Building an army worthy of Mordor (or Orcs and where to find them)

[GuizhouGeneral]

Back in November I finally managed to get my hands on the Midgard Heroic Battles rules from James Morris, a set I was particularly excited about having followed his blog for several years. I even managed to get a few games in before I left Scotland and moved back to the mountains of Guizhou. Upon getting back home to Guizhou after a year in my sunny Scottish homeland I decided that a new(ish) continent demanded a new army (ignoring the dozen or so unfinished ones sitting in my cupboard). Middle-Earth has always been my first love and over the years I've had lots of fun creating my own vision of the forces and factions vying for control. Inspired by the incredible Battle of the Five Armies staged using Midgard rules and the excellent blog ........... and his orcish horde I decided it was time for me to join in on the fun and build my own army worthy of the Dark Lord.

The First task was to make some scenic multi-bases for my assorted masses of scum and villainy. I decided on pvc plastic bases which I ordered on TaoBao (the domestic version of alibaba I guess?), then set about making them presentable. This actually turned out to be quite enjoyable and I spent hours faffing about with texture paste, pine bark and static grass. I am very pleased with the results so far.


Next up was orcs, lots and lots of Orcs. Thankfully 3d printing came to my rescue. The bulk of the army would be from the ever excellent Medbury Miniatures with a few interesting sculpts from the Print goes ever on scattered in to add variety.




My army general, Gorthog the Opulent, Lord of the Grey Mountains and his bodyguards.




Here is my first painted stand, an orc taskmaster and his hangers on - how else are you supposed to get orcs on the move, if not by the whip?

[Little Odo]

Great start to the hordes. How are you fixing the orcs to your lovely bases? Are they drilled in some way or just glued on? Also, I really like these 3d printed orcs - how do they scale up with the "official" GW LotR orcs?

[GuizhouGeneral]

To be honest I just superglued them on, though I suspect that might not be a long term solution so I'll probably end up pinning them. In terms of scale the Medbury Miniatures are a good match for the Lotr stuff at their standard size but I print them at about 105% size because I want them to a little bigger and more in line with the Oathmark miniatures (probably my favourite mini line at the moment).  The ones from the Print goes ever on are a bit more vaired, some are quite big others are on the smaller side.

[fred]

Good stuff - I was a little surprised to see you starting with bases. But then seeing the 3d printed figures with no integral bases, it makes sense!

If the supergluing figures to the bases proves a bit unstable - then perhaps adding a small disc under each foot in the 3d software,  to give some more surface area to adhere to the base would work? Would mean you would need to doing the basing afterwards to hide these.

These are some good looking prints - so looking forward to seeing the horde assemble.

[mikedemana]

Great start! That is an interesting take. Create the unit bases then paint the figures and attach them. Do you scrap away a bit of the flocking so it adheres to the plastic itself? Just curious...

Mike Demana

[LouieN]

luck on this Middle Earth project. 

[GuizhouGeneral]

Good stuff - I was a little surprised to see you starting with bases. But then seeing the 3d printed figures with no integral bases, it makes sense!

To be honest, I love the crafting/"artistic" side of the hobby more. I've lived in a fairly remote farming village in the mountains of South west China for the last few years so I've focused more on painting and building terrain. The bases are kind of an extension of that I guess? I started out with the intention of making a few test bases and went down the rabbit hole from there.

[GuizhouGeneral]

Great start! That is an interesting take. Create the unit bases then paint the figures and attach them. Do you scrap away a bit of the flocking so it adheres to the plastic itself? Just curious...

Mike Demana

Just superglued them straight on, the superglue is fairly liquid-y so it seeps in and appears to form a decent bond. To be honest I got a bit over excited at getting my first fully finished base done so I took the easy route. We'll see how it holds up long term!

[HerbertTarkel]

Those look fantastic! The Medbury are great looking miniatures, very worthy Orcses!

[GuizhouGeneral]

Those look fantastic! The Medbury are great looking miniatures, very worthy Orcses!

Agreed! I absolutely love Medbury's stuff. His historical stuff is also excellent. In fact I'm not sure there is a single line from him I dislike.

[GuizhouGeneral]

I had planned on finishing as much of the Horde as I could this month but life decided otherwise and I've barely had a minute to myself recently. Thankfully I finally got an afternoon to sit down and paint. I managed to smash out a unit orc scum, not the cleanest paint job in the world but definitely serviceable!



Next up was supposed to be a unit of archer, I had sprayed them and left them on the roof to dry. Unfortunately a monsoon rolled in at about 2am and carried the poor souls off to pastures new!

[jon_1066]

Looking good.

If you want to bring newly sprayed figures inside without stinking the house out put them in a cardboard box.  They still dry fine and the cardboard absorbs the smell.

[Ultravanillasmurf]

Those look really good.

[GuizhouGeneral]

For our anniversary last month, my wife got me a box of the DnD frameworks orc warband (Lovely models but VERY expensive). Since they were a gift I felt obliged to paint them up. At first I wasn't sure if the really fit the "Old School" Middle Earth look I was going for but then I had an idea - what if instead of orcs they were my version of Half Trolls? So I painted up the leader as a test and I'm actually very happy with the results.



The other 6 are on the painting table...somewhere.

[Mikai]

Lovely paint job!