So anyway, a combination of life factors combined to completely torpedo my grand idea of getting a couple of small armies painted on my break.  I got as far as clearing off all of the half-painted figures off the painting desk. Despite this, a combination of painting burnout, work stresses, exhaustion, friends and late nights (and the smashed mornings that they lead to), spring cleaning, more spring cleaning, a new bike and riding along the river in spring, getting sick for a few days and the releases of Grand Theft Auto V and Grand Theft Auto Online all conspired to me not doing a damned thing on this until the last day or two of my break. When I cleaned, heat-straightened and assembled six Mantic ogres. I suppose, I did also ring up GW and ask them if they could help me with the bits that were broken when I opened up my IoB box for the Elves. I should be receiving those replacement parts later today.

When I was painting those Wardancers a few posts ago, I decided to pick up some more, and try to get a bunch of the figures that I’d never owned. This in turn led to picking up a bunch of old-school High Elves and a few Dark Elves as well.  What got me started and motivated for this thing about a month ago was looking at all these High Elf figures I’d been buying off eBay. I’d always kinda liked the models, and had a small stockpile (a small army’s worth) from days gone by.  I’ve also had an idea for an Army scheme to use with them for close to 7 years now, excepting the fact that I hadn’t actually painted any of them.

The Ogres were kind of an afterthought, based on the fact that many of my choices from the Mantic Kings of War Kickstarter got changed to Ogres when photo reveals turned out to show us that things like those awesome looking trolls:

instead ended up being misshapen lumps of shit with little to no relationship to the original art which was the basis of people like me throwing money at our monitors:

So anyway, my wife and I ended up shelving the planned Troll horde of Mordor for the various LotR games, and instead got the next best thing (and something that turned out quite decently) – Ogres.

So now, with a shitload of Ogres incoming, and a period of discovery showing that I had quite a few old-school Citadel Ogres painted up from years ago, I worked out roughly what I had, give him the caveat that I didn’t want any goblins/gnoblar proxies and sent the list off to JudgeDoug, and in reply I got three army lists for KoW – 600, 1200 and 2000points, which it turns out, I can put together with just a little effort. Old-School Warhammer/Oldhammer devotees may or may not have much of an interest in Kings of War, but I’m sure will like the old-school Citadel Ogres.

Anyway, this blog is nothing without pictures, so here goes:

600-point Ogre Army
only 13 models!

115 Ogre Warriors Troop
[3x Ogres] solid unit

The two fellows on the ends are Bob Olley sculpts. While Bob is in many ways one of those Vegemite (or Marmite) sculptors (you’ll love him or hate him) his Ogres manage to be pretty well liked by most people. And with good reason, as they’re excellent sculpts that still stand up extremely well today. This pair were painted pretty much when they were released, so aside from rebasing them in my current style, will be left intact. The middle Ogre I believe is a Tim Prow sculpt which was released by Grenadier or Ral Partha or the like. I cut the integral metal base off him and based him on a 40mm, painting him in the style of Empire Ogres of the day. He must be a good 10-years old as well. I may tone that bright yellow down to an ochre, but otherwise I won’t be messing with him much either. All three are certainly table-ready right now, after all!

115 Ogre Warriors Troop with Two-Handed Weapons
[3x Ogres] solid unit

Once again, three classic Citadel Ogres, painted a long, long time ago. I think these three still hold up very well today, with the exception of the horribly garish red-green-blue of the guy on the end. Even back in the day it didn’t quite work for me, so he’ll be having some paint surgery to tone that the hell down. I’m still quite happy with the other two, especially with the skinhead ogre with the bag of loot and flagon of ale. I’m also very happy with the freehand tattoos on the “woodsman” ogre. As can plainly be seen from these six figures, I always chose to paint almost all of my Ogres as individuals, with different skin tones (and where appropriate, tattoos) to go with their unique sculpts. As this ogre army expands, I’ll continue to do the same with the models that are clearly individuals, while those with a more uniform appearance, like the Mantic models, will be painted in a more “regimented” manner. Obviously these guys don’t have the crazily-oversized 2handers that the newer GW Ogre Kingdoms models or the Mantic ones have, but they’re all a more than acceptable size for 2-handers, and besides, these classic Jes Goodwin Ogres trump all other Ogre sculpts, in my opinion.

140 Ogre Shooters Troop with Heavy Crossbows
[3x Ogres] solid unit

140 Ogre Shooters Troop with Blunderbusses
[3x Ogres] solid unit

Both units of these guys are obviously, the Mantic KS Ogres, sculpted by Remy.  I’ve only built these ones so far, and clearly, they’re very WIP – but my thoughts on them.

1. They take a bit longer to assemble than the plastic GW ones, due to needing to wash them (I sometimes wash hard plastic, but not always, and it’s always fine). You will also need to immerse them in hot water to get their feet evenly flat for gluing to a base. You will need to use super glue, not plastic cement. You will also probably need to use a hairdryer to heat up 2-handed weapons (you definitely need to do so for both the crossbows and muskets) so you can get the two arms/weapons to join properly. This also means that you need to properly file/cut away the mould lines/flash before assembly. Heating the arms does allow you a fair bit more flexibility in poses though, compared to hard plastic kits. Oddly, I found I enjoyed the heating, gluing and cooling part of the model assembly.

2. I was pumped to start painting them, but I found that due to their arms and weapons crossing over their torsos, that the missile troops are annoying to paint for someone like me. I imagine the 2H weapons will also annoy me, but that I’ll be quite happy with the sword and board models, as well as any conversions I do using GW’s plastic Orc arms. This is because…

3. They’re nicely sculpted, nicely moulded models. I wish that there was more variety in heads and torsos, but that’s because I like to make larger models like ogres more individual. They are nice models, though. Detail is lovely.

4. On the missile troops, there’s no real need for GS. I did drop some liquid GS in a couple of wrist joints, and in the neck joints, but that’s largely because I reposed the arms (slightly) while heating and gluing. Otherwise they’re fine. Again, I imagine the 2H troops will be similar, and that the 1h/shield troops won’t need anything at all.

As we have something like 80 (eighty) of these Mantic models, I’m going to be giving them what I consider a good quality tabletop level of paint, but not going to town on them. The metal above has been painted with a simple layer of Vallejo Model Colour “Oily Steel” (70.865) washed with Army Painter Dark Tone (aka Badab Black). I think it’s come out bloody well, and with these guys being Ogres, I like the weather-worn, dulled look of it (which is why I used Oily Steel rather than a brighter metallic). They will also be, clearly, more uniform than the unique individuals that most of the Citadel Ogres are.

90 Ogre Army Standard on Chariot
* Mace of Crushing
[1x Ogre Banner guy on Chariot] hero/monster

No pic of this guy yet, as he’s not yet assembled. I’ve got many of the bits picked out. Mantic Chariot from the KS. Mantic Ogre torso – either the upright one or possibly the “general” one. Undecided on the head. Probably a conversion for the “reins” arm, and either a converted arm for the standard, or mounting it in some manner onto the chariot itself. Undecided on whether I’ll use the Mantic Boars, Citadel ones with metal heads, or even some other kind of beast(s). I’m pretty much still waiting on Hoard O Bitz to send out my bits order that I placed a week ago, then have it make it’s way across the Pacific to me.

Finally, a size comparison pic:

I don’t have any assembled OK models to add to this at the moment – the only assembled ones I’ve got are Ogryn conversions, and they’re still MIA from moving house right now. I’m sure there’s some other pics comparing the two elsewhere on the internets. Since I plan to use a couple of OK models in the larger versions of this army, I’ll eventually have some more comprehensive comparison shots.

 

Ogre Index:

Jes Goodwin Classic Citadel Ogres #1

Bob Olley’s Classic Citadel Ogres

Golfag’s Ogre Mercenaries

Mantic’s Ogre Shooters: Units 1 and 2.  And Based.

Mantic Ogre WIP 1 (and army concepts/some of the other ogres pre-touchup and rebasing)

Mantic Ogre WIP 2