Some miniatures for Song of Blades and Heroes (Frostgrave undead and construct)

[Hobgoblin]

Thanks!

Yes - retrieval from the depths of time and cellar is definitely where it's at! I had a rummage when I got back home this evening and found some half-complete HOTT chaos hordes, on the old 60 x 60 bases. They contained, variously, a Ral Partha Grendel, a Runequest demon or two, some Trish Morrison beastmen and an old Grenadier Gollum. That got me thinking - I need to start a parallel project on some Moorcockian chaos hordes. I'll limit it by purchasing not a single new model for the chaos army (with perhaps a concession for a toy octopus to repaint as Pyaray once the rest of the army's complete). I'm envisaging walking corpses side by side with corrupted humans (wretched rather than formidable and spiky) beastmen and barely describable THINGS.

I look forward to seeing your hordes. I thinking mixing goblins and orcs is a tremendous idea (I cling to the Tolkien line that they're ONE AND THE SAME ); I like the fact that old Citadel models made much less of a distinction in facial type. There are quite a few old Perry goblins with "orc" faces, right up into the first slottabase ranges. I think my two conversions above were attempts to restore the blurring of the (heretical!) boundary.

Mixing manufacturers is an excellent idea too - your troll units look all the more tremendous for their diverse origins.

[Severian]

Yes, quite clearly orcs and goblins are one and the same, and as an unapologetic Tolkien purist even as a teenager this was one of the small marks against the whole D&D-warhammer orc/goblin taxonomy. I think I rationalized it then as just a way of distinguishing between different sizes/breeds/whatever of orcs (or goblins).

Without entering into the whole vexed question of orcish origins, obviously they come in a variety of sizes and shapes, just like human beings but (probably) moreso. So it makes perfect sense to have hulking great Essex orcs (great goblins, if you like) alongside scrawny little Ral Partha goblins (like wiry fly halves alongside prop forwards, perhaps, although taken from a wider spectrum of sizes than the human). And all others in between, too.

Different roles for different sizes and shapes of orc/goblin seems only natural, although I plan to vary the sizes a bit within units just for fun. You could easily explain this as a random ad hoc grouping of the variously sized goblins of a particular hold (in, say, the Misty Mountains); the arguably more regimented forces of Mordor might need to be a bit closer to each other in size, although even there a range of sizes and shapes would be both plausible and visually more interesting than serried ranks of same sized orcs...

I'll try to get some pictures of my hordes up when they're fit to be seen; I'm currently working on the bases, as well as digging out various likely candidates. I recently picked up some red box goblins, which are very nice (in fact, they're miniature Paul Bonner trolls) but comparatively tiny. They may go in the second wave of hordes...although one advantage of sabotted bases is the ease of mixing in subsequent reinforcements.

Curious to see how your chaos hordes come out. It's an excellent notion to assemble them from whatever is to hand; in fact this ought to be axiomatically true of any chaos army, surely?

[Hobgoblin]

Yes, quite clearly orcs and goblins are one and the same, and as an unapologetic Tolkien purist even as a teenager this was one of the small marks against the whole D&D-warhammer orc/goblin taxonomy. I think I rationalized it then as just a way of distinguishing between different sizes/breeds/whatever of orcs (or goblins).

Ha! I registered similar harrumphing black marks against D&D and Warhammer for the same reason! It's always struck me that D&D goblins are essentially Tolkien's orcs (with hobgoblins as oversized iterations of the bigger sorts), with the D&D orc more or less an original creation (although initially, the tribal names were taken from JRRT).

Without entering into the whole vexed question of orcish origins, obviously they come in a variety of sizes and shapes, just like human beings but (probably) moreso. So it makes perfect sense to have hulking great Essex orcs (great goblins, if you like) alongside scrawny little Ral Partha goblins (like wiry fly halves alongside prop forwards, perhaps, although taken from a wider spectrum of sizes than the human). And all others in between, too.

Yes, indeed. I think the rugby analogy works very well. In fact, I think people tend to worry too much about the compatibility of scales. It seems to me that relatively delicate Ral Partha humans actually work perfectly well with chunkier Citadel types. Even if you confine the range of scale to "robust, warrior types", you only need to look at a low-level club rugby pack to see people ranging from, say, 5'6" to 6'6", all of whom are bigger (or at least heavier) and stronger than average. Battlefield archaeology (e.g. from Towton) suggests the same sort of range among medieval soldiers; they all tended to have muscular build and concomitantly thick bones, but there was a wide range of "scales".

For orcs, the early Citadel miniatures facilitated a mixing of types. About half of these Night Goblins had faces that were similar to the Citadel orcs of the period, and they were all the better for it, as it established a kind of "Gloranthan troll and trollkin" visual relationship. That persisted into the first slottabased range of goblins, but thereafter, "goblins" were confined to drooping noses, for some reason.

Different roles for different sizes and shapes of orc/goblin seems only natural, although I plan to vary the sizes a bit within units just for fun. You could easily explain this as a random ad hoc grouping of the variously sized goblins of a particular hold (in, say, the Misty Mountains); the arguably more regimented forces of Mordor might need to be a bit closer to each other in size, although even there a range of sizes and shapes would be both plausible and visually more interesting than serried ranks of same sized orcs...

Yes: certainly, the Misty Mountains in the Third Age were home to both "great uruks" and many smaller types too. And while the wars of Mordor seem mainly to have been fought by uruks, there were certainly lots of smaller breeds involved at the later stages too. And they were marshalled by uruks (as we see in "The Land of Shadow").

And I think your point about visual interest is even more important. I've long argued that it's clear from LotR that even the biggest uruks were significantly shorter than Men (see Gimli's complaints about the Dunlendings and much more besides). But at a certain point, you have to say "to Hell with it - these are great models!". I think HoTT facilitates that very well, because the figure scale means that everything's a little abstract anyway. So, while the orc overseer here is Middle Earth troll-sized, he'll work perfectly well as an uruk driver at the back of a horde (which I hope to compete tonight). The Ral Partha giant goblin with whip (which I'll also be using) is the "correct" size, I think, but visual interest has to win out.

In that respect, I'm aiming to make my HOTT orcs "Hobbit-faithful" rather than LotR faithful (as The Hobbit has far less detail on the respective sizes of creatures, and they seem generally to be a bit more elastic).

I'll try to get some pictures of my hordes up when they're fit to be seen; I'm currently working on the bases, as well as digging out various likely candidates. I recently picked up some red box goblins, which are very nice (in fact, they're miniature Paul Bonner trolls) but comparatively tiny. They may go in the second wave of hordes...although one advantage of sabotted bases is the ease of mixing in subsequent reinforcements.

I look forward to seeing them. The sabotting certainly gives you lots of room for variety.

Curious to see how your chaos hordes come out. It's an excellent notion to assemble them from whatever is to hand; in fact this ought to be axiomatically true of any chaos army, surely?

Yes, my longstanding grumble with the GW parsing of Moorcock is that it's tended to lead to an oxymoronic "regimented chaos". And beyond that, I think chaos armies should look at least as wretched as they do terrifying. At his best, Moorcock can conjure a bit of sympathy for his chaos creatures - the deluded man-horse Poliv-bav, for example. I also like little details like the image from Stormbringer of chaotic looters being directed by a skeleton on a horse, the bony rider wielding a flaming sword.

Given your user name, have you ever thought of doing Urth armies? It's just occurred to me that they would fit very well into HOTT. The pandours of the Autarch would present some tremendous painting and modelling opportunities:

'Behind these windows we could see the moving figures of men and women, and of creatures that were neither men nor women. Cacogens, I think, were there, beings to whom the avern was but what a marigold or a marguerite is to us. Others seemed beasts with too much of men about them, so that horned heads watched us with eyes too wise, and mouths that appeared to speak showed teeth like nails or hooks. I asked Dr. Talos what these creatures were.

"Soldiers," he said. "The pandours of the Autarch."'

[Severian]

Ah, there's a thought. It's sometimes vaguely crossed my mind, but I've never properly thought it through. I'd need to gather some information, of course... The fascinating article "Cavalry in the Age of the Autarch" (from The Castle of the Otter, reprinted in Castle of Days) is full of ideas.

But it also suggests a stumbling block - I've always rather disliked painting horses (even, as in this case, genetically engineered Kevlar-armoured warbeasts), and any army I try to muster that has a sizeable cavalry component tends to get postponed... The archetype would be my "generic steppe nomads" mob, which was meant to serve as opposition to any number of historical opponents across a couple of thousand years, as well as having some Gloranthan convertibility. Only a tithe of it has ever got finished; and the reason is that painting the wretched nags is frankly tedious (and I'm not much good at it). Every once in a while I dig it out and paint a few more, so there's some hope, but it won't ever be quick.

However, it might be manageable in HOTT to have a few elements of destriers alongside whatever else one decided to field. Hmmm. Those pandours could be lots of fun, couldn't they.

At this point I shall allude to the usual caveats about no-space-for-another-project and get me back to my goblins (which, like yours, are aimed to be Hobbit-faithful). However whenever I next look into the Urth books this will probably be at the back of my mind...

[Hobgoblin]

Couldn't agree more on horses! I have an old Grenadier orc hero on a horse based up and ready to paint - but I'm dreading the steed and half-thinking of painting it in tiger colours to get round the problem.

On different-sized goblins: I've always rather liked this John Blanche illustration, which appeared in White Dwarf (in an article on orcs). That's roughly the look I want when my hordes are assembled:

[Hobgoblin]

I've been playing around with some ideas for HOTT chaos hordes. Here are a few possibilities. I want to mix more (more or less) humans in, and more creeping things - and some banners - but these are roughly along the lines I want. I suspect the army will be something along these lines:

2 x behemoths
1 x hero or magician general
2 x flyers or beasts
1 x blades
6 x hordes

I also have a rather good sneaker - a Runequest demon with a vulture beak - and endless possibilities for more formidable infantry. But I'd rather keep the force as much wretched as fearsome.

I'll give the bear a shield and weapon as a nod to Corum. The trumpeter will get the chaos star on his flag

[Arunman]

Your work on shield decorations is very beautiful and I found this whole thread both inspiring and refreshing, with its spirit of Middle Earth and liberty.

On two pictures I saw some sort of white material on the unfinished model bases. How do you attain the fine texture on your 25mm scale bases? They look perfect, like a grass should look like. In my experience all kinds of sand do not result in such a good finish and texture of beach sand varies quite a lot from country to country. British beach sand is much finer and homogenous than Nordic beach sand, for example. What kind of material and glue is being used?

[Hobgoblin]

Thanks, Arunman!

For bases, I use Golden Coarse Pumice Gel. It's great stuff - you just paste it on the bases and give it a couple of hours to dry. You can also mix it with paint to get your base colour on at the same time, but I tend to be too lazy to do that.

Here in the UK, it's widely available in art shops and costs about £14 a tub. It lasts for ages - I've bought three tubs in two years, and have most of the third one left. I've based hundreds of miniatures in that time - maybe a thousand.

Another good thing about it is that it dries very firmly. So, if you glue a solid-based miniature to a base, you can use the gel to secure the figures to their base. I only ever use Milliput or green stuff if the miniature is particularly heavy (a metal dragon or something).

[Hobgoblin]

Here are Schrumpkopf's new kobolds - for which many thanks to him!

These are brilliant little miniatures. I'll be buying many more - they're by far the best iteration of the D&D kobold I've seen. And that means that they free up the Chronicle, Grenadier and Ral Partha ones I have for other purposes (Chaos imps in HOTT, most likely ...).

I made these fellows blue in nods to their etymology and the SOBH cover.

[affun]

Yep, looks gorgeous. I've been sort of avoiding/putting off Schrumpfkopf's thread, telling myself that I didn't need these guys. Apparantly I do.

Really like the shield designs as well

[Severian]

Very nice (both figures and painting)! These are a must-have, for sure. I have no idea how many hundreds (thousands?) of the little blighters I slaughtered back in my D&D days...they were always a good morale booster.

I had forgotten there was an etymological connection between kobold and cobalt, so thanks also for the reminder: always good to have an excuse to browse in the etymological dictionary...

And the chaos hordes are looking great; an object lesson in how to make use of those random oddments that are the somehow unavoidable by-product of prolonged (or even modest) bouts of miniature buying.

[Arunman]

Thank you Hobgoblin for the reply - I just put an order to British artist's supply shop for that basing material. I note it worked well also for your Space Ork models. I have been thinking something like that for my own science fiction models, too.

[Hobgoblin]

Here's a survivor from very long ago - a chaos beastman that I painted as a teenager before abandoning gaming entirely for a quarter of a century. I can't be bothered to repaint him, so I'll just repair the weapon and add him to one of the chaos hordes, where he'll act as a nostalgic reminder of an age of more interesting beastmen!

I do think it's a great shame that there none of today's plastic beastmen kits offer the variety of the old Trish Morrison beastmen. They're so ripe for a great multipart kit - imagine goat legs, snake tails, slug-like bodies, wings, long necks, crab claws and insect thoraxes ...

[Hobgoblin]

And here is the first of his fellow hordelings. This is the quickest miniature I've ever painted - half an hour from (washed and drybrushed) undercoat to current state. There's a temptation to try to finish him off "properly", but I'm determined to resist: I recall that the soft detail on some of these Grenadier miniatures can be an extraordinary quagmire. So he'll go in as is. Next!

[Hobgoblin]

Here's the hordeling's other side. I made good progress with the chaos hordes yesterday evening, with the crab man and the bear (now wielding a bone club and carrying a shield) close to completion.

One thing that I think is important in HOTT is not to worry about horde elements looking too formidable. The point (and I think this is implicit in the rules) is that they're disorganised fighters, however fierce they may be individually. So horde elements can contain plenty of large or ferocious-looking monsters - it's just that they don't fight in a particularly cohesive manner.