The Peoples and Creatures of Middle Earth,5th Round,LPL6 ?

[Doomhippie]

  Yeah I agree,just didn't like the armour and weapons of the White Hand and the Moria Orcs.

  And Blue I hope you were not expecting green Orcs,the horror,the horror.

My man! Both points were a bit of a letdown in the movies. Even though the orcs in the hobbit are called goblins I have never in my studies of various Tolkien books found any indication that they'd be any different from orcs.

I also agree with you on the Uruk-Hai outfit. For my taste there was way too much plate armour (in general, actually. I don't particularly care for the Gondor armour either). And The swords were desrcibed as straight broadswords, not some weird cleavers. But I can live with the PJ design. It could be a lot worse.

And Blue... NO! No green whatsoever. Orcs have black blood, so it is only reasonable to expect their skin color to be very dark, almost black. Apart from the fact that the color black (or not-color, if you prefer) has a certain symbolic meaning here as well. Grenn is a color for things growing and living - way to positive for Tolkien's orcs.

Then again, if green is the color you like the orcs to be, why not? But a nerd like me might sticks to black.

[area23]

For Uruk Hai I'd say Grenadier Half Orcs.
Savage Dark Age saxon style murdering fighting Uruk Hai:

sculpted by Mark Copplestone (from Mirliton, Em4 or Terrain Warehouse)

For Mordor Orcs I like the old Harlequin LotR orcs
Long mailcoats and some wear great carolingian looking helmets. (which make Artizan Carolingians the perfect Men of Gondor)


http://www.scotiagrendel.com/Products/index.php?main_page=index&cPath=2_46_203_204

Hasslefree has some very nice goblins too.

[Welf VIII.]

Do you know the metal Mordor Orcs GW released just at the start of their LotR range? I think these work okay, even if you are not to pleased with the costumes in the film (neither am I).

Should I ever abandon the path of Pig-faced Orcs, these would be the ones I'd look for.

[Hammers]

Tom Meier's orcs and elves in his own Thunderbolt Mountain are not hit either:







There's a quite decent selection by now.

[Spooktalker]

Meier all the way for Middle Earth. 

You know, back when I was on a 10mm kick I dreamed of doing 10mm second age middle earth, and so these Meier figs (I'm always like quite a bit) were never a serious consideration. (10mm as I wanted a big army feel.)  But since then I finally crossed the hurdle into accepting a single figure can represent hundreds or thousands... Uh oh, time for me to look away! Better not start oggling Thunderbolt Mountain figs and wind up in trouble.   

[Captain Blood]

As I recall from a careful reading of The Lord of The Rings long ago, Tolkien describes orcs as essentially Saxons gone bad.
Ringmail shirts, conical iron helms with nasal, round shields, straight swords, 'swart' complexion. Like slightly unsavoury dark age types.
That's it.
Everything else, all the entire massive overblown gothic confection of sub-Tolkien fantasy arms and armour - not least the entire godawful world of Warhammer and all its bastard offspring - has been piled in a huge teetering tower of baroque nonsense upon that tiny foundation: a couple of one-line mentions of something rather uninteresting arms-and-armour-wise, vaguely resembling something Tolkien might have seen in the Bayeux tapestry or picked up from his study of Anglo-Saxon text or Viking sagas.

Nothing to suggest that orcs are in any way reptilian, porcine, canine, or lime green munchkins. Just ugly, swarthy, proto-men (or elves).

 

[area23]

Word!

Proto-men indeed. devolved cannibalistic miserable creatures.
I've said a hundred times before that the physical appearance of most modern fantasy ghouls resembles Tolkiens orcs much more than most popular depictions of orcs.

[Plynkes]

The Uruk-hai used straight swords, regular Orcs used scimitars. This difference is noticed by Aragorn the first time Uruk-hai are encountered. All were described as "swart" or "swarthy", and slant-eyed, though.

Tolkien said somewhere their appearance was that of 'degraded repulsive Mongol-types' or some such thing you'd get into trouble for if you said it today.

[Plynkes]

Citadel Hobgoblins had an Asian look to them back in the day, as I recall, so they would fit with Tolkien's vision (I suppose, not sure if he imagined them actually dressing like Asians). I always really liked those figures, but they aren't exactly what I imagined the Orcs looking like when I read the books.

[Captain Blood]

The Uruk-hai used straight swords, regular Orcs used scimitars. This difference is noticed by Aragorn the first time Uruk-hai are encountered. All were described as "swart" or "swarthy", and slant-eyed, though.

Tolkien said somewhere their appearance was that of 'degraded repulsive Mongol-types' or some such thing you'd get into trouble for if you said it today.

Ah yes, that's right. I'd forgotten about the scimitars for the poorer sort of orcs, and the Asiatic aspect... Tolkien was a man of his day after all. I don't have a clue what his track record or view was on racial matters, but as a clear enthusiast for all things Anglo-Saxon, it's not entirely surprising that he'd default to a kind of central Asian ethnic look as his reference point for degenerate savage footsoldiers of 'the enemy'. 

[Hammers]

As a result of MUSHing, 20 years back I would be able to serve Plynkes with the exact quote. Oh dear... Thank god that has passed. But I still concur, the devolvment of orcs was more on the moral side than the physical (although still noticeable).

[jthomlin]

Wikipedia has a fairly comprehensive page on Tolkien's Orcs.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orc_%28Middle-earth%29

Orcs are described as ugly and filthy fanged humanoids. The largest can reach near-human height, but they are always shorter, and some are as small as Hobbits (since Frodo and Sam disguise themselves as such when they enter Mordor). In contrast, crossbreeds between Men and Orcs are called "man-high, but with goblin-faces."[14] However, some Orcs are very broad, if not tall. Many Orcs have long arms, like monkeys or apes. Many of them also have crooked backs and legs.

Tolkien describes Orcs explicitly in one of his Letters:

    ...they are (or were) squat, broad, flat-nosed, sallow-skinned, with wide mouths and slant eyes; in fact degraded and repulsive versions of the (to Europeans) least lovely Mongol-types.[15]

In a word: 'debased'. (at least from your average early 20th century white western male perspective)

Contrast that with your average current day Orc, who is typically green, taller than a man and one of the biggest steroid abusers in this or any other universe.

Cheers!
Joe Thomlinson

[Arthadan]

Great suggestions so far!

I'm also a Tolkien nerd and I heartly agree with most suggestions.

Since Tolkien never said a final word about the origin of Orcs and he thought about three different possibilities, I use all the three to have variety:

1 - Elven origin: For this one I prefer Mithril Orcs (not a heavy build, pointy ears).

2 - Mannish origin: The "average" Orc with Mannish proportions, for this ones I use many different brands since Human race offers a wide variety (Ral Partha, Bronze Age, Tom Meier...). I paint the skin almost human (all tones, from dark to pale depending on the "background" they seem to come from because their equipment).


(These are Bronze Age's).

3 - Animal origin: In this case they would be hominids (some kind of big monkeys). For these I use the old Nick Lund sculpts (I know they are a bit crude for today standards, but they work for me). I paint them grey, as hairless gorillas.

Then, these three basic races would have mixed giving birth to a lot of new "hybrid" races.

And finally, there were some lesser Maiar incarnated as orcs (legendary Orc generals which ever returned to battle after suffering mortal wounds). In the late Third Age, there would be some Maiar-blooded orcs (very few indeed, but the perfect excuse for a shaman, a huge elite Orc....).

So, taking this in account, you can have this:



As an hybrid race of animal/Maiar origin (it's quite big!), probably breed by Sauron himself for his elite guard (note the eye on the helmet).

Even from an strictly purist point of view, there are different races which vary in skin colour  and phisycal appearance.

[sukhe_bator]

I'm with Pil - I like the Chronicle and Grenadier Orcs by Nick Lund. They work well en masse

With a few adaptations to take in some of the banners and personal touches from the films they work well imho

I am especially fond of the American-Werewolf-in-London-esque Wargs

[Doomhippie]

Great suggestions so far!

I'm also a Tolkien nerd and I heartly agree with most suggestions.

Since Tolkien never said a final word about the origin of Orcs and he thought about three different possibilities, I use all the three to have variety:

1 - Elven origin: For this one I prefer Mithril Orcs (not a heavy build, pointy ears).

My favourite pet-peeve. Elves don't have pointy ears! At least not in Tolkien's world. I forgot exactly where but he specifically denies pinty ears as that looks to much like fairies. So here again my mantra: No pointy ears!