Toms Goblins and Orcs: Rank and File #4

MAY.

This month has been awesome!

It's seen the completion of my planned army, and now comes the push to add some extras. But before getting ahead of myself, here's the last orc boys regiment 👊

These boys were a little bit of a struggle, but then as soon as I was half way through, they were a breeze. So strange how that sometimes happens... Here's the rank close ups...

The rust is a technical paint from the Army Painter - part of the John Blanche paint set

I tried to make them as easy as possible.  They're super nice sculpts, so that made it a lot easier. But it's why there's no colour variation, and all the 'bits' are the same brown colour.

Some of the orcs have been converted by their previous ebay owner.

Like this boy, with his beloved hammer and cleaver....👇

And then you gotta love picking up a model and then belatedly realising your fingers are covered in paint 😂😬👇

Here's a shot of the back of the orcs. You can see that I did the classic Thing of not checking whether they rank up neatly before plastic gluing them to their bases. It's why there are two orcs not on the required diagonal - and therefore those two can only be on the end of the rank. 

On to the Command! These models have been sat in my lead pile for a decade or so, and I think they were all 'extras' in bulk ebay buys when I was purchasing orcs for my big hat chaos dwarfs... 

This guy has a thing about eyes...👇

The drummer 👇

Took me so long to realise the drum is made out of a nailed in snotling 😬

And now on to the regimental standard, which I'm super proud of. He's now been promoted to Army Standard he came out so well! The banner design was inspired by this banner by ladykito on Instagram

My banner is paper. It's been doubled up and glued with PVA before painting, so then when it's attached to the banner pole it'll be quadruple paper. I used a new brush to paint the design on, which may be why it's come out so well! (I use greenstuff world gold sable #2 brush for everything except drybrushing)

And here it is attached and flying! 

The pole is 1.2mm brass rod, drilled right through the hand (which disintegrated, so I had to make some fingers out of greenstuff. It is the first time I've had to so something like this with GS!). The skull is from the current GW skulls set. I had to add some of the greenstuff to the back of the skull to poke the brass rod into and to shape the back of the skull.

It (the skull) is a bit too eye-catchy, but hey - it's done!

Both designs on the flag are inspired by images in the Warhammer Armies book (I asked ladykito about her banner).

Eye on the shield to fit in with the champions.

Group shot again 🙂

And now onto the promised ogre from last month! 👇

I think this ogre regiment is becoming one of my favourites! 👇

And then I also added two bases of snotlings. Every O&G army has them!

Sooo, that's all the planned minis. Now onto some extras, and I have this rushed timestamp pic where most of them are backwards...

Here's the git I was most excited to paint. Such a classy classic.

I did chicken out of adding any checks, dags or flames...

Here he is, doing what he does best - adding insult to injury...

I changed the rim colour of Grom's base to fit back in with the army 🙂

Then onto the squigs, and herders!

And their squigs. I did a classic thing of not checking my already painted squig hoppers from the last OWAC, so these squigs have purple lips

And yes, I know there's four squigs, when herders can only herd three, but hopefully I can rustle up a few more for June 🙂

Last but not least, some mushroom fuelled majiks from this night goblin shaman 👇

Basecoat // All over wash // Highlight

Aaaaand that's it for May!

Only thing left is the links back through and the points check for the month.

Intro: link

January: Rank and File - link

February: Rank and File - link

March: Rank and File - link

April: Leaders - link

May:

93.5...   17 x Orc Boyz

53...      1 x Orc Boss

11...      1 x Orc Musician

11...      1 x Orc Standard

40...      1 x Ogre

15...      1 x Night Goblin boss (that's the finger flasher)

30...      2 x Snotling bases

8...        1 x Squig Herders

80...      4 x Squigs

28...      1 x Night Goblin Shaman

Total: 369.5

So the plan for next month - the FINAL MONTH, is to make some terrain. I have some of the recent Old World plastic fences, some more of the K&M trees to base, and fingers crossed a paper building from the pages of White Dwarf. I have already painted some animals from Warlord (link) with which to populate the landscape 🙂

See you then! 💚

Jaakko and Rugluk - Rank & File month #1

The warband crested the ridge at dawn, tired, hungry, and down to numbers Rugluk could count without taking his boots off.

Smoke rose from the valley below.

Rugluk narrowed his eyes. “Dat’s a camp.”

Hope stirred. Maybe a tribe. Maybe deserters. Maybe lads wot hadn’t heard about the whole “failed siege, mutiny, near-death” business.

They marched down, weapons ready.

They stumbled into a circle of snotligs arguing with a cooking pot. One snotling kicked the pot. Another tried to wear it. The only weapon in sight was a spoon. Bent.

Rugluk stared.

“…Dis is wot fate sends me?”

One of his orcs scratched his head. “Dey’s enthusiastic, boss.”

A snotling looked up, saw Rugluk, and pointed. “Oi! Big un! You 'now how ta make stew?”

Rugluk’s eye twitched.

They heard loud noises and the ground shook.

THUD.
THUD.

Two trolls stood behind the snotling mob, blank-faced, drooling, watching the fire with empty eyes.

One sniffed a snotling.

Rugluk’s grin spread slow and mean.

“You two - you’re hired.”

Hello again! This is one of my favourite stages of the challenge. The first month of OWAC is behind us, and the first batches of painted miniatures are starting to emerge before our eyes. Last season, I focused a lot on the core of the army to meet the minimum requirements in the Warhammer Armies army list. That meant many large units and a lot of batch painting. This year, I hope to add some spice to the mix.

I decided to start the challenge with snotling bases and trolls. I caught a nasty flu and didn’t achieve quite as much as I would have liked, but I’m really happy with these guys. I managed to paint five bases of snotlings (with 28 snotlings) and two trolls. A third troll is nearly finished and will join the force at a later stage.

Enough talking, let's move on.

These little guys are full of character, and I really loved painting them. I hope to paint more at some point, and I have enough of them to fill a few more bases and man another pump wagon. But, they are also tiny, and the bases are quite crowded, so I don’t mind moving on to something else for a little while.

Painting the trolls was also a lot of fun. Trolls from different eras have one thing in common: they are all amazing sculpts.

This month in points:

And that's it for the month. See you later!

Tom's Orcs and Goblins WILDCARD!

This month's models

Soooooo.... June.

All my army list is painted, plus some extras along the way (the Arrer Boys and Snotlings for example).

The pressure is off, and this month is the Wildcard!

I've a long term goal to paint the contents of the WFB 4th ed, (or is it 5th? I always get confused) box set. Anyway, this one 👇

I'd like to paint the cardboard standees' metal equivalent too, and on that note here's a quick timestamp pic I took before painting the Wyvern! 

I've yet to paint the shaman model I'm afraid, so here's just the wyvern with a bit of colour on him.

Everything is pinned, except one wing which I couldn't separate from the body due to the previous eBay owners glue. Milliput used (poorly) to fill some gaps. I know there's some errant paint blotches - that red around the scales by the horns for example, but he's done enough for me!

The base is an old Rackham one I found in by bitzbox. It's slightly thicker and taller than the GW ones.

The scales and wings are contrast paint and drybrushed, everything else painted as usual.

Eventually I imagine the weight all on one leg like that will bend the wyvern. At a later date I will add a pin from the base to the belly to brace it - in the motivation to paint it I forgot that this would be a Thing. I've no plans to hide the pin, I'll just paint it black.

There's a cardboard house that came in the WFB box, so here's one I made for this OWAC wildcard month, following the instructions given on pg59 of WHITE DWARF185. 

Whilst not the most orcish, it certainly fits the oldhammer vibe! I remember making this back in the day, although I never had the balsa wood coffee stirrers so I just used cereal cardboard for everything. I remember it looking terrible, and I never painted it.

Anyway.

A little timestamp using the OWAC rock lobba crew...

And another angle...

I used Gorilla Wood Glue, coffee stirrer sticks, card from a pack of cereal Wheat Biscuits, and some foam board I had left over from the a display board I made for my orks from OWAC 2022, (pics of that  included here cos who doesn't like a pic?!) 👇

Ahem... Anyhow, the base for the house is a material called hardboard (3mm), with sand glued on top for grass 👇

The coffee stirrers were trimmed a bit all round with a hobby knife, to imitate wooden beams. I've made a bit of a boo with the wooden lean-to, as there's no door on it 😂

The worst part was individually cutting out and shaping the tiles....

The doorless outhouse 👇

But in the end, I think individual tiles were worth the extra effort. Even if some of them are as big as paving slabs!

Before painting, I covered it all in Modgepodge, so that the topcoat of paint should sit evenly on all the surfaces and not soak into the wood, or 'float' on the smooth surface of the foamboard. Everything was then undercoated in two coats of crafting poster paint black - I was too nervous to use the spraycan!.

I didn't anticipate that the poster paint that I used to undercoat would rub off, and reactivate with the water when applying the rest of the paint. 

It wasn't too bad, but I will reapply a modgepodge coat to seal off the undercoat from the topcoat on the next one.

I kinda like this random square of grass where a model might go👇. Or a barrel, if I ever paint one for it! You can see where the paint rubbed off on the wooden lean-to, but I can live with it...

I really like this crack 👇. Made with the hobby knife directly into the wall. The foamboard really does facilitate this well.

The windows are just painted quite crudely on, but I'm super happy with how they came out

I added a brush on varnish - the same I use for the models (vallejo premium colour, satin).

And then, rather than build the stone tower, I went for another classic - the townhouse from WHITE DWARF 131, pg45, which I built alongside the cottage.

Even more tiles! I made these purposefully smaller this time round🙄.

Here's the build, still drying in it's coat of modgepodge 👇

Different chimney though 👇

I also cut out a piece of cereal card to box in the foamboard chimney so that it is the same texture all the way round. On the other house, you can see the difference between the foam side and the board side quite easily.

I've left the sand off for now, and I aim to add it after painting the house. It'll stop me from splodging paint on the sand which sometimes shows through the green paint for the grass..

And here it is. 👇 

I kinda know that it took roughly 3.5 hours to paint, including drying time... Most of that was probably the tiling 😂😭

I've also neglected to have any downstairs windows!

It's a bit rushed - certainly I prefer the other, more basic, house for build and paint - but this is an iconic house anyhow and I'm stoked to have it done!

The other cracks are painted on, using a new paint for me - Citadel Contrast Ratling Grime.

Here's a side by side 👇. AS i've said, I do prefer the shorter, simpler house, but it did take a lot longer to paint.

I probably won't make another cottage, but there's still that tower to build. That's for after the Challenge though 🙂

(If you'd like your own blueprints to make these, then the White Dwarf - Through the Years 1977-2014 (Issues 0001-409) Facebook group has an excellent Files section where you can download the relevant White Dwarf pages). 

To round off my models, I've painted one more base of snotlings, to take the total to four bases. 

I'm sure I was sold these snotlings years ago, very cheaply, and the condition was that I paint them as part of an OWAC - which I'm now very happy to say that I have done!

And the unit of 4 all together 👇

What's a collective noun for snotlings? A bogey? 

So, this month, I had a nice cabinet delivered so that I could use it to store some hobby stuff in the front room... And it came packed with a load of this extra thick cardboard! 👇

Only one thing to do, and that's to have a look at making a display board!

First I arranged out the models out to see if they'd fit, and imagined a few hills in there for good measure. 

I've left some empty space for a few more units if I ever get round to it (black orcs, I'm looking at you...) 

Then cut out the hills, which turned into one big hill rather than two individual hills👇

I then tore up lots of thin paper (which came in the cabinet packing) and mixed it with wood glue and water to make a paper mache . I kept it as strips, not pulped up as I thought it would be easier to cover the holes for the first covering. 

Oh no, it warped. 

I stuck it down on another big bit of cardboard, and added a ton of books to weigh it down flat overnight

I also added a tiny bit of colour to the paper mache, then pulped it all up into a paste, using my hand, and then added another layer. It filled in any gaps, and hid all the edges of the previous strips of paper. 

Couldn't help myself but to arrange all the models out again!

Whilst it was drying, I got into the hobby zone and started basing up some trees which I brought from K&M (link). The trunk of the tree is snipped with a pair of clippers to shorten it so that it would fit flush in the base support. The trunk was then roughly painted, and the base prepped with glue and sand. This is the only pic I took, sorry!

I also made some walls using Das air dry clay, but was so in the zone I didn't take any pics excepting the one above, with the display board. Here they are - same pic, just zoomed in. 👇

(The super glue wasn't used though - only the trusty Gorilla Wood Glue). 

The bricks were individually made and pressed together, left to dry, then placed on the base and covered in two coats of thinned down wood glue for strength. 

Sand added to the base, and then the walls were undercoated a dark blue. Highlights were via drybrushing, and then a few splodges of a contrast green and brown to add a bit of interest.

A progress pic of the completed walls and nearly finished trees 

Here's a fence made from coffee stirrers 👇

I should really make a few more fences, but the motivation for terrain has left me for now.

All the Das clay walls. The sign points to Dinefwr, which is an excellent castle near where I live in Wales.

The K+M trees. I should make some more and put them on a bigger base, but that's for another day.👇

All the terrain! 👇

....

Ahhhh. 

In the end I did find some time and motivation to complete the wyvern! 

I initially couldn't find the seat for the shaman, so I painted him first in the hope that I could find it in time which eventually I did. 

I pinned the back rest to the seat, then drilled through the seat to be able to pin the shaman on it later. 

Then placed the seat on the wyvern and drilled through the hole I had already made in the seat so that I could get the holes all aligned.  

And here he is in all his glory!

He sits a little wonky, but I can live with that!

I especially like the lil' face on the back of the seat.

Also, I'm sure the wooden banner poles there on the back, should extend out into the seat, but...well - they don't on mine! Maybe it's a previous owner mod, but I couldn't see anything on the model before painting that would have suggested this.

Anyway, I'm really happy, again, with how this model has come out!

Here's some more pics, but this time with some added banners. They're made from regular plain paper, doubled over for a bit of thickness, and stiffened with wood glue.

(There's a slim chance that I'll paint the rim of the Shaman's belly plate, red - to match the one on the wyvern...)

Here's a few great old models that I painted up today (24th June) in a burst of motivations! No timestamp though 👇

I do have another one somewhere to paint up, but for now I need to add the completing elements to the already painted models (banners and shields). Knowing me, they'll either be done for the Wrap Up next month, or not at all...

Anyhow, here's the black orcs that I managed to paint (including the tester). I love the model, I kinda liked painting them too - but for some reason I am super drained of any mojo to ACTUALLY paint more😭

I think they'll look fantastic when I finally get the unit of 15 finished

And, that's about it for the end of the month and my Wildcard!

A band of Slayers defend their lunch 

Full army shots, and undoubtedly some more like this ☝️, next month in the Wrap Up!

Until then, here's the usual breakdown and links back:

Intro: link

January: Rank and File #1 - link

February: Rank and File #2 - link

March: Leaders - link

April: Rank and File #3 - link

May: Rank and file #4 - link

June: Wildcard.

15...           1 x Snotling Base

57+180...   1 x Orc Shaman on Wyvern

75...           2 x Squig Hopper

45...           5 x Black Orcs

FREE...      lots x Terrain

Total: 347

Actual terrors