26 February 2018

Orc archers 1

He was sitting with his back to a great tree, as if he was resting. But Aragorn saw that he was pierced with many black-feathered arrows; his sword was still in his hand, but it was broken near the hilt; his horn cloven in two was at his side. Many Orcs lay slain, piled all about him and at his feet.

One of the arguments I regularly trot out to the incomparable Mrs Rab about why I'm painting "horrible, ugly monsters" is that without such horrible, ugly monsters, how are the heroes to prove themselves? Tolkien (of whom she is sensibly an admirer) understood this and so, while he further understood that the worst monsters could be apparently fair or only temporarily wicked (Boromir himself...), I picked half a dozen older Citadel orcs as the next victims of my brush, of whom the first three are now complete.




I haven't decided on a shield design yet, but it will involve red... Once all six are done I have a unit of scouts for my evil horde for Dragon Rampant as well as encounters for dungeoneering.

These three (and the three to follow), like the adventurers of last month, come from the Shelf of Shame of undercoated or part-started and abandoned miniatures that sits above my painting desk as a constant reproach to my butterfly attention span.


These are those parts of my started horde that I still expect to do "soon" and haven't been packed away for another day. I reckon it's doable to clear the Shelf of Shame this year if I can keep this pace up of nearly two miniatures completed a week.

Perhaps!

6 comments:

  1. I like the orcs very much and my pile of unpaintedness is bigger than yours

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    1. Thanks Phil. This is just the "fairly recently started and then abandoned pile", the true hoard is... more extensive...

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    1. Thanks Neil, I've found I'm really happy with how the Foundry "Moss" triad gives a suitably (imo) Tolkienesque sallow skin tone for orcs.

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  3. Great figures, I’ve always like this line. There is a great set of crossbow figures for the same time period as well. And I’ll bet my lead pile is bigger than both of your combined!

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    1. Thanks Kcam - and I have no doubt; I'm in many ways a mere dilettante when it comes to collecting... but I do like to have some semblance of order, and I hate leaving things unfinished!

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