Hobby Update: Orc Reinforcements

Happy Orctober? I think that's the greeting. I am not a practitioner.

Late in 2021, I hobbied up a small Orc army. It was a warband that got numerically out of hand, but hobbying it up did let me start exploring some things related to Kings of War and movement trays and to armies that could potentially be run across multiple game systems.

More detailed thoughts are still forming around these topics of trays and multi-system armies, but for now, just a quick refresh and then the update. The Orcs are from GW, so are on 32mm round bases, of which 10 can easily fit into the 125x100mm heavy infantry tray, and this was how I had last left them. This number makes it nice for inter-system play, as a lot of games deal with increments of 10, but this a little haphazard for Kings of War since there is a fair bit of extra space about in the tray. Using a 3d printer to print some kind of a tray insert to "hold" the minis would certainly be an option, but I wanted any of these multi-system armies to try and showcase a minimal approach to help draw folks in. "Do you have minis? Well, put them into an appropriately-sized tray and you can play Kings of War!" However, I realized recently that the heavy infantry tray could fit 11 miniatures on 32mm bases. Doing so ranks up the minis much more, which leads to a better-looking army in my opinion. So that is part of what I set out to do here.

Previously I had already finished up a few extra armored orcs, intending for them to be used as infantry heroes or as ASBs, and swapping minis out of units as need to facilitate whatever I wanted to run. While that is not a bad call, it's not a great one either. Digging into the army list more, I am not likely going to want to run ASBs or infantry heroes. Fortunately, for me, I still had some extra orc minis sitting around, so I decided to make a push recently to fill up my existing units and to finish up this little army for now. 

Army shot. I could fit everything into one picture, and figured I'd go for it.

This is probably one of the more compositionally awkward shots I've taken for the blog. The little coffee table and it's fake stone is pretty "busy" as designs go... but this still captures the full army. A horde of Greatax; a horde of Young Ax; two Skulk regiments; a Moreax regiment; a Giant; a Troll Bruiser; a War Drum; and two miscellaneous hero orcs on a chariot and on a Gore. It's something like 1500 points without items or upgrades. But as you can hopefully see, having 11 miniatures per group does fill out the trays much better! The minis in the tray feel more stable as well, though that may be my imagination.

The Giant. Green, of course, though if you couldn't tell I wouldn't be offended. What a dark picture!

The giant is Krung, Hill Giant, from Reaper Miniatures. I love this manufacturer and have been buying their minis for years and years for my irl D&D games. This one was similarly purchased years and years ago, and seeing a Giant in the roster for the orcs, I figured I would do him up for fun. I added some green stuff to get the tusks, and sliced the tip of the nose off to try and emulate GW's orc snout. Overall, it works! He fills the space nicely even if he isn't amazingly tall. As a DM, I gave up on painting up all my D&D minis ages and ages ago, so it was nice to find a use for this one and I think it turned out pretty nicely.

The orcs get some supporting units!

The orc on Gore is some named character from Warhammer. Not sure which one, and I think he is incomplete? I think a shield is supposed to pop onto the hand and there looked to be something that should slot into his back as well, almost like a Japanese personal banner flag. He and his friend on the chariot are likely to be used as Krudgers, the stronger of the generic Orc fighting characters in Kings of War. The drummer was a leftover command model from the ebay purchase getting all the orcs to run as the Youngax. I added a gong and stand but the base is looking a little sparse, but I supposed I could always add another drum or something down the line. All of these were kept on square bases to help me out for Kings of War, as with the Troll and the new Giant. I figured not everything needs to pull potential double duty.

More Skulks!

Another regiment of Skulks was added. Orcs aren't known for their shooting, but I think these will be good to have around? Having lackluster units and teaching a player to evaluate their options is part of learning a game after all.  And the army lacks chaff (Orclings), so the archers might be able to function as a bit of anti-chaff and actually be useful. And the Skulks look to have gained an upgrade option for Scout and Pathfinder at some point, which makes them more interesting. The point here is, I hobbied up some Skulks. Time will tell if they are useful or not!

Orc Greatax, increased to horde-sized.

And a new regiment of Greatax makes a horde, which is likely how they will be run. The orcs do like their infantry after all, and this should give the army a good backbone unit for any introductory games. The Regiments are fine, but the trays make a horde a bit unwieldy, as each tray has lips and edges,  which gives the unit an even larger footprint. However, I have some 250mm wide bases I ordered by mistake years ago when starting Kings of War, so I should be able to use those to help measure and move things about in a game setting.

The original army was mostly ebay rescues, so I tried to have a bit of variety with the skin. I could have probably done more with the skin tones than just different base coats. More shades, more layering... but I was admittedly lazy. I can always go back and touch these up in the future.

The last things to highlight are a few of the new minis for the Youngax and Skulk units. They are wounded orcs from the Empire Archer / Huntsmen kit from old Warhammer Fantasy. Yep, I bought 3 whole kits back in the day. I painted up the archers ages ago, repainted them getting into Kings of War, but never did dioramas, nor connected with an orc player to pass these bonus minis along to, so these sat unused for honestly, probably close to a decade now. It was satisfying to find a use for these old minis as well!

And that's the Orc "army" now! Not optimized, really for any system, but a decent generic collection to have on hand for wargames. We'll see what use it gets in the future.