Orctober fest

 

Since this month's subject for the Bits and Bobs Challenge is 'Heroes' I have a bit of space to complete some extra 'rank and file' for last month as well. It's orctober, I need to do orcs, they're not really heroic now are they? :D

These are all Bob Olley Mountain Orcs currently available from SHQ Miniatures (except the armoured guy at the centre of the top image, he's RPE) and are joining the bunch I have already painted for my non-green orc army. They're pretty big chaps, I have half a mind to count them as ogres.

These were a late addition to the army as I picked them up in a cheap ebay lot and they have lounged around at the back of the shelf for two years whilst I waited for the impulse to get back to finishing the army. They're all open-handed sculpts and came with a selection of weapons so I was able to bend arms and give them different equipment for variety. Sticking with the same basic colours as the rest of the army and trying to keep them very muted.

I've also added to the ranks of the goblins in the army. The unit has a kind of hobgoblin/Mongolian vibe so these Giaks fit nicely.

Most are Citadel Giaks, one of each, with the same red eye iconography as the previous models. These are such lovely models to paint. The poses feel really natural despite the limitations of two-part mould metal casting and the character and detail in the faces is wonderful.

These three are a pair of more recent Giaks (from Minifigs) and a Grom's Goblin Guard whose equipment and face blend in perfectly. This little chap was a gift from a generous BOYLer, I forget who but thank you!

Orctober fest

Bob-a-job month

 

September has been "Paint A Bob" month on the Oldhammer Community Facebook page, or, as I like to call it "Bob-A-Job Month" (non-UK followers, this was a term used by Boy Scouts who used to have a "bob-a-job week" where they would do odd jobs for people and be paid £1 (1 bob) per job. I think inflation may have changed that now!). This is the second in a series of contests painting a model by a particular sculptor and then having the competition judged by the sculptor in question. The last one was "Make a Trish", this time it was the turn of Mr Bob Olley, undoubtedly the Marmite of the miniature sculpting world!

 

Look at this meanie, he's gonna mess you up.

 

 

It's hard not to spot a Bob Olley sculpt; the big head, the wealth of texture, the deviation from 'canon'... Bob certainly produces some unique creations.  I will confess I was not a fan of them, until I painted one. I have a general rule for what qualifies a good sculpt, one which I try to go by when pushing putty. That is: if you can't produce a decent tabletop-level result with a combination of base coat, wash and drybrush it is not a good gaming model. Anything with too many flat surfaces that requires expert-level blending and freehand work is fine for those painting at display level, but unless you are a master it will look terrible on the table.

 

Bob's black orcs. I used to have a couple of these guys but I didn't like them and gave them away. What a fool I was!

 

 

Start painting a Bob and it will be clear he has a similar policy.

These are perfect sculpts for the pre-airbrush era where artists' inks are king. Put a drop of ink on a Bob Olley sculpt and all manner of strange and wonderful details will start to appear. Stuff you'd never notice from a catalogue page or bare metal miniatures is suddenly brought to vivid life. Put simply, to an average painter Bob Olley sculpts are pure gold, they'll make you look like a master with so little effort! I'm sure an amazing painter would bring our further magic from all those intricate bits.

 

Olley's Armies Scrunts- the biggest dwarves you will ever own!

 

 

A couple of years back I picked up a bunch of Essex undead cavalry for Bob's superb horses (that's another thing Bob does brilliantly- animals. Just look at his wonderful ork kangaroo!). Unfortunately the skeletons are one of the things I still can't bring myself to love, their big heads just don't fit with anything else I have in my undead army, but the horses are magic (and I'm pleased to see they now sell them separately). At the same time I picked up some gnarled old wizards and my first Bob-a-job entry is one of these.

 

 

His robe made me think Plains Indian so I've tried to up the shamanic elements as he summons his snakey servants. As someone who is petrified of snakes I was grateful for Bob's cartoony take on the blighters. I have a Tim Prow snakemen on my shelf which still makes me shudder if I forget it's there and catch sight of it. Just look at the expression in the face, the fierce eyebrows, the flared nostrils, the bad teeth! None of that is me, that is all Bob.

 

Because of the classic look of the mini and theme I decided to try and emulate a 'Heroes for Wargames' kinda look to the photo. Nice soft focus (not entirely deliberate).

 



 

My second entry is a more recent sculpt. A Bob Olley ogre from Ral Partha Europe. I picked up a dozen of these ogres a few years ago (see blog post) and really wanted this shaman to go with them. Unfortunately I had not recorded what paints and inks I used to do the tartan robes, so had to guess. I now keep records of the pallet used in any group I might want to add to later on! Fortunately I think I guessed right, or close enough that he works nicely with them.

So if you're a fan of a Bob sculpt I hope you enjoy these efforts. And if you aren't a fan of Marmite, um, Bob, perhaps try painting one? They're dead cheap from Essex and RPE. You might find you like it, or you might find you don't.

Bob-a-job month

Stripping the bonies... oo er!

Well, the horde have had their nice Dettol bath. Not quite got everything off, but if there's any army ragged strips of paint hanging from the models isn't a bad thing it's with the undead! Not that many additions to the horde, 15 more plastic citadel skellies (more modern ones but they'll fit in ok), 3 cool 80s citadel skeletons, 2 4th ed undead cavalry, a 4th ed skelly command group and the black knight/mounted wight lord from Circle of Blood. The wight lord I've wanted since he came out, he's brilliant. Does anyone know if his horse is a recasting of a previous Citadel one?

The astute among you may also spot a black coach in there. Not sure what I was thinking, the black coach is possibly the worst kit GW have ever made. I mean, really? A coffin-shaped hearse? It's not even well-executed. It re-uses the yolk from Arkhan the black, plastic cart/cannon wheels and the back of the coach is just open with no details whatsoever. Utterly crap. So I guess I have set myself a challenge to actually make it look half-decent. Since I have no vampires in the army and am not planning to I will also need to find a new use for it...

Added extras to the previous tally,
Budget spent so far: £144.33
Price per model so far (cavalry counts as 2 models, chariot as 3): £1.20- not including the Black Coach.

I also got a nice surprise on Friday as my Twisting Catacombs furniture finally turned up. I forgot I'd ordered a revenant/wraith with a scythe so he's going into the army, gonna look great. I've also found my Attack at Weathertop Ringwraiths which will make beautiful wraith figures. None of these are included in the above.

The guys below I would still like to add to the army. Iron Claw horses, Citadel skellies, skelly horses and a liche. If anyone can help let me know. :)

Stripping the bonies... oo er!

Citadel skellibob horde arrives

The ranks of the rank undead have grown a bit. I had a couple of good trades over the last couple of weeks.

 

The haul from two generous chaps. One load of old skeleton archers, one mish-mash of various undead bitz.

These two chariots I was expecting, but the splendid fellow through in an extra one not in any of the pictures! That's three chariots to add to the Fenryll one (once they've been stripped and fixed up a bit).

And then there's this one, the Machineries of Destruction chariot (it's much bigger than I thought it was!). Now here's a dilemma. Do I put Mr Longhorn on his actual chariot or keep him with the oxen-pulled Fernyll cart? And if the latter, who gets to ride in the machinery of destruction?

A Citadel skeleton horse. Might become the mount for the Lich Master. The Citadel horses don't have that wild look that the Essex/Iron Claw Bob Olley sculpts have so nice as they are I'd still like to get my hands on a few of the Iron Claw Death Rider horses.

And an incomplete Skull Chukka/Screaming Skull Catapult. Should be able to build something suitable for the rest of the frame. There were also bits for a dozen or so skeleton warriors and five plastic skeleton cavalry, so that takes my infantry, war machine and cavalry contingents up to decent strength.

Nice to have some of the models I had in my first army back, especially the plastic chariot which was my first buy and the skull chukka (which always fell apart when I tried to carry my miniatures to a friend's house so rarely got onto the table!). Also a treat to have the metal chariot which I used to study with great admiration in the 3rd Ed Rulebook. It was OOP before I started gaming and I never seemed to have the money to mail order one.

 

INTO THE DETTOL THEY GOOOOOOOOO......!

So added to the previous tally,
Budget spent so far: £125.63
Price per model so far (cavalry counts as 2 models, chariot as 3): £1.35

Doing pretty well. There are a few models coming which will up this and take me close to my budget- so I'm hoping to pull a bit of a cheat next month to get the outstanding models on my wish list. ;)

Citadel skellibob horde arrives

The dead begin to rise... Essex and Celtos skeleton reviews

Yesterday the first of my purchases for my Undead force arrived. As they trickle in I'll do a quick review about the figures and how they'll fit into the army as there's quite a lot of skeleton miniatures around to choose from and plenty of variation in style and size.

First up, the Essex Mounted Skeletons (Q86, 87, 88 and 89) by Bob Olley. The Essex website is not particularly helpful, with no photos of these miniatures, but fortunately they are on the lost minis wiki... well, some idea of what they look like is anyway. Since the Bob Olley Liche Master is my starting point this seemed like a good place to begin building the army, at least ensuring the skeleton horses matched. There appear to be just two horse variants, the afro horse and the spiky horse, but I'm a big fan of the style of these and I reckon a bit of careful cutting and bending will produce a lot more variation in pose. The metal is quite soft and should bend well (lots of lead in there I reckon).

The figures are what you'd probably expect from Olley skeletons. The bodies don't look overly chunky (especially compared to GW plastics) but the skulls are massive. The Liche Master has a big head, and these skulls are probably in scale with that, but they look pretty goofy. As I'm only having one 'fleshy' (the Liche Master) in the army his big head will be fine but pretty much all the other skeletons will have smaller heads so I'll probably end up chopping off these guys' heads and replacing them with the Ral Partha skulls. The Q88 skeleton (helmet, axe and shield, shown far right) is particularly horrible to my eyes, looking like an undead Genghis Khan with an ineffectual, stubby axe. I might replace the whole figure with a spare from somewhere else. On the plus side there's a good sense of movement in most of the sculpts and the detail on the bodies is nice and textural, just how I like my fantasy minis! With postage these guys worked out at just over £18 for the 4, cheaper than any other skeleton cavalry I've seen, but I would say you're mainly paying for the horses here and might want to look elsewhere for the riders.

The other package which arrived was from Brigade Models which stock the Celtos range I believed was OOP. Thanks to Dan/Xero_Fuchs for the tip off. At £12 for a pack of 12 spearmen with command you can't fault the value. In the pic above the command is top row, troopers below. You get one of each of the command models and three of each of the troopers, plus metal shields and round bases. I should say that you don't get the axe guy thrown in, he's an extra £3.50, but was so appropriate to the army theme I had to stick him on the order. All in they also cost me just over £18 with shipping, probably as good as you're going to get with metal skeletons. There's a bit of flash to scrape and trim, but they're pretty clean casts and very shiny models. I'm used to Celtos Sidhe and Humans being on the chunky side so was prepared for big bones, but they're actually slim and well proportioned. Well, about as slim as you'd want in metal anyway, comparable to the c-series Citadel skeletons. Poses are good, a bit of gentle bending should produce variation across the unit, and the detail is basic but ok. Painting them should be fast, which is something else you want for large blocks of skeletons!

Spent so far: £36.39
Price per model so far (cavalry counts as 2 models): £1.73

Ok, that's it for now. Waiting for my Mantic order to arrive. Still looking for trades/second hand purchases of RAFM skeletons, Iron Claw horses and the Dark Knight/mounted Wight from the Circle of Blood campaign (in metal) if anyone has them.

Cheers all.

The dead begin to rise... Essex and Celtos skeleton reviews