ORC1 Oldhammer Warrior Orcs (1987?)

ORC1 Oldhammer Warrior Orcs (1987)

One thing about the various models that we call “Oldhammer” is when looking for them in the old catalogues, there’s an awful lot of them that just aren’t listed in various catalogues. This guy is one of those. After a bit of digging around, I found a model that this guy is a variation of – “Mannik” of the ORC1 range, as shown in the 1987 Citadel Compendium. So given the way things worked back then, it only makes sense that this model was sculpted and released alongside. It’s certainly got the weird, malformed, and horrible-to-paint face that quite a few of Kev Adams’ earlier orcs had before he refined and stuck with the orc look that has remained today through any number of Citadel’s sculptors and even games companies (hello, Blizzard!)

ORC1 Oldhammer Warrior Orcs (1987)

The interesting thing (to me) is that the model on the left was originally painted by me back in the 90’s, along with the shield of the guy on the right. Basically, a couple of years ago I found my original model rotting in a figure case, and decided to rebase him and touch him up just a little. At the same time, I started a “new” version of the same model in something closer to my current style. Except.. in fixing up the original, his orc-face shield popped off. And then various combinations of the two models and the original shield fell in and out of the black hole that apparently exists on and around my painting area, eventually resulting in the newly-painted model having the original shield glued onto it, and the old model having the newer shield glued onto it as I found them and tried to finish off both models for the final time this month.

So now they’re both finished, but truth be told – and especially sitting here looking at the images as I write this, I’m not happy with the new (our left) shield. I think the original one really aces it. I’m going to have to go in again and fix up that newer shield.

I’ll update in some form once I’ve done that…

 

Oldhammer Orc Shaman and General (1988, Kev Adams)

Oldhammer Orc Shaman and General (1988, Kev Adams)

Today as my penultimate post for June(!) we have some more proper Oldhammer. This pair of models, as the post title has already told you are an Orc Shaman and General, circa 3rd Edition Warhammer. As you may have noticed, they’re not articularly large, nor outlandish in their posing, but that’s just the way things were way back then. This pair are the two that used to lead my own Orc army, back during my WHFB period from around ’89 and into 4th edition and just a couple of games beyond that, when Herohammer put me off entirely.

Oldhammer Orc Shaman and General (1988, Kev Adams)

These two are basically “renovated” models – where some of the paint is my original work from the time, some things have been repainted (usually just toning down something garish or where a colour simply didn’t work), chips and such have been repainted, additonal highlights where needed, models rebased, and the riders finally glued down permanently instead of left separate for transport in my older cases.

Oldhammer Orc Shaman and General (1988, Kev Adams)

The Shaman has a Bob Marley-esque rasta-coloured flag, as the model has deadlocks – so what else could I reasonably do? In my updating, I also gave him the glowy eyes because he’s a magic orc! Back in thise 3rd edition games he often used necromantic magic to summon conga lines of skeletons thet broke up line of sight between the units of orcs so that they wouldn’t need to test for Animosity and start fighting amongst theselves. Ah, those were the days.. 

Oldhammer Orc Shaman and General (1988, Kev Adams)

The general doesn’t have nearly as interesting a story. His shield is from the Marauder Miniatures sprue, and while both of them originally had those banner poles that you can see in the old Stuff of Legends catalogues, there really was no proper way to attach them – especially so if you were a teenager and had to put the models into the cases we had back in the day – and not attached to their mounts, as mentioned earlier! I may have them still somewhere, in some pitz box or another. I doubt I’d add them back on, though – even if I were to find them…