The Green Horde: Tork the Animal

 This week-end, I could find time to paint and take a few pictures, at last! I'm still in the mood to add figures to my Orcs army, but I also need some variety, and I have a huge pile of Rackham figures to paint, so I decided to paint one of my oldest, an Orc wizard from the Bran-o-Kor faction.

Let me introduce you Tork the Animal:

This is an initiate of the Magic of the Earth. He concentrates his power in a magical rock that he can throw at his enemies and cause considerable damage.

Though I intend to use him as part of the Green Horde, I consider him as an ally from another clan, the Orcs of Bran-o-Kor. In Confrontation's world, this Orc tribe lives in dry deserts and canyons, which explains why the bases are different from the bulk of the Horde.

Close-ups in the pictures below, where you can see Tork with a body guard, a brute warrior from the same tribe.

Hope you like him :)

More Orcs to come next month, and maybe some 1/72 figures too!

The Green Horde - A beginning

 Hi dear readers!

Today, I wish to write a post about the building of a large army of Orcs for Kings of War with 25/28mm figures. I like Fantasy universes, but when I was at school discovering D&D, there were no such things as 1/72 Fantasy figures, so we had to buy Citadel or Ral Partha figures for our role-playing games. I soon realized that Monsters of all sorts were much more attractive than heroes, paladins or white knights, and among those creatures, I had a growing sympathy for Orcs. With time, I bought several dozens of Orcs and Goblins from various manufacturers, and sometimes tried to paint them, but I really was a poor painter at that time. Then I gave this scale up and turned my painting efforts to 172...

These days, I've come back to 25/28mm because I needed a 2000 points army in a Kings of War game against my son who is using (and improving) his own Undead army, mainly composed of GW and Mantic figures. I gathered my Orcish motley crew, and was able to see that, with a few recruits, I had enough figures to accept the challenge.

Here you are the first unit (troop) of Orc warriors, and you know what ? They are based !!!

For the historians or figure encyclopedists (I know there are several among you), you can spot Citadel, Grenadier and Alternative Armies figures - I don't remember every maker. The guy on the left, first rank, is a brand new plastic figure from Warlord Games.

The rest of the army has got some painting too, but nothing is finished, as you can see below (the different colors from the previous pictures are due to the fact that I took the latter pictures late in the afternoon, with little natural light).

Some more warriors, from various manufacturers.

Some wolf riders, including a few wargs from GW: heavy cav on the left, and light on the right.

Some heavy elite warriors - figures by Rackham. I love these figures, I want to use them as much as possible.

Archers - only three are finished, but not even  their bases.

Trolls from the 1/72 Fantasy range by Dark Alliance. They're so big that you can use them in a 28mm armies without any problem.

Goblin reinforcements - A catapult and a Goblin king on his war chariot.

And last so far, an Orc chieftain named Vorak and a sorcerer - Rackham figures, once again.

 

 

I will write more posts later this year as the works progress.

Orc Mystic Warrior 1

 Hi! As the older readers of this blog already know, I sometimes paint Rackham figures (see here), that are much taller (32mm) than the usual 1/72 figures on display in these pages.

I left this range aside for years, but I started to paint some at the beginning of 2021, in order to finish at least what was already begun.

The following pictures depict an Orc from the Bran-O-Kor faction, that is Orcs that live in a hot, desertic area.

This guy is a mystic warrior, which is a sort of mage warrior. He's got blue tattoos on his arms to represent his magic powers, linked to the earth. A snake is coiled around his right arm.

His skin is of a lighter green than that of the other members of his tribe - a birthmark that indicates his predisposition for magic.

SInce I've already painted several other Rackham figures this year, you will probably see some more in the next weeks.

Hope you like him - even if he is not of the only true scale :)

Metal giant: an Orc by Rackham

Today, I wish to start a series of posts related to the Confrontation miniatures range by Rackham.
I wrote last month (see here) how I got inspired by one of the factions to convert a 1/72 mini into a Wolfen.

What I didn't explain was that I painted dozens of these minis some years ago, and I think it's time to display some of them on this blog, even if they are not 1/72.

The first mini to show is an orc warrior. In the universe of the Confrontation game, they are called the Orcs of Bran-o-kor, and they live in the borders of the Syharhalna desert where they were former slaves to the Scorpions of Dirz.

Let's have a look at him:

 I used a classical green color for this orc (that's why my 1/72 orcs are painted in another color, I wanted to change :)). His tunic is red simply because red and green are complementary colors. The base is very simple, it is meant to recall that this guy is living in a desert.

In my eyes, the Rackham minis remain the best fantasy figures ever created. They are famous for the incredible level of detail which make them more difficult to paint than others.
A closer view to the back of this warrior to illustrate this opinion:

You can see several flasks and bottles, a book, a scroll and a scary shield (there are often humoristic details in this range :)).

What do you think ? Would you be interested in seeing more of this range, or will you ask to remain in the one true scale :) ?

Hope you like this giant anyway. See you soon.

Some more info about Wolfens

In the previous post, I showed a conversion of a Wolfen in 1/72, and asked everyone to guess how I did it.
Only a few minutes later, Paul from Paul's Bods gave the right answer:
"The Body is a Caesar Orc, and the head, one of those Zombie dogs you painted a while back".
The knowledge of Paul concerning minis or history is phenomenal ! Game over :)

1. The conversion

Here are the basic elements of this simple conversion:

orc + zombie dog + green stuff

The minis, before priming:

And after:

You will note that dog head still look like the zombie he was, because at that moment, I didn't know whether I would paint a living or a zombie Wolfen, or some sort of demon... one of my future projects would be to paint a demon army inspired by the art of Wayne Barlowe... but that's another story).

I eventually made a decision, and here is the result:

2. The original Wolfens

The Wolfens are a creation by Rackham, a French miniature and games production company that was active between 1997 and 2010. Their main miniature game was Confrontation, a skirmish game in a fantasy world called Aarklash, in which several people fought and allied with one another. One of these factions are the Wolfen, giant half-wolf half-human creatures.

Here are some artworks representing Wolfens:

Artist: Paul Bonner

Artist: Paul Bonner

And some of the minis, painted by the Rackham studio:

The minis I converted are rather different from the original: they are much smaller, compared to humans figures in the same scale, they wear boots, they have no tail (I am definitely not a sculptor), they are not as dynamic... but it was fun to do, and to paint :) The only think I will change on the next one will be the painting of the eyes, because the pupil on my mini is too round and too big.

Some more photos to compare the sizes:
 

Left:1/72 man from the Redbox Landsknechts, right: converted Wolfen

Left: 32mm man of Alahan, right: Wolfen of Ilyia

If you are curious about the Rackham miniatures range and want to know more, you will find below a link to a blog that has collected many pictures of Confrontation figures, ordered by faction:

http://underthemountainblog.com/athenaeum/aarklash-archive/factions/

 Thanks for reading :)

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