Warmaster - "Fast" Orc Tutorial

I posted this "fast" orc unit tutorial for 10mm Warmaster orcs on the Facebook Warmaster group this time last year. I get asked about it quite a lot and am told it is a pain to find on the community page so I thought it might be easier to repost here so it has a permanent home: 

The much promised “fast” Orc tutorial. It may not be fast enough for some of you, so some of you may want to cut out some highlighting stages or change/tweak a few things. 

Before we start, a word on brushes. I’m using Windsor and Newton Series 7s and I use a size 3 for almost everything except some detailing. High quality brushes hold a very fine point and at this scale the larger brush size holds more paint. More paint means less brush reloads, which means quicker “batch painting” which is essentially what you are doing for WM, even if you're just doing one or two strips.

I used PVA to attach all the strips to lolly sticks / coffee stirrers with PVA glue. It’s strong enough to hold them on the sticks but not so strong that you can’t easily remove them when ready to base.

With the PVA dry, I sprayed 3 whole units in 3 different brown undercoats. The Colours I used were: Mournfang Brown by GW, and 237 – "Desert Tan" and 29 – "Dark Earth" both by Humbrol.

I know in some countries Humbrol is hard to come by, you can easily substitute in GW “Zandri Dust” Spray for the Desert Tan. Annoyingly, since I first posted this, GW have stopped making Mournfang Brown as a spray. I had a look at the colours at Warfare on Saturday and I think that Army Painter “Fur Brown” would make a good substitute although personally I find citadel spray superior to Army Painter in holding detail.

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Please note (1) that between me doing the undercoat and actually starting painting the things my mother-in-law visited from Africa for 5 or 6 weeks. As such these were somewhat clumsily stored for several weeks under the bed, hence the flash visible in the early photos. The bad clean-ups and mould lines are my own fault.

Please note (2) that I use a dark oil wash as my first stage with thinned down artist oils. This might scare some people (especially if you don’t own any and you just saw how much they cost!) – but a thinned Citadel shade will suffice if you prefer.

STAGE ONE:

Stage One – Over the strips, with a large brush I apply a very thin wash with artist oils. I use a mixture of black and burnt umber thinned right down with turps to give me a very thin wash. Artist oils are very heavy pigment-wise so they keep their pigment while thinned down. I do one side at a time leaving them to dry flat so that the dark pigment sinks into the deepest recesses. Oil wash takes nowhere near the same time to dry as neat oils (which take days) and shouldn’t take longer than a Citadel shade to dry. To be safe, I usually do the washes the night before and start painting in earnest the next day. This stage is optional - but I use it to show my ageing eyes the detail on the strips.

STAGE TWO:

Skin - I basecoat all the orc skin. I’m using a Foundry paint trio for this (though I am only using the darkest (107A) and the lightest shade (107C) here. The colour is 107 - “Austrian Gun Ocre” which gives this lovely Oldhammer orc skin colour. All usual painting rules apply. Two thin coats are usually better than one. While painting the faces and hands I use a semi-drybrush (if that makes sense) to make sure I leave the dark oils is the eye sockets and nostrils etc. In other words I take a little of the paint of the brush with kitchen paper but not as mush as I would for real drybushing. Apply the paint by drawing the side of the brush across the face.

STAGE THREE:

Stage three – from now on I’ll just show the progress on the Mournfang brown chaps so we can focus on them. Stage three is an optional step so please leave out if you wish – but to add a bit of variety to the clothing and equipment I am adding in a couple of other dull shades. I pick out a few pouches, trousers, “tunics” and the odd shield in Citadel “Mechanicus Grey” and “Zandri Dust” – and obviously similar dull shades of yellow/khaki and grey/brown will substitute in easily. I have the Mournfang Brown out to tidy any areas where I’ve got green by accident!

STAGE FOUR:

Metalics. Speaks for itself. Weapons, handles, some bangles painted in Boltgun metal / Leadbelcher depending on how old your paints are! If there is any mail I pick this out with a drybrush.

STAGE FIVE:

The whole model gets a wash with GW Agrax Earthshade. I don’t want to faff about with a black wash for the metal and greys, green for the skin and brown for the cloth etc – so it's one brown wash and done. 

The brown gives the metal a dull Orcish feel and makes the bright green more ruddy and lived-in. It also deepens the shade of the cloth, making the grey look a bit dirty and grubby. I have a habit of leaving washed figures to dry upside down for five minutes on my cunning Humbrol upside down drying platform. I rotate them several times while they are drying to prevent pooling at the bottom of the figure. Use a dry brush to remove any paint that pools on raised surfaces

STAGE SIX:

Highlighting. For me the skin is the focal point so it’s going to get the most attention. I am going to do three quick(ish) highlights to the skin.

Firstly with the Gun Ocre light. I am using the paint thinned with water but with the side of the brush as if I was drybrushing. I want to cover most of the flesh but also leave the brown to darker green transition in the skin creases.

For the second highlight I am using GW “Krieg Khaki” Edge Paint. They call it a brown but this does perfectly well for the purpose I want. I am now highlighting the top edges of the skin. Tops of heads, shoulders etc anywhere where the light would hit. Alternatively you can use a 50/50 mix of your last highlight and white (or Ivory colour)

For the third and final stage I use the last highlight colour mixed mainly with white. With this I am going to “edge” highlight the skin. I do the this with the side of a brush and now finally I’m swapping to a smaller brush – a 1 or a 0. I only want to catch the extreme edges. Eyebrow ridge. Nose. Maybe tops of hands / fingers. I leave the skin there.

At this stage you may wish to detach the strips and glue to bases. This stops you from over-painting the backs of the front row and the fronts of the back row. I haven’t done this because I wanted to tackle the basing all in one go in a later “stage”.

STAGE SEVEN:

More quick highlights. On the brown I am going to firstly do a quick semi-drybrush with a 75 / 25 mix of Mournfang Brown and Zandri Dust. Again I want the raised areas. I also paint a wide “stripe” / “splodge” around the middle of the wooden weapon shafts and highlight the tops of the wood and shields. I doing this as quick as I can without obsessing or taking it too slowly.

Finally with the browns I use a mix of Mournfang Brown heavily lightened with Zandri Dust. I use this to “edge” the wood. The tops of wooden shafts, tops of shields and extreme raised edges of brown clothing.

I do a similar top highlight to the grey and Zandri Dust in the same way. But there’s no need to go overboard. Hopefully the green skin is going to get the most attention.

I paint in the odd shield detail in red and here and there an orcish red eye - you can edge highlight the metals with your lightest silver if you wish but don't drybrush it. You're looking for poor orc smithery or stolen weapons remember.

 

STAGE EIGHT:

Sticking to the base. My Dad used to say the modelling / Wargaming holy triumvirate was “Faces; bases; flags”. Actually. He’s not dead. He still says that at 73 years-old with his x10 magnifier on his head as he builds 1:72nd WW1 French ambulances and O-scale model railway trees. We’ve done the faces. We can save flags for another time. Now on to the bases.

Get out your fine sand and have the box open and ready. Trust me. And don’t sneeze.

I use thick Gorilla superglue gel. And I deliberately use too much on the bottom of the strips. I place the back strip as close to the back of the plastic base as possible and place the front strip as close to the back strip as possible. This is because I find that having a big gap between the ranks both looks bad and is also impractical. Also – having as much room at the front of the stand as possible allows you to do some nice basing.

Because I’ve used too much glue, when I splat them down on the stand – lots of superglue excess splurges out of the sides. I wait a few moments for the strips to glue to the stands and then I plunge into the sand (the stands, not myself). This means that unless you have OCD, there’s no need to use filler between the bases and the stand. The excess gel creates a ridge around the base of the strip and the sand covers it.

Use a scrap of paper towel to remove sand or glue that has splurged down the sides (unless you like that sort of thing).

When this is dry I use brush-on superglue (£0.99 from Wilko) to sand any gaps.

STAGE NINE:

Basing - When the glue is completely dry I paint the sand with a thinned down layer of Mournfang. I drybrush this with Zandri Dust.

DO NOT SCRIMP ON BASES! Apply a couple of tufts, tiny rocks if you like but DO NOT JUST APPLY SOME UNIFORM FLOCK TURF TO THE BASE! Don't let your hard work be ruined with a lazy base.

I used some coarse grass by woodland scenic for the other two patches of grass. Applied with superglue brush-on. And finally a little citadel “dead grass”.

I left the shield 2nd from the right blank as I will most likely paint it white and apply a home-made decal.

Remember. At this scale it's about contrast from darkest dark to lightest light. Leave subtlety to the larger scales!

FINISHING TOUCHES:

To finish off I freehanded a simple moon (or is it a sun?) design which I painted over lines I made with both black and brown fineliners. The design is copied from a (much bigger) LBM Studios decal designed for a medieval Polish knight. I used another two decals, one which I took from the new Blood Bowl set of a white eye and a second red moon face which I hand made myself and painted over.

A second unit of black orcs painted in the same way but with red weapon hafts and a home-made oldhammer decal which I have painted over.

Hope that was useful!

 

The Oldhammer Dwarf Army Part III - The Raven Company

The Raven Company have long travelled the Old World and the shores, mountains and marshes of  both Albion and Little Albion, in search of fame and fortune (mainly fortune actually) prospecting long disused mines and panning mountain streams in the most isolated and dangerous places. 

In times of need these hardy dwarfs are willing to fight in dwarf armies in return for cheese and ale, cheesy ale and cider-soaked pipeweed, and as such are rugged, grumbling veterans of many battles. The colours of the unit are red and gold and most members of the Raven Company display these colours in some way, whether they be personally wealthy enough to afford a full surcoat or just on a shield or sash. The red represents the blood of fallen comrades and the gold represents the elusive fortune they seek.

The leader of the Raven Company is one-eyed, one-legged "Lucky" Longjonnsen Syllvar.

Longjonnsen lost his left leg when he was attacked in his bed by a jealous love rival who mistook his leg for his legendarily proportioned "Long Johnson".  His adversary severed his leg with an axe. 

The ensuing single combat was not witnessed by any dwarf, but according to Syllvar he was unarmed and beat his axe-wielding assailant to death with his Long Johnson before using it to fix a tourniquet around his thigh to prevent death by blood-loss from his severed leg.

"Lucky Longjonnsen" claims he lost his eye in a fist-fight with a giant, but rumours abound that he was hit in the eye by a troll's toenail clipping while he was hiding in a cave.

The ravages of time have not been kind to Longjonnsen, it is said that even before age and facial battle-scars took their toll, that Syllvar already had a face that looked like two-old hands wringing out a damp cloth. In tribute to their very-nearly, almost legendary leader - many troopers choose to paint or sculpt their shields with grotesque faces. This had led to them being occasionally known as "The Ugly- Faced Boys."

The more observant of you will have noticed something about the stats on the playsheet above. Give yourself a second or two and I'll see you in the next paragraph.

Yep - you've got it. I twatted up the Strength and Initiative stats which should read "3" and "2" respectively. The playsheet itself is in Excel so I had the worksheets set up so that I could pull through the stats from a master sheet just by specifying "warrior"; "+2 shock elite"; "Lvl 10 hero" etc. and the card would pull through the points value based on the number of troops in the unit, the equipment and the champion value.

Unfortuantely, while rushing to get these ready for BOYL 2017 I seem to have used a function not normally used in Excel called a "V-COCKUP". Several of my playsheets (seemingly the ones for ordinary warriors) are incorrect. I seem to have mislaid the file in my laptop but I promise to find and correct these as soon as I can. Yes. I am a colossal pillock.

 

Unit shot(s) of the Raven Company 

I know that people get annoyed when I complain about the quality of my own painting, but in the case of these chaps I was somewhat rushing to get these done for my first game of third in a long time back in maybe 2015 or 2016. As such many of them are somewhat rushed and as I photographed them I notice little unfinished bits and pieces on them which annoy me. I just haven't brought myself to sacrifice otherwise scant hobby time to spend a few hours finishing these up.

These first five include the command and two troopers. Longjonssen Syllvar is obviously "Owd" Tom Thyksson from the Bugman's Rangers Regiments of Renown box. I have a spare of this guy and haven't decided yet whether to add Owd Tom to my Rangers which are currently half-completed on my workbench. The banner is a decal applied to tomato paste tube. This one has been cut from a larger Little Big Men Studios banner and then painted over using the raven decal as a guide. The bearer is a marauder spearman that I had a double (or triple) of which I have added in an extension to the spear to allow a larger banner. The musician is one of my favourite models and I may move him into another regiment as I added him to the Raven Company just because I wanted to paint him. I have a hornblower (not pictured) who bears the red and gold of the regiment who I will draft in once this chap has a unit of this own. The other two models are a slayer ("berserker") in chainmail and a converted adventurer. The lantern this chap came with was damaged so I replaced it with the head of a 15mm "Hordes of Things" ogre or giant.

A rear view showing the shields. Longjonssen has an old Citadel metal shield; the adventurer with goblin head has a shield from Bood Miniatures; the standard bearer has a more modern plastic shield that fitted in with the narrative of "The Ugly-Faced Boys"

The next five are from the Perrys' adventurers and imperial dwarf ranges with the chap in the middle being an alternative model from the ME33 LOTR range.

 

The shields are left to right: another Citadel "ugly-face", a "paintbrush-enhanced" LBM decal on a classic Citadel plastic shield. I cut the boss off an Essex metal shield to cover the hole. The ME33 has a simple design painted on an Essex metal shield. The next complex design is another LBM decal applied to another Essex metal shield. The observant will notice that he has a replacement axe. This is from my bitz box and probably Essex again. I got this mini for abouot £0.70 because it was damaged. The last chap is again carrying an Essex metal shield, the kite design I use quite a lot. The design is a LBM decal.

Four more Perrys and one Marauder. Part of the narrative of this unit is that they are part-time warriors and part-time prospectors and miners - hence I have tried to get at least half of them lugging their adventurers packs around and am happy to have a few troopers rocking weapons like this chap with the grappling hook!

 

I'm not one-hundred percent sure but I think the shield on the far left came from the dwarf in Advanced Heroquest. I remember having the model but sold him because he was plastic and probably kept the shield. The next chap has another Citadel "ugly-face" shield. It's not to everyone's taste but when I first got fantasy minis in 1986 and was painting them with my dad he was not constrained by fluff that suggested that dwarfs had to have a certain kind of shield. I wanted to reflect that unconstrained fantasy philosophy in one unit of my army and this is why its part of this regiment's story. The two shields on the right are yet another Essex kite with a simple, free-handed design and what I think is a Marauder plastic shield.

Some of the last five are to some extent slightly unfinished. They still look fine in the regiment but I will get around to finishing things like the guy on the far left's axe and backpacks.

The middle shield is I think from the Warhammer Regiments plastics box and the shield either side is another Essex metal. I think these came with javelins which I removed with cutters.

I love the fact that this guy is missing the ring-finger on his right hand. In this unit this berserker has probably bitten off his own finger to remove a wedding ring due to some unbroken vow!

That's all for the Raven Company. Next up we'll probably take a look at the Artillery and some of the baggage train.

Cheers x

   

Lost Dogs - Warning, this interlude may contain traces of plastic.

It just so happens that the other day I was smiling to myself that my youthful attempt at painting an ogre was on Stuff of Legends alongside some much better ogres painted by buddy Darkblade.

As I mentioned in a previous post, a few years ago I decided to sell off most of my (non-dwarf) collection of Oldhammer goodness. I had a rifle through some old, backed-up files on a hard-drive and found some of the pics I used to sell some items on Ebay.

It was kind of nice to look at these and had a little "seller's regret" - I make myself feel better by hoping that these guys have found an owner that games them more than I used to, even if they are stripped now. Maybe someone that owns one of these models is reading this or is on the Oldhammer group!

Five "Brets" - by Essex Miniatures

These were a combined effort between me and the old man. He used to own a beautiful medieval army by Essex which has "disappeared" - which probably means they've been thrown away to make room for more model trains. I found these guys which he'd done in enamels and rebased them and highlighted with acrylics. I think they came out ok. Dad free-handed all the heraldry around 30 years ago.

 

Dad was decent at doing the patterns and spirals on the lances. Was never good at that myself!

Another Bret, this time a Citadel one! I must have painted this around 20 years ago as I recognise the Humbrol colours!

Some wardancers, again painted probably 20-years ago from the Humbrol colours.

 This ogre is one I wished I hadn't sold. Lovely Jes Goodwin sculpt and I was quite happy with the paint job. Paint was touched-up a little before I sold him.

"Maggott from Ruglud's Armoured Orcs (The Spike Can Commandos). Not sure why but I painted this regiment in "Orc brown". Was quite refreshing to have a yellow/brown orc, but I suspect he's been repainted now wherever he and his comrades are now!

Not my finest moment but a nice, green Zoat! I know from experience that this has been washed with Windsor and Newton ink. Either the one with the apple or the frog on the bottle! The metallic paint on the axe is the absolutely dreadful original Citadel "Chainmail". I often think that people that reminisce  fondly about the original Citadel paint just don't remember how awful it was.

Ridiculously I gave away a crate of RT stuff to a friend for his gaming club. I didn't paint many Marines, Guard, Eldar or Space Orks - and here is the only one I have a photo of (I think).

I had a lot of dwarf pike dudes, so I sold these six. Complete with obligatory late 80s Streety STAREY eyes.

A frankly dreadful Skarloc. Possibly the first miniature I did in Citadel paints with an old fashioned miliput base!

PLASTIC WARNING:

I didn't ask for it but after I gave a shit-load of RT stuff to my friend they gave me the contents of two boxes of one the newer WFB box sets (Battle of Skull Pass maybe??)

Plastic is for the most part no good to me so I sold it on. However I did paint and sell this as I had a plastic base that it fitted on OK. It was fairly good practice for painting models with little detail on, and no...there really was no getting rid of those mould lines.

What No ACW?

Don't be silly. Amongst the lost dogs I found these pics of my first ever wargames soldiers. Tabletop Miniatures now available from Alternative Armies

They have that old Minifigs old-fashioned style and these will always have a special place in my old wargaming heart!

 Well a fairly self-indulgent trip down memory lane. Thanks for putting up with it. Back to the dwarf army in the next post I promise.

"I have been chosen! Farewell my friends, I go on to a better place!"