-waving poses are far from the best that can be achieved with the other orc and goblin kits, which offer really good natural poses. So I'm assuming (or hoping!) that the same will be true in this case.

[Hobgoblin]

Also, the orc heads have the neck attached and a cavity on the body, so these (presumably) could all be built facing in radically different directions.

I misremembered this: the necks are attached to the bodies, but the heads can be fixed to align in many different ways.

[2010sunburst]

Character figures look excellent, but I’m not sure about the plastics.  The original Orcs are some of the best in the range, but these just don’t look right to me.  Some of it is in the painting, the skin colour is too close to the armour to stand out well, reducing the character of the minis, and some of it is the poses.  The right hand on those with raised weapons looks really awkward, for example.  I also don’t think they are “that” different to the normal Orcs.  They are OK, they just don’t make me want to go out and buy them. 

[Daeothar]

Oh,. I don't know; both the twohanded and handweapon and shield poses as depicted here give off a distinct nineties plastic GW orc feel, but I think there's a lot of potential when mixed in with other kits, for variety.

My orc are not uniformely armed, so mixing in twohanded weapons, handweapons, shields, spears, (cross)bows etc; the odd odd pose will not stand out as much.

So, I like the potential for kitbashing, and I'm happy that at least one McBride-inspired head made it into the kit

[Hobgoblin]

Character figures look excellent, but I’m not sure about the plastics.  The original Orcs are some of the best in the range, but these just don’t look right to me.  Some of it is in the painting, the skin colour is too close to the armour to stand out well, reducing the character of the minis, and some of it is the poses.  The right hand on those with raised weapons looks really awkward, for example.  I also don’t think they are “that” different to the normal Orcs.  They are OK, they just don’t make me want to go out and buy them.

I'm keen to get hold of them precisely because they're not that different to the other Orcs! I'm currently building a mercenary warband for Mordheim with the original kit (something along the lines of the Mudat's Mercenary Maniacs Regiment of Renown...). So extra bits and options will be great for that - especially heads!

My one grumble with the original Orc kit is that some of the heads are a bit samey; it looks like this kit will boost the head options in the same way that the wolf-rider and slave kits did for the goblins. In line with those, some of these heads appear slightly more monstrous than the originals - for example, the one in the McBride-ish helmet and the chap with the spectacled helmet. That's good for me, as I want to create a spectrum of orcishness in my half-orcs!

I agree with you on the right hands; that's why I wonder if those hands were designed to be "down" rather than up. We shall see. I wonder if both hands are fixed to the weapon on the sprue (like some Frostgrave two-handed weapons) or separate like most Frostgrave and Oathmark examples to date.

The actual body poses look fine to me (similar to some of the original Orcs), but the 'regimented' way they've been assembled here looks a bit odd (almost all the heads looking off to the side, almost all right hands raised, etc.). I'm hopeful that they'll look better when assembled with more variety.

My orc are not uniformely armed, so mixing in twohanded weapons, handweapons, shields, spears, (cross)bows etc; the odd odd pose will not stand out as much.

So, I like the potential for kitbashing, and I'm happy that at least one McBride-inspired head made it into the kit

Yes, that's exactly it for me. It looks like a great way to expand the (half-)Orcish potential for assembly. Some of the wolf-rider heads work on the orcs (they're a bit bigger than the original goblins, I think), but this new release expands things a lot further.

[Kanto]

2010sunburst pretty much summed up my thoughts.
Not that excited with plastic heavy infantry but probably worth getting a box for kitbashing purposes.
Characters on the other hand look great. Not that big of a deal but sculpting of chainmail on both metals and plastics looks pretty rough.

[Ultravanillasmurf]

For reference,  here is the back of the standard Infantry sprue.

[Hobgoblin]

For reference,  here is the back of the standard Infantry sprue.

Funnily enough, I was just playing around with some of these on my desk. From the looks of it, the front left-hand and rear body in the hand-weapon-and-shield photo of the heavy infantry looks to be very close to the lefthand body in your photo - possibly with slightly more of a crouch, but very similar in pose. The mace arm looks to be identical in angle to the mace arm on the sprue, but with more armour on the arm and a more subdued (and thus better) mace.

The prospect of kitbashing the heavies with Frostgrave demons is an enticing one!