Orcs and the "gamefication" of Middle Earth

[Hobgoblin]

I agree with this.  There may be some slight indication of a sort of goblin<orc<hobgoblin hierarch in terms of size and ferocity in some places, but its far from definite or universal and I would not go out of my way to argue for it.  I would just see this as variations within the overall race, rather than a true separate race.  

The term hobgoblin is used just twice in the works Tolkien published: both times in The Hobbit. The first time is when he says that orc is usually translated as "goblin", but that "hobgoblin" can be used for the larger kinds. The second time is when Gandalf says that the Grey Mountains are "stiff with goblins and hobgoblins and orcs of the worst description". So the inference is that the latter use is definitely synonymia (repeating different words for the same thing: he's already told us that goblin = orc, and that a hobgoblin is a big orc (or goblin). But note that "hobgoblin" appears to be an optional term, because the very biggest goblins (the Great Goblin, Azog, Bolg and Bolg's guards) are all just described as "goblins". So hobgoblins must be a subset of goblins (and orcs). We actually know that Tolkien abandoned the term "hobgoblin" when he found out that, etymologically speaking, it originally meant a smaller or more domestic goblin ("Robin goblin"). I think it's pretty clear that he replaced it with "uruk" - the word that's used in LotR for the bigger goblins.

But there's one thing that's unarguable: in LotR, even the biggest orcs are called goblins. The Uruk-hai of Isengard are called goblins twice explicitly and once implicitly. (And if you look at the early drafts of Helm's Deep, they are called goblins all the more.) In fact, "goblin" is used to describe big orcs in LotR more often than it's used to describe small orcs. I don't think there's any significance to that beyond the fact that most of the orcs encountered are big soldier-orcs rather than the smaller breeds: Tolkien did, after all, say that the words were synonyms. The other point is that Tolkien clearly began to prefer the Germanic "orc" to the Romance "goblin" as a word - which is why "goblin" predominates in The Hobbit and "orc" predominates in LotR.

Re:In short, all uruks are orcs. And all uruks are goblin too!

I'm a bit less confident on this.  Now, there were references for some of Sauron's orcs as "black uruks"  which I think may have just been a descriptive term for a subset or tribe of orcs.  However, to me TTT seems to make a definite distinction between normal orcs and Saruman's Uruk-hai, which are IIRC described as larger than other orcs, less bothered by sunlight (which was considered a common feature of the original evil races) and using more human style weapons and armor.

I wonder, did you misread my sentence in bold?   I mean that all uruks are goblins (orcs), not that all goblins (orcs) are uruks! The latter is clearly not true, because Tolkien tells us that the word uruk was "applied as a rule only for the great soldier-orcs that at this time issued from Mordor and Isengard".

The uruks of Mordor - "black orcs of great strength"; "large and evil: black Uruks of Mordor" - are definitely a subset of orcs (the uruks are the big fighters, bred in the Third Age, about 500 years before the events of the book), as are the Uruk-hai of Isengard (who are also described as "black uruks" in The Battle of the Fords of the Isen and as "great uruks" in the Appendices of LotR). It seems pretty clear that Uruk-hai means something like "uruk-folk"; Christopher Tolkien says that "uruks" is an "Anglicisation" of Uruk-hai.

Now, there does seem to be something different about Saruman's uruks. Eomer says that they are "stronger and more fell" than other orcs, and Aragorn remarks on their man-like equipment. Yet they don't seem to be that different: the narrative voice generally describes them simply as "orcs", and if they're bigger and tougher than the Mordor uruks (presumably) under Grishnakh's command, then it's a marginal advantage: Grishnakh and Ugluk are contrasted as a pair with the smaller Northerners, and when the Mordor-orcs fall in behind the Isengarders on the run, the narrator says that it's not clear whether this was because the Isengarders were hardier or because Grishnakh had some cunning plan.

Sunlight is an interesting issue. The Northerners definitely don't like it, and Ugluk seems to ascribe this to their lack of training - but he also acknowledges that the "mountain maggots" can "see like gimlets in the dark". But there's no suggestion that the Mordor-orcs are bothered by the sun: they seem to be able to keep up pretty well with the Isengarders, and don't seem particularly scared of the Isengarders (Grishnakh is severely undermanned when he confronts Ugluk).

Re:In short, all uruks are orcs. And all uruks are goblin too!

Also, Gandalf(?) speculates at one point that the Uruk-hai may be the result of Saruman cross-breeding humans and orcs, which would imply they were somewhere between the two races in terms of size and strength.  None of that justifies the big, strapping Uruk-hai of the movies, or course, although they do make for cool opponents for Rohan.  

It's not quite that clear-cut - mostly, I think, because Tolkien kept changing his mind about what orcs (and thus uruks) actually were. Treebeard speculates that Saruman has been "doing something to them" - "Are they Men he has ruined, or has he blended the races of Orcs and Men?". If I remember, though, Tolkien somewhere (Letters?) refers to Treebeard's speech here and says that he's wrong about some things ("he does not know everything").

The thing is, the narrative voice only tells us that the Isengard uruks are "large orcs". Whatever they are, there is not doubt that they are orcs - and they're described as orcs by the narrative voice again and again. They seem generally to be bigger than the Mordor uruks, but not always: the biggest orc in Moria is "A huge orc-chieftain, almost Man-high", whereas Ugluk is merely "a large black orc". It's the equipment of the Isengarders that raises Aragorn's eyebrows, not their physiology - which, given the size of the uruk chieftain in Moria, should be no surprise: Aragorn has recently killed an even bigger orc.
 

Is it?  I always took it that these were just examples of more Uruk-hai with enough human blood in them to pass as humans.  

Well, given that they don't remind anyone of the Uruk-hai and they're never identified with them, and they're called "Men" rather than "Orcs" ...   They do remind the hobbits of Bill Ferny's Southron friend, however. And they're marching with the Men, rather than with the Orcs. Equally, when the hobbits encounter the same sort of creature in the Shire, they're reminded of Bill Ferny's friend and these marchers, not the countless uruks they've collectively encountered elsewhere.

Also, in The Battle of the Fords of the Isen, a clear distinction is drawn between the "fierce" and "black" uruks on the one hand and the Men or Orc-Men, "ferocious, mail-clad, armed with axes", who kill Theodred.

So, there are very clearly two classes of creature. Are they both products of Saruman's experiments? Ye, it would seem so. But they're very clearly distinguished.

[/b] In the end, despite the endless world-building and background notes that JRR accumulated for Middle Earth, he did not AFAIK really address this definitively, leaving it open for interpretation.  [/quote]

Well, I think he hummed and hawed on what the Isengard uruks actually were, because he could never decide what orcs in general were (the elf-origin story is just one of about a dozen notions that he toyed with). But he does seem to have finally decided on Saruman's creatures, given this passage in Morgoth's Ring (which postdates LotR):

""There is no doubt that long afterwards, in the Third Age, Saruman rediscovered this, or learned of it in lore, and in his lust for mastery committed this, his wickedest deed: the interbreeding of Orcs and Men, producing both Men-orcs large and cunning, and Orc-men treacherous and vile.""

Again, this distinguishes between two types of creature: essentially ~orcs and ~men. And that's exactly what we see in LotR.

And yes, not a hint of green skin among them!

[Rhoderic]

because he could never decide what orcs in general were (the elf-origin story is just one of about a dozen notions that he toyed with).

Now, that's interesting! Do we know what the other notions were?

[Hobgoblin]

Some aspects to think about, beginning with the assumption of "baseline" (non-uruk) orcs:

1. Body shape and size? Based on what's been said in this thread, I'm imagining bandy legs and stooped postures which make them about the height of dwarves, or perhaps slightly taller than that but certainly shorter than men. Would they be the bulk of dwarves though, or more like the bulk of men (who I assume are greater in bulk than dwarves due simply to having more height over which to distribute that bulk), given that their stooped, bandy-legged nature could potentially still make them quite bulky despite their dwarf-like height? Also, is it wrong of me to imagine that their legs would be somewhat shorter but their arms somewhat longer than those of a human? Or that their heads would be quite big but their necks quite short? These aspects haven't been mentioned in this thread (other than the big heads), but they just feel right to me. Agree/disagree?

My contention would be that uruks pretty much are the baseline for the latter part of the Third Age. They seem to be a minority, though, in the Misty Mountains, where there are lots of the older breeds. I think the non-uruks would range in size from hobbit-sized to dwarf-sized, with uruks the size of large dwarves or slightly bigger. I think they would be quite bulky - "squat and broad", with proportionately large heads (this recurs in the published texts and is also noted in HoME). Short necks sound good - big heads lend themselves to thick necks (something I always found useful in rugby!).

2. Any clue in the source material as to what their faces ought to look like? Long noses, stubby snouts, or neither of the above? Fangs? Sloping foreheads? Wide, predatory-looking mouths? Overbites or underbites? What size eyes? What shape ears? Should their facial features vary to a greater extent than do those of us humans, so that for instance one might have a cartoonishly long and sharp nose, and another might have a stubby snout? Should their facial expressions convey vicious, bloodthirsty wickedness or more of a cowed, self-loathing misery?

Flat faces: in a letter, Tolkien specifies flat noses. "Protruding fangs" (seen on Shagrat) and "yellow fangs" on the Mordor-orc guard in Rohan. The letter specifies wide mouths:

"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."

3. Hair? How much of it?

A human quantity of hair - and hairy arms. Presumably, they had facial hair too, though not long beards like dwarves - orcish beards might have been relatively scanty, given the "Mongol" connection in the letter.

4. Viewing the above questions in a somewhat different light, how much should they look like human actors trying to look like orcs, like many of the GW LotR/Hobbit figures do? I mean, I get (and agree with) Captain Blood's point that the "actors in rubber suits" of the LotR films beat the "video game characters" of the Hobbit films (even if I personally am equally lukewarm to both trilogies, overall), but still, excluding CGI, there's only so much you can do to make a human actor look non-human no matter the budget. You can give him a prosthetic nose, brow, cheekbones, chin, etc., change his hairline and do some other stuff like that, but you can't make his eyes closer together or wider apart, or his mouth unnaturally wide, or make the nose simply go away, or make the forehead more sloping (without the addition of a prosthetic brow protruding dramatically over the eyepits), or change the overall structure of the face to a more animal-like one that has the eyes more "at the sides" and less "at the front", and so on. You can make him adopt a stooped pose but you can't make his arms unnaturally long or his neck unnaturally short. So, given that you can do all of these things with miniatures, should you? To be honest, one of my main gripes with many of the GW LotR/Hobbit orcs is that they look a bit too much like miniatures of human actors in costume. Meanwhile, I get that there's such a thing as overly cartoonish orcs/goblins as well.

I think the same letter says that they are "essentially human" or words to that effect. But clearly their stances are very different: running bent over, with long arms almost trailing the ground.

5. What kind of clothing, how much of it, and how much variety of it? Some orc/goblin miniature ranges manage to pull off a fairly "uniform" look quite well (especially the Vendel/SGMM goblins), but most of the best ranges I've seen go for a lot of variety. At any rate, does the source material offer any hints in this regard? Would there be a tendency for a specific style of dress, such as robes (as with the Bakshi orcs), or tunics with naked legs, or conversely trousers with naked torsos, or an abundance of furs and animal skins covering most of the body, or something else? If indeed they are clever and technologically sophisticated, does that mean they wear "well-crafted" clothes of their own making? Any indications in the source material of decorative garments? And what about boots, belts/straps, cloaks and other practicalities of that sort?

Grishnakh has a knife with an ornamental hilt "shaped like a hideous head with squinting eyes and leering mouth".

We know their garb includes leather tunics and hairy breeches, and "heavy iron-nailed shoes". Some wear black cloaks.

6. What style of armour and weaponry, how much of it, and how much variety of it? Scimitars instead of straight swords? Axes, spears, maces? "Funny" weapons like flails, tridents and spiked wooden clubs? Bows or crossbows? Thrown weapons like javelins? Chainmail, plated mail, leather armour, or not much body armour at all? What shape/size shields? What general aesthetic of their crafted items (eg. jagged, angular and "industrial" like in the Peter Jackson films, or vaguely oriental, or that iconic Angus McBride aesthetic which Wargames Factory and Khurasan have imitated)? How crude or well-crafted? How decorative? How much of a "mass-produced" look (as for instance with the Peter Jackson uruk-hai)?

Most seem to use scimitars rather than straight swords, but the Isengard uruks use short, broad-bladed swords. Spears are common, with broad blades mentioned more than once. The uruk in "The Land of Shadow" has a short broad-bladed spear. Axes are mentioned in several places too, and long knives are common. At least one Mordor-orc has a short "broad-bladed stabbing-sword".

Crossbows are never mentioned anywhere in Middle Earth, as far as I know. The Isengarders have long bows of yew; the Mordor-orcs seem to have shorter bow of horn (i.e. composite bows).

They seem to wear a lot of mail, which they make themselves (The Battle of the Fords of the Isen notes that the Dunlendings generally lacked mail, because the only mail made in Isengard was the heavy, crude mail of the Orcs, made by them for their own purposes). Some orcs in Goblin-town are described as being in "full armour". Ring mail is noted too. Helmets can have nose guards and often have badges on the front.

Large round shields are mentioned for the Uruk-hai of Isengard. The Moria uruk chief has a broad shield covered in hide. He's also "clad from head to foot in black mail".

7. How many discernible "combat roles"? Should there be dedicated archers or crossbow-users separate from the melee fighters, or is it more of one big mob wherein some of the orcs happen to also have missile weapons? Who (as in which variety of orcs) would the wolfriders be, and would they use missile weapons at all? Also, absolutely no "shamans" or other magic-users of any sort?

No crossbow-men!   I don't think archers are separated from the melee fighters: all four of the dead uruks at Amon Hen have long yew bows, and the uruk in "The Land of Shadow" also has a bow at his back: he's a "big fighting orc". The impression given is that most orcs carry bows. Uruks seem to be unusually fast-moving, bow-armed heavy infantry. (small ones, mind!)

With wolfriders, it seems to be the wolf, rather than the orc, that the's main threat (hence my preference for using the Lesser Warbeast profile in Dragon Rampant, rather than one of the Rider ones). Archery isn't mentioned, but could be reasonably assumed, given the orcish preference for the bow (they achieve most of their notable kills through archery, it seems: Isildur, Balin, Boromir, etc.

8. Keep in mind, all of the above questions have mainly been to do with the baseline orcs so far - the ones that aren't uruks and (accepting Hobgoblin's theory that uruks would have been the brunt of the orc armies by the end of the Third Age) would have been the regular soldiers before uruks came along. So, what is their role "in orchood" relative to the other types of orcs, and how does that inform the above questions, like what size they should be and how well-equipped?

Well, I think most of the description quoted above actually refers to uruks. These are the "big fighting-orcs" that serve in Saruman and Sauron's wars. I guess that they're about the size of a dwarf - maybe a big dwarf - and that the very biggest might be about 5' (almost as tall as a man). But they are "squat and broad" (see "Helm's Deep"), and they're clearly very strong for their size.

Some of the smaller orcs might vary from the the norms above: the small tracker in Mordor is dressed in "ragged brow" and is the only orc specifically described as "black-skinned". The uruks are often described as "black" and "swart", but it's not quite clear what this means.

9. What, then, can we say about uruks regarding all the above questions? How would their physical appearance, clothing, armour, armaments and combat roles differ from the baseline?

As above, i think uruks are the baseline in the Third Age (outside the Misty Mountains). Presumably, they're better equipped than the smaller types.

10. And man-orcs? How do their differences from orcs and uruks manifest in all the above respects? Would they just physically look like ordinary men but with orcish faces?

Yes - they are described as Men, not orcs. It's their orcish faces that distinguish them:

"And there were battalions of Men, too. Many of them carried torches, and in the flare I could see their faces. Most of them were ordinary men, rather tall and dark-haired, and grim but not particularly evil-looking.But there were some others that were horrible: man-high, but with goblin-faces, sallow, leering, squint-eyed. Do you know, they reminded me at once of that Southerner at Bree; only he was not so obviously orc-like as most of these were."

10.Would their clothes, weapons and armour be more "mannish" in appearance? From a practical point of view, could man-orc figures be converted out of suitably warlike (or thug-like) human figures with head swaps and perhaps some weapon swaps and shield swaps, or are they more distinctive-looking than that?

I think head swaps or even distinctive painting/mild facial conversion would do the trick. There's a "not quite sure" aspect to them. At the Isen, they wear mail and carry axes:

"As soon as the enemy had gained possession of the eastern end of the Fords there appeared a company of men or Orc-men (evidently dispatched for the purpose), ferocious, mail-clad, and armed with axes."

These Orc-men are deployed because the Orcs are ineffective against the Rohirric shieldwall, owing to their small stature.

11. Finally, is there a point thinking about "extra small" orcs as a separate grouping, such as might be encountered as "local tribes" (though "tribe" is probably not the right word) in the mountains, forests and other wild places all over Middle Earth? If so, what could be said about them apropos all of the above questions?

I don't think so - at least not from anything in the books. Those suggest that, while there are different breeds, orcs essentially come in two sizes: small (snaga) and big (uruks). I think the Starbucks-style "small, medium, large" divisions are more or less an invention of Merp and other games. Now, there's obviously a continuum, but I don't think your "baseline orc" really exists. Some older breeds in the North and in certain parts of Mordor are small, but for 500 years by the time of LotR, the big ones have predominated in the armies of evil (and of course they've been sent by Sauron to the North too).

TLDR: Don't really know how to write a TLDR for this one, sorry

TLDR be damned!

[Cubs]

I've never seen this in any wargame ruleset, immortal spirits/ demons leading Orc armies. What an idea!

The closest thing I can think of is Warhammer's Azhag the Slaughterer, who (if I remember rightly) was 'advised' (controlled) by a cursed crown he used to wear, which was possessed by some old wizard or something.

[Hobgoblin]

Now, that's interesting! Do we know what the other notions were?

From memory:

Made from "heats and slimes of the earth";
Made from animated stone;
Some kind of "robot" puppet (playing "recordings" of speech - I think this one goes with one of the others);
Made from beasts;
Made from Men;
Made from Elves;
Made from the Druedain (woses);
Made from minor Maiar
Mixed origins.

[Rhoderic]

Thanks again. That's a decent amount of information to go on. You make a pretty convincing argument for the notion that there's just the two "size classes" of orc and that uruks are the brunt of the soldiery. I could still imagine non-soldier-orcs (ie. non-uruks) outnumbering the soldier-orcs, though.

Those alternative origin stories for orcs are very interesting - definitely in line with Tolkien's cosmological preoccupation in The Silmarillion. Reminds me of some contemplations I've had as to whether he intended for orcs to have souls or not, and if not (which seems likely as I think Mandos would otherwise have at least made some passing remark about the large numbers of broken elf-souls streaming into his halls ), how it came about that beings without souls began to be born of beings with them. I'm sure I'm not the first one to have gotten snagged up on that detail, and considering some of the alternative origin stories (robot puppets, etc) it seems to have been part of the reason for Tolkien's own indecision as to what orcs are.

[spud]

My take on the Orcs/Goblins from the Silmarilion is a corrupted being, human, elf, whatever, not some uniform species in and of themselves, but an alteration of something else. I have been doing LOTR in 1/72 and chose to not use the Peter Jacksonesque Dark Alliance models...despite the fact that they are awesome.  I use a mish mash of ancients.

[LeadAsbestos]

Thunderbolt Mountain Goblins as perfect Orcs? I think they hit all.the marks.

[Vermis]

The major setting I've used for a while has highly militaristic orcs and goblins in it, one where there had been a magical war that went, essentially, nuclear and left a good portion of the world in ruins. Orcs and the goblinoids descended from the military caste of one side of that and had been selectively bred for their military then, a process that, somewhat, continued with the clans having keepers of the lines as a major part of the culture where they are still trying to improve their warriors by pairing the best of them...

Sounds good. A wee hint of morlock?

I do admit to having a fondness for Foundry's largest great orc/ogre mercenaries, or at least the largest, foppish ones. But as stated above, that's something entirely different from Tolkien to me.

Despite being a bit bored of GW style orcs and Kev Adams' style, I have a sneaking liking for their regular orcs. Almost started buying them when God of Battles was the next big thing.

(No one should take seriously a crank ranting about goblins on the internet! )

Not so much ranting as preaching to the choir.

Now, there's nothing wrong with gaming Middle Earth "non-canonically". But I think one of the attractions of the setting is that there's so much material that you can actually dig into it a bit and uncover certain points. In that respect, Tolkien gaming is perhaps more like historical gaming than most fantasy games.

I think this is a plus, that applies to other well developed settings, and that gets somewhat overlooked. I've heard complaints about GW's SBG that all you can do is replay the story, and conversely, one of the rationalisations of WFB's destruction is that the story needed to progress. Historical gamers don't worry too much about replaying the stories, or whether or not a particular period like, say, the ECW progresses much beyond 1651! With a detailed background, fictional history, and that most important of features, a fantasy map, there should be a lot of battles and hooks to spark off a few imaginations, and maybe enough space for gamers to stretch their legs and do their own thing within the canon.
On the other hand, unless it's a campaign like Dark Shadows or Storm of Chaos that ostensibly determines new background, you could say that all gaming is non-canon, regardless of the setting. Even the most rigorously researched historical game, with-rock-solid OOBs and all the piping in the right colours, turns into fiction once players and dice get involved. Not to mention the fact that it's little plastic and metal models on a flocked tabletop.

But, getting OT, so...

Every single wacky little games company or kickstarter running today, churning out yet more green-skinned, Mockney 'orcs', can trace a line back to Tolkien's original creation...
You may be right that many of these legions of sub-Tolkien creations and settings now have self-worth independent of each other. But Hobgoblin's central point is (and I paraphrase) that most wargamers' notion of orcs in 2016 bears little or no relation to the orcs invented and described by Tolkien...
Basically, through a process of evolution, Tolkien's original concepts have been hijacked, gradually bent out of shape, and redefined in the popular imagination for two generations of gamers. And it's the ersatz image which has stuck, and not the original.

Which is, for me at least, a pity

Well said! The apple's fallen a little far from the tree.

To add another stem to the argument, I'd have to say that one of my formative images of Orcs are from Ralph Bakshi's version of Lord of the Rings, mainly as I would have seen it for the first time around about the time I first read the books. How do we think they fit in with the changing image of Tolkien's creations?

Bit difficult to say, with all the red and black blobs!

I'm not altogether behind Bakshi's orcs. They're an interesting impression of orcs, in the way they behave and how they're perceived (a dark, swirling horde with flashes of white fangs and red... whatevers) but it's difficult to go much deeper than that.

One of the things that's so great about these is how varied they are. It's not just that they've got interesting details, but they've got tremendously varied equipment. They're not uniform and optimised for Warhammer...

Good point.

The way the larger orcs fight in this crouched position behind their shields used to really make me think of the battles in the tunnel systems under the Misty Mountains and i used have hours of fun in the polystrene tunnels i built for them.

Nice!

Hated a great deal about the Hobbit movies - except for Martin Freeman.

I was watching that Brian Pern thing on the iPlayer the other day, where Martin Freeman was hired to record the audiobook of Brian's memoirs. He said he had a lot of voices that he could use for it.

Funniest line in the whole show.

I have no problem at all with cutting bits out of stories in adaptation... And I don't care what's added, so long as it's done well.
My main beef with the LotR films was with the sudden lapses of tone and taste: dwarf-tossing, endless Jet Set Will-style crumbling staircases, oliphaunt-surfing and - perhaps worst of all - the scenes with Theoden in Edoras. They did that brilliant bit with Eoywn and the flag, but then threw the audience into some zany kung-fu computer-game scene - and topped it off with an instant haircut and manicure for the king. What on earth was wrong with just letting an actor act?

Yes, those are things that rankled with me. A bit of a cop-out to chuck in such naff moments of light relief, which just jarred with the other 99% of the movies. Similarly the reduction of Merry and Pippin to almost entirely silly comic characters. Fine, so they come of age in the third film, but they were nothing like such a pair of idiotic nitwits in Tolkien...

I could write a book about what I didn't like about the LotR movies, but it largely boils down to that general theme - mucking about with the 'spirit' of the story and characters, moreso than changing some events. Especially when you do a PJ and drain all subtlety out of it.
Gimli, Theoden, Merry and Pippin, yes. Me, I'm still narked that Treebeard and Faramir were turned into harrumphing jobsworths, until they were given a talking-to by some naïve bumpkin hobbits.

There. Peter Jackson made me speak ill of hobbits.

So... in the (perhaps vain) hope that this thread may serve as actual inspiration or reference for some "patron of the hobby" to sculpt or commission a new range of orcs in the orthodox Tolkienist tradition, what should they ideally look like? As in, what's the nitty-gritty brief that one would send to a sculptor if one was commissioning the actual figures? (To be clear, I'm not planning to do any such thing - unless I win the lottery - but I think it worth going over, anyway.)

It might not be strictly in line with the info gleaned from Tolkien's writing*, but again, as per Polynikes'(?) illustration in an older topic: less gorillaform, more chimpform. With some big, gnarly monkeys in the mix too. When I see Alan Lee's take on the tracker orc, I see something not a million miles from a baboon or a drill. With requisite anthropomorphism.

For clothing and equipment, I'd like to stick to the general 'dark ages' europe theme that seems to be associated with middle-earth. Though that still encompasses a wide range, from what I know.

* Though given some of the descriptions, posted by Hobgoblin, it's not too different. Hunched, bandy-legged stances; flat noses; yellow fangs; wide mouths; hairy arms...

I have to admit, even with the qualifiers of "degraded and repulsive versions" and "to Europeans", I find going the ape & monkey route a little less troubling than making uglified mongolians.

No crossbow-men!   I don't think archers are separated from the melee fighters: all four of the dead uruks at Amon Hen have long yew bows, and the uruk in "The Land of Shadow" also has a bow at his back: he's a "big fighting orc". The impression given is that most orcs carry bows. Uruks seem to be unusually fast-moving, bow-armed heavy infantry. (small ones, mind!)

Flashbacks to the longbows vs. crossbows topic...

The closest thing I can think of is Warhammer's Azhag the Slaughterer, who (if I remember rightly) was 'advised' (controlled) by a cursed crown he used to wear, which was possessed by some old wizard or something.

'Some old wizard'. Nagash himself!

http://whfb.lexicanum.com/wiki/Azhag

I've heard of the Boldog bit; IIRC it's also an explanation for the origin of other various nasties like wargs, werewolves, giant spiders (Ungoliant's children), intelligent dragons ("and Glaurung spoke by the evil spirit that was in him"), possibly vampires, in middle-earth.

[rebelyell2006]

My take on the Orcs/Goblins from the Silmarilion is a corrupted being, human, elf, whatever, not some uniform species in and of themselves, but an alteration of something else. I have been doing LOTR in 1/72 and chose to not use the Peter Jacksonesque Dark Alliance models...despite the fact that they are awesome.  I use a mish mash of ancients.

That's my vision as well.  Perhaps Morgoth's corruption involved barracks in a uranium mine, as I imagine orcs looking like elves that have various defects after thousands of years of cruel, twisted manipulations and tortures that carried over from generation to generation.  Stuff like too many or not enough fingers, oddly shaped bones, too many or not enough teeth, etc.  The Northern/Moria orcs were more true-orcs, while the Isengard and Mordor orcs had fresh injections of human and elf genes.

[Rhoderic]

Thunderbolt Mountain Goblins as perfect Orcs? I think they hit all.the marks.

They certainly have the "short legs and long arms" and "big heads with no necks" things going for them which I personally like (though the leg/arm thing doesn't seem to be canon), and I agree that they tick nearly all the boxes. The "heavy goblins" seem to measure about 20mm to the eyes which puts them at the same height as, or very marginally taller than, Westfalia halflings (my ideal hobbit/halfling figures, at least in terms of anatomy). Probably bulkier than halflings, though. I don't have any good dwarf figures around to measure right now.

There's also more poses than I recall. I don't much care for the thinness of the weapons (I have some of the weapon sprues in the lead pile - no actual goblins though) but swapping them out isn't a big deal.

They are rather "wargamefied" in regard to weapon/armour loadouts, though, and I'm not quite sure whether their size makes them more suitable as uruks or snaga.

[wolfen]

This is one of the coolest threads I have ever read on any forum anywhere!

I've also been a gamer for as long, and I have to say I've still never found a range of orcs/ goblins that fits my mental image of Tolkien's evil race. Considering I've been in the figure industry for 28 years, it's a bit pathetic of me to have not done them myself. Maybe I should start a vanity project.

Nick
North Star

*Now patiently waiting for Tolkien Orc Nickstarter*

[Hupp n at em]

*Now patiently waiting for Tolkien Orc Nickstarter*

Yes, please! 

[beefcake]

Yes yes.

[Blackwolf]

A couple of things I have done:

First shows a Silmarillion scene using Redbox Games Elves and GW Mordor Orcs(plastics).

   

   
      Second is a trio of Asgard Orcs,lovely!