Completed Ogre Army

For the final few units of my Kings of War Ogre army, I performed some extra conversions, as well as taking some extra care painting the unique characters.

This is a Reaper Bones Ogre Chieftain miniature. I did a bit of conversion with the club to make it into an ax, but otherwise this is the base miniature. It has excellent detail for a Bones miniature and is quite animated. The Chieftain's shield is also very "heavy metal", and gives a sinister vibe. I use this miniature as Grokagamok, a named Ogre warlord character, in Kings of War.

This is also a Reaper Bones miniature, an Ettin, or two-headed Ogre. I use it as an Ogre warlock in my army. I performed a bit of conversion with the left-hand club, adding some skulls to make it into a shamanic staff.

The next character is an army standard bearer. I did a conversion with its weapon, and replaced it with a standard from Games Workshop skeletons.

I also painted an extra horde of standard warriors. Currently, my army list doesn't need this extra unit, but I can use it for a bit more option.

With a few simple conversions, I made this horde of heavy crossbows. They are just some plastic bows and sprues added to standard warriors. Still, I think they are a decent representation of arm-mounted heavy crossbows.

The following is a full group-shot of the entire army so far. This is easily enough for a standard 2250 pt tournament army, with some options to swap around. I can't wait when the current pandemic situation ends, and we can start having games and tournaments again.

I think I will be moving on to another army now, probably back to finishing some extra units for my dwarves.

A Quick Review and More Kings of War

Since the Kings of War tournament for late March was canceled due to the pandemic situation, I had some more time to paint new additions to my Kings of War army. This also involved exploring new unit types.

A while ago, I bought into the pre-order for Oathmark Miniatures' plastic goblin wolf riders. I've always been impressed by the quality of Oathmark's castings, so I jumped at the chance of more classic Tolkienesque goblins rather than cartoonish green goblins.

I bought two boxes of these miniatures, which contain 15 goblin riders each. That's quite a sizable number for use as auxiliary units in my Ogre army.

The box consists of three goblin sprues and 5 wolf sprues. The goblins show the typical high quality casting from Oathmark, and each sprue contains enough arms for the choice of all miniatures being archers, spearmen, or swordsmen.

The close-up above shows the excellent detail of goblin faces.

However, the wolf sprues were not as impressive. Each wolf comes in two halves, but other than the manes and tails, their bodies are almost completely smooth! The lack of fur texture can be a problem during painting. It's very strange that there is such a lack of detail compared to the riders.

I painted up enough for a couple of troop units in Kings of War, with removable individual bases. When painted up, they generally look quite good. However, being spoiled by a lot of the newer plastic kits, I ignored the gaps down the front of the wolves' heads. Newer kits don't usually need greenstuff to cover up gaps like that. After painting them though, the gaps are quite obvious. Maybe I have to use some paint to try to hide them. I'll definitely remember to fill those gaps for the next ones I build.

A close-up shows that they are very nice painted up, despite some of my issues from above.

This is the second unit of them, and I will remember to fill the head gaps next time!

Aside from the goblins, I based up a couple of plastic pre-painted mammoth toys from Michael's, which will function as quick and cheap war mammoths for Ogres.

Gribblies and Suits

I went to a major sale at a local hobby shop recently, and they had some Confrontation pre-painted miniatures marked at half price. I'm not a player of any Rackham game, but some of the miniatures interested me. There was a box of "Scorpion Phemera Omega" miniatures for $15, so I bought those.
There are 8 in the box, and these creatures remind me of hormagaunts from Warhammer 40k, but in a size appropriate for 1/72 miniatures. For pre-paints these are not bad, although they have rather large bases that I may have to replace.
As you can see in this comparison, they are a decent size to go with modern 1/72 miniatures.
Another angle shows some of their detail. You can easily imagine a horde of these attacking.

I'll probably look around for more sales to buy more of these creatures. It seems appropriate for them to come in a large group.

Also, inspired by Eric at 1/72 Multiverse, I bought some reduced-price AT-43 Red Blok battlesuits from the War Store. These are nice miniatures, especially at their price of $13US for a box of 3.
This shot shows the type with a machine gun and a flame thrower next to a 1/72 scale VAB. These are meant to be powered armour in 28 mm scale, but they seem to fit nicely as battlesuits or mini-mechs in 1/72.
Another shot with one next to a Sagaie.
Two of them next to a Caesar 1/72 scale nun. They are suitably imposing compared to 1/72 scale humans, and should put a good sci-fi element into games when mixed with moderns. I may repaint these to a colour scheme more appropriate to my setting.