Morgoth's Horde

 

Benchmark post #2: Orcs

This is the Orcish half of the Middle Earth's First Age project. The orcs tend to paint up faster and I'm not doing much in the way of conversion to them. However, I need to paint about three times as many Orcish troops as I do Elves to keep up with the point values.

Sidenote about Oathmark and my opinion on Orcs: Oathmark differentiates between Orcs and Goblins. Its mostly a performance difference, which kind of falls in line with my feelings about the Orcish folks as a whole. I donI've always felt that the terms used, Goblin, Orc, and Uruk Hai, are just different names for basically the same creatures but are more indicative of their prowess and abilities. Goblins would be equal to Militia type troops, Orcs are the Regular army and the Uruks are your Huscarl types. 

This is what I have completed at this time.

The bulk of the army is made up of Goblin Foot. These are the Oathmark plastic Goblins. Apologies for the sub par image. I have 30 or so of these done with a goal of eventually doubling that 60 goblins arrayed in three units of 20. The only change I made on these from the plastic kit was changing out the various shields from the kit for some more regimented round shields.

Orc Archers. These are from the old Grenadier Fantasy Warriors line and were sculpted by Mark Copplestone. Great figures and I'm really glad they are still around.

Copplestone Orc Blades.

These are my Uruk Hai. These are 15mm armored trolls from Khurasan Miniatures. 

A unit of Goblin Warg Rider Scouts. I used the Oathmark plastic riders here but mounted them on to Games Workshop's Middle Earth Fell Wargs.

Here are the heavier Warg Riders. Again I used the Oathmark riders but mounted them on to the GW Fenrisian Wolves.

This is Gothmog, my lord of Balrogs. I used a Fire Giant from the Norse themed board game Blood Rage. I added the whip using some wire and green stuff.

Here's the whole bunch for a group shot. With the Balrog this is about 1400 points. So we're staying pretty even with the Elves for now.

Spears for Fingolfin

A year ago, or maybe a bit more, I did started a small First Age of Middle Earth project with the intent of making an Elf warband as well as an Orc warband for skirmish gaming using Dragon Rampant or some similar rules.

With all the extra personal time I've had due to the current situation I expanded that project into a true army raising for the much larger scale Oathmark and perhaps To the Strongest rule sets. So I'm back to work converting and painting Elves and orcs with the goal of making a 5000 point value army, in Oathmark terms, of each.

Below are pictures of what I started with and have accomplished recently.

Elves

A unit of  archers. Converted from Tanatus miniatures Saxons with Elf heads from White Knight Productions.

Three small, 10 figure units of spears. The goal is to expand these to one 20 figure unit and two 15 figure units.  These like the archers were converted from Tanatus miniatures Saxons and White Knite heads.

Elven knights. I used Aventine Miniatures Alan Horsemen here and mounted them on Perry War of the Roses Agincourt horses.

Here is the host as it stands now at a point value of about 1350 points. Elves are far more expensive point wise than orcs so the figure count for this army will be considerably smaller than that of the Orc horde as we'll see in my next post where I detail the Orcs and their progress to date.