Adrian's Blood Bath at Orc's Drift

 

Long time, no see. 

After a long pause for a year, I'm back on track with the objective of completing yet another batch of old metal miniatures.

 

I've been thinking about how do I want to expand and round-up the orc army I am collecting and was my first entry on the OWAC. With the colours, motifs and the clan heraldry chosen is no secret that I got in mind collecting the entire Blood Bath at Orc's Drift army and after that, maybe adding some more trolls, a giant and some warmachines. 

As I doubt I will get my hands in the amazing Man Mangler in a foreseeable future and doubt if having a unit of boars and some wolves, the army lacked the last punch to get another complete run on the OWAC, which not only I love participating. It is an opportunity to complete entire projects that are sitting in the shelves unpainted. THE opportunity (don't skip a challenge if you can get here or start one with your friends, you'll notice how your projects get completed at last!).

However, the "special" rules for this year gave me the opportunity to try tinkering the other units of the campaign, with the goal of finish most of the miniatures needed. And following this year challenge, do some cool pictures that resembles the art of the old campaign book.

The (December) workbench

 

I finally got a box of Ruglud's armored orcs. Some of the most awesome orc sculpts out there. My plan is having a big blob of these fellas ranked up, going with the Kwae Karr clan heraldry.
 

They're commanded by the chieftain Magyar Ironfist. I got an old C15 orc shaman to be Bagrash that's still in the mail somewhere. I went for other miniature because the Bagrash model is superb but not so easily read as an orc shaman.

For the Vile Rune orcs I already had a lot of Harboth's archers and C15 orcs painted, so I got Fangor Gripe in my hands and a batch of C15/16 orcs with none other than Guthrum Mane. However, some of the FF orcs and Guthrum needed some repairs.

So they got their scimitar and glaive respectively repaired. Hope that the FF orc spear doesn't break because it has bent several times in the process (and already arrived bent).

Now that I had the putty out, why not repleace some of the heads in a pair of quite characterful hobgoblin and orc sculpts. 

Voilá, instead of repeated sculpts, a new orc and hobgoblin. Normally I would have reserved them for trading, but I love both of them and  think that the conversions works pretty well with the swap.

The Challenge

Now that we got the basics done, it's time to present the units for this year. More or less in the batch I'll try to paint each month bare for the leaders month which will be a mix of the campaign characters.

Brommedir's bows at Orc's drift

I dunno how many elf archers I still have. I swear that this may be the last of the lot but maybe I discover another ton of them in a box somewhere else. 14 monopose elf archers that will have a small shield in the left arm. Brommedir itself is an special, yet pretty new, metal model.

Maybe I'll proxy Brommedir with an elf captain that's also in the mail, because I almost got my hands in one but missed in the last minute.

Osrim Chardz's dwarf engineers

The opportunity to paint the last 5 of my Uther's Dragon Company dwarves and a bunch of awesome dwarf engineer or miner sculpts. The leader is none other than a Dwarf of Legend that I think it's a good proxy for Osrim, which was impossible for me to snipe one in ebay or the groups.

The Linden Way Militia

A collection of Perry Miniatures, Midlam Miniatures and oldhammer citizens (as well as some of the characters still in the same mail as their other friends and foes). I almost got the entire militia unit and all the special civilians.

Oh, and yeah, that's Beli in the mix. Hope I can also get my hands in Gymlet from the personalities at Orc's Drift.

The characters at Orc's Drift will be painted probably in the leader month. Whereas the militia and the townsfolk divided between a rank and file and the wildcard, as I hope to make the entire scenery for the campaign.

Funny thing about the humans, I almost got in my hands the original elf which is the base of Mayor Leofwine sculpt and it's a million times more easy to get. I didn't expect that at the time they crossed scultps between different races (e.g., some different types of characters or units based on the same human, but not from elf range). However, I think that'll proxy him in the future, because it is not a miniature that I like a lot.

The Kwae Karr Orcs

I will probably expand some of them in its month because I want a unit of 20 without the special characters and also to get a Kwae Karr banner without damaging the original Ruglud banner.

The Vile Rune Orcs

I love the classic C15 orcs and some of the FF range too. Led by Fangor Gripe.

Grashak Kra, the handler from the Severed Hand Orcs

Not handling pretty much at the moment. But cannot miss in a challange about the pretty ilustrations of the book.

Last but not least

King Fyar's in his winged serpent

In his wyvern. I'll try to do a conversion that allow replacing the old wyvern shaman and the original wyvern rider. I went for the amazing 4th/5th edition wyvern because it got an official recast with the made to order and it was one of my favourite monsters of all time.

Oh, and don't forget that there are spies among us. An half-orc spy, from the orcs of Midlam Miniatures.

Let's pretend that the orc army is the main one, that will be a total of 669.5 points of orcs to add to my previous army, and 30 more orcs to the horde.

Brommedir elves will be another 246 points as an unit of kith warriors with long bows and armour. Osrim and his sappers another 200 points. And the town militia probably 135 points of human villains with bare minimum. So that gives me a total of 1250.5 points following the traditional rules.

Let see how I can complete the challenge, including the pictures resembling the art from the campaign book.

PS: Mathew Sullivan from the Oldenhammer in Toronto, your army was an inspiration years ago to start this project, and your Harboth's are amazing, so I used them for the intro picture if you can read this.

Until January's update, Merry Christmass, a happy New Year aaaaand 

Adrian's out.