Halloween 2014 - Orctober Surprise

The raiders creep towards the village through the woods

The first of this years Bad Guys have rolled off the assembly line.  I ordered some figs from Caliver Books and took the opportunity to pick up a couple boxes of fantasy figures from Wargames Factory.  One of the plastic boxed sets comprises 24 Orcs.

A mixture of hand weapons and shields

These are less the GW Cartoonish Orcs, and more LOTR in nature.  (They are taller, more lean models with heads on shoulders rather than sunken into their chests)  The set includes a wide diversity of weapons and equipment which allows for extensive customization. The boxed set comes with six sprues that each include four different legs and torsos and six different heads.  One interesting innovation is that the torso pieces are designed to be reversible resulting in an exponential increase in possible configurations.  The pieces are done in hard plastic, and I had no issue with spalling or flaking after I applied the primer.

Polearm equipped raiders 

The weapons themselves are of the 'wicked blade' variety with a mixture of single handed and two handed weapons.  They are more realistic in proportion than other fantasy figures and thus appear somewhat spindly in comparison.  In total you get:

6 Halberds
6 Massive spears
12 swords (two different sculpts)
6 Swords in Scabbards
6 Hand Axes
6 Battleaxes
6 Flails
24 shields (two different sculpts)
6 Short bows

I combined these with the excess weapons from the Wargames Factory Viking and Skeleton sets, as well as some other accessories  to complete the group.

A collection of two handed weapons

For the paint scheme I wanted to emphasize the dark, muddy colors.  I went with a Black undercoat, and then did the skin with a 3:1 mix of Yellow and Matt Black to get a good drab green tone.  The armor was done with a mix of Black-Gray and Metallic tone additive to give it a black Iron look.  Most of the cloth was done in "English Uniform"  with the weapons done in NATO Tri-color Brown.  Yes, I recognize that I am using paints from 4 different manufacturers and era....

Overall, I really like the boxed set in terms of value ($22 US delivered post-free)  and variety.  Assembly time is significant with the need to cut, trim and glue Legs, torsos arms and heads separately and then add weapons.  I tried brush on modelling cement with these, and it worked mostly well.  Gel seems to form tighter bonds, but takes longer.  Some of the weapons require more super-gluing to keep them set in place.  I think plastics work wonderfully for Unit basing, but find their fragility much more noticeable when individually based.