I’ve tended to move away from WIP and the From the Painting Desk series of posts recently, as I’ve had a fair bit of painted stuff to show. A little while ago, I placed some first/test orders with Brigade Models and Ral Partha Europe. The long and the short of it is that both companies came through nicely, but I only got around to writing up a review of my Brigade Models experience, and got distracted before finishing my RPE review. That RPE review is still in the works, but in the meantime, I wanted to put together a smaller review of some figures I picked up pretty much as impulse purchases while buying the other stuff.

Three Das Schwarze Auge Undead Ogres, in their RPE mail order packaging.

Das Schwarze Auge – Undead Ogre – Axe, and Undead Ogre – Club. I assume these are sold by RPE under licence, as they have a fair bit of licenced product. DSA (The Dark Eye) is a German RPG of some description, and I don’t care to know any more about it. What I do care about is cool models and models that have potential for my own use, so I bought a trio of them. I’d have preferred if there were three distinct sculpts in order to make up a KoW unit, but beggars and choosers, so despite preferring the Axe sculpt, the club seemed to have more potential for simple conversion, so I got two of the club and one of the axe.

The three castings “in hand”.

Castings were reasonably clean, needing a bit of work with a scalpel to clean them up, but not bad at all. I decided to make the two clubbers distinct from one another by doing some work on both of them, to move them both ever-so-slightly away from the original sculpt in different directions. One I simply de-horned, while the other I changed the club to an Axe with the help of the head off a Mantic Ogre’s 2-handed axe, which I pinned onto the end of the cut-down club handle. To make him a little distinct from behind, I added an old Marauder Miniatures-era Undead shield to his back as well.

After conversion and basing.

Mounted on a 40mm base, and with a bit of putty to bring the base level with their integral metal bases, and some bits of slate to add interest and break up the flat area, and we’ve got a decent little unit of Undead Ogres (We’ll just proxy the Undead Troll rules) for Marouda’s Kings of War army in metal for only £15/AU$30. Not too bad for such a unit. Not as cheap/model perhaps as the UK prices for Mantic’s restic or GW’s HIPS Ogres, but still cheaper than a single Metal/Finecast Ogre from GW or even a good chunk of Reaper’s metal Ogres. And not even Reaper (who seem to make every odd thing) make Undead Ogres. Aside from this one. Who doesn’t really count for most wargaming.

Rear view, showing the shield added to make the two identical Ogres less so.

Now I just need to stay focused long enough to actually finish painting them. I’d planned to take them to work where it’s guaranteed I’d get the bone and metal done – which is how I can justify “queue-jumper” models to myself, but with the large bases added, they’re difficult to transport to work in the little cases that I favour.

Update – FINALLY PAINTED!!