MUNGO SMAAAAASH!

In preparation for the Bloody Hells' first ever battle in Mantic Games' Kings of War tonight, I thought I'd quickly post up some images of the newest addition to the army, Blind Mungo, my Orc Giant.

I love this model, not least because it's pretty rare.  It's a resin cast of one of Mantic's three-up orc sculpts - the original large-scale sculptures that the 28mm miniatures are based on.  You can see from the photo at the top that, when compared to a 'normal' orc, this miniature is a monster!



At first glance, this miniature looks like
any other 28mm miniature... Until you see
the other orc...!

I began by painting the metallics in two
different tones before roughly highlighting
both with Chainmail.

I followed this with several black and brown
washes to 'dirty' up the metal before giving
the areas a drybrush of Chainmail.

I then highlighted the metals using lots of
thinned layers of Skull White to represent
light glinting off it.

I began the browns by basecoating them
with Scorched Brown, before washing the
areas with Devlan Mud.

I then built up the highlights from Bestial
Brown to Bleached Bone before finally
washing the areas with thinned Devlan Mud.

For the whites, I basecoated with Citadel's
new Ceramite White.  I then washed the areas
first with Devlan Mud, then with Regal Blue.

Finally I built the highlights up gradually
using lots of thinned coats of Ceramite White.

I began the skin with a 1:1 basecoat of
Vermin Brown and Scorched Brown.

I then built the colour up with a 2:1:1 mix
of Dwarf Flesh, Vermin Brown and
Scorched Brown.

The next highlight was simply pure
Dwarf Flesh.

I then added a 1:1 layer of Dwarf Flesh and
Skull White before a 3:1 layer of Skull White
and Bleached Bone.  I then gave it a 1:1 wash
of Ogryn Flesh and Gryphonne Sepia.

Finally, I re-applied the extreme highlights
before adding a glaze of Scorpion Green to
the most prominent areas to give it an
'orcish' look.



Finally, I added gallons of blood to the shield and axe by first painting it on with thinned Blood Red and then adding a 1:1 mix of Blood Red and Chaos Black onto the areas where the blood is the thickest.  Finally I added some gloss varnish to give it a really icky-sticky look!

I loved painting this miniature, even just to a gaming standard, and I think he was really worth all the effort.  Below are some images of the finished article:


If you want to see some more of The Bloody Hells, you'll find them in the Tabletop section of the Flare Gallery!

To see these and more of my miniatures...

Clash of Kings! (Part 4)

Well, it's been about three weeks since I last updated the 'Clash of Kings' portion of the blog.  In that time, I have been basecoating orcs like there's no tomorrow.  Except there was a tomorrow.  I knew this because I was scheduled to be basecoating more orcs...

I have to say, I'm pretty chuffed that I managed to get a hundred and ten greenskins ready for dipping in just three weeks!  It was a pretty monotonous job, despite loving the miniatures, so I set myself small, manageable goals for each night's painting, rather than trying to do everything too quickly and just burning myself out.

That said, I was due to finish the basecoating a week from now, but realised a couple of nights ago that this weekend was the last chance I would have to get outside and dip the miniatures for a couple of weeks (for anybody who doesn't know, it's the Chelmsford Bunker's Bunker Bowl III tournament on the 13th and 14th of October!) so I did put in a couple of marathon painting sessions over the last few nights to get them finished:

This morning, I spent a very messy and fun few hours reminiscing about Arnie's death in Terminator 2 as I slowly submerged a thousand points of orcs one-by-one into sticky brown goo.  Sadly, none of them gave me a thumbs up as they went in, but you can't have everything.

And here they are in all of their shiny, sticky, glory:

It'll be at least another fourty-eight hours before they'll be completely dry, so I'm going to reward myself by spending a couple of nights assembling my Krudger on Gore and four Flaggers.  After that, hopefully it should take slightly under a week to add the weathering to the orcs' armour, add snow to the bases and paint the edges.  After that, a quick blast of matte varnish and they'll be ready for battle.  This can only be a good thing as, apart from a couple of intro games courtesy of Tom Pugh at Cymbeline Games (an all-round decent chap and supplier of all my Mantic wares), I have not actually played a full game of Kings of War yet!  I may have a few 'victory issues' when it comes to the tournament in February.  I'll be the one on the bottom table, drinking beer and watching my army run away...

Anyway, more updates as soon as these guys are done.  I bought a huge amount of plasticard from my friends at 4Tk Gaming in Colchester this afternoon, ready to make my first ever scratch-build movement trays.  Hopefully, it's going to be as straight-forward as I'm imagining it to be...

More on that soon, but in the mean time - bye for now!!!

Clash of Kings! (Part 3)

THUNDERBIRDS ARE GO!

Sorry, that has absolutely no relevance to my Mantic Orc army, but it did a good job of summing up how I'm feeling about them at the moment.

I managed to get my five test-orcs dipped on Sunday, using The Army Painter's Strong Tone (which is the 'medium' tone) dip.  After letting them dry for twenty-four hours (yes, that's how long it takes), I added some final weathering on the armour, using Hawk Turquoise washed with Devlan Mud, before adding snow to the bases and edging them with Calthan Brown - which I have used for the rest of the army.

After that, I varnished the minis with matte varnish - this is essential because the dip leaves them with a very shiny gloss finish - before re-glossing the blood and eyes with gloss varnish.  (At this point, I realised that you could probably drop these guys out of a plane and they would land unscathed!)

Anyway, in all honesty, I was completely blown away by the results!

The miniatures went from THIS:

To THIS:

All in a few simple stages!

Now, I don't know about you, but I'm pretty impressed with that and can't wait to crack on with the rest of the army.

Obviously, they're not as 'polished' as they would be had I painted them conventionally.  Below is an example of a non-dipped regiment I painted a while ago:

Saying that though, these have been photographed 'properly' and it's worth bearing in mind that this unit took three weeks to paint, whereas the dipped orcs took about four hours.

Better yet, I have forty-five 'conventionally-painted' orcs, which should be enough to form a great-looking front rank for each of my units of dipped ones.

So what more can I say?

Let's paint an army.

Clash of Kings! (Part 2)

Quite a good weekend of work on this project, really, though after preparing all of the miniatures, I didn't get a great deal of actual painting done!

 Here you can see the forces assembled, and what a force it's going to be!  Points-wise, this is actually only about two-thirds of the army.  I plan on buying at least thirty Gore Riders, and let's not forget that in those little plastic bags you can see, I have a Krudger on Gore and A HUNDRED AND ELEVEN (!!!) Orclings.

The good news, I remembered, was that I have already painted about forty-five of the orc Axes, so that's a significant proportion of the foot-troops already done.

The four Ax which are still on sprues will be my army's Flaggers.  As you saw in the last post, I have spent a massive amount of time painting the 'official' orc Flagger and though the miniature is magnificent, I really don't think I could do another four of them!   Instead, I have managed to acquire some banner arms from the Flagger miniature, so some conversions ahead, I think.

The biggest pain before I could actually throw myself into the project properly was gravelling the bases.  This took quite a long time and (as you can see) required a heavy-duty amount of PVA glue!

Once this was done on Friday night, I then left them until the morning when they were all dry so I could then undercoat them.

I am yet to assemble the Krudger or the Orclings because firstly, I don't have any 40mm bases yet for the little guys and secondly, I'm not sure the Orclings will make it into the army if I want to include a giant.

The Krudger on the other hand will be done completely separately from the main force as he will get a hopefully very lovely paint-job, time permitting.

And here they are, assembled and sprayed.  In total, having done a proper head-count, I have one hundred orc Axes, twenty Moraxes, forty Greataxes, four Flaggers, one Krudger on Gore and enough Orclings to make at least ten bases.

Not a bad start really!

Finally, I managed to find the time to (very roughly)  basecoat five of the Axes to run as a test.  As you may see from the picture, the bases aren't quite dry yet - and still aren't dry as I'm writing this - but as soon as they are, these guys will get dipped...

Keep an eye out for more updates over the coming days to see how these guys turn out!

Clash of Kings! (Part 1)

Huzzah!  The family have been packed of to the Abyss for the weekend (Mersea Island...) and so I think it's high time I actually got around to painting my Orc army for Mantic's Clash of Kings tournament which is coming up in February.

Now, let me start by saying this:  The tournament requires a fully-painted 1800pt army.  I currently own around a hundred and fifty un-painted plastic orcs (unassembled in some cases!) and this will take me to about 1200pts.  Not a problem though because Mantic's minis are, despite being fantastic, some of the most inexpensive wargaming miniatures on the market.  I thoroughly plan on buying lots of Gore Riders soon to bulk up the rest of the force, but at the moment I only have foot troops.

But anyway, the point I'm trying to make is that this will be a big job to get them all done.

Now, the orc Flagger you see above took about two weeks to paint, but there is no way I can spend that much time painting rank and file to this standard.  Instead, I will be trying out The Army Painter's dipping method.  Obviously, for a gamer whose first love is painting, this may seem anathema to their hobby principles, and it is.  But this isn't an exercise in fine painting, it's an exercise in army painting.

My plan is to basecoat and dip the entire army (excluding characters, which will be painted to somewhere resembling the Flagger's standards) and then, should I have the time before February, I'll go back and improve on the detail, beautify the front ranks, add weathering to the metallics etc.

I'm going to dedicate pretty much 100% of my hobby time to this project from here on in, and the plan is as follows:

Today I hope to finish assembling the troops I currently have, and gravel the bases.  From tomorrow, I will basecoat all of the miniatures (testing the first few with the dip to see how they look).  If I can basecoat ten orcs a day, then in theory my current horde will be ready to dip in less than three weeks.  Hopefully, having a full day to paint tomorrow, I'll be able to make a significant dent in the numbers.  After that, I'll finish the bases on all of them before buying the remainder of my force.

Simple!

So, onwards and upwards and all that...

Wish me luck!