Tag Archives: Ral Partha Europe

Ral Partha Europe – Undead Ogres (6-Month Tale of Gamers Challenge)

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Back in August last year, I put up a post reviewing the Ral Partha Europe Undead Ogres from the Das Schwarze Auge line – Undead Ogre – Axe, and Undead Ogre – Club. I’d recently picked them up and shared my experience with ordering from RPE and showed off the figures as well as the minor conversion work I did on them. I’d originally planned to take them to work, since painting bone and metal is something I can do there with limited time and a limited palette. It never actually happened, since the models were a bit too big to find a small enough carry case for them once I’d based them on their 40mm squares. So, like so many others, they sat on my desk, staring at me for months with baleful eye(sockets).

Ral Partha Europe, Das Schwarze Auge, Undead Ogres

Paint meeeeeee….

Over on Dakka, I threw together a post one night on my Plog asking if anyone wanted to join me in a “Tale of Several Gamers” type challenge to try and finish a unit per month for 6 months – and see how we do before extending it, or setting up a second one. By the next morning, there were a half-dozen people keen to come on board, and asking me when the proper thread would be started. I took this as a sign, and wrote up the “Official Post” with fairly open, flexible “rules” to get people painting, if not gaming.

Ral Partha Europe, Das Schwarze Auge, Undead Ogres

He axed me to paint him…

People just kept coming on board, and now there’s 28 people including a bunch of people I’ve never chatted to before and I’ve stopped updating the number of people in the OP. There’s not much there yet, but it did motivate me to get back on the horse with a double-challenge of both Marouda’s Undead and my own Gondor Army. I’ve even convinced Marouda to take part with the Mythological Greeks, though I’ll be contributing help to a greater or lesser extent there as well.

Ral Partha Europe, Das Schwarze Auge, Undead Ogres

The club this guy used to wield got axed.

So here they are. As a direct result of making some rules for myself in the form of the challenge, I knuckled down and finished these guys off yesterday. Mostly it was a matter of highlighting the bone, painting the shield, and finishing off the metal. Not too much, but sometimes it’s a matter of making yourself complete these things rather than an actual lot of work.

Ral Partha Europe, Das Schwarze Auge, Undead Ogres

Undead Ogres Three.

Ral Partha Europe, Das Schwarze Auge, Undead Ogres

And an old Marauder Miniatures Undead Shield comes into play.

This trio will be used in Marouda’s Undead Army for Kings of War. We’ll use the entry for Zombie Trolls, since the stats fit well enough with these big fellas. Now I owe the Gondor Army a completed unit for January!

Fake edit – after I’d written up the above text here but before I photographed my models, I found that Subedai has also just finished the very same models for his Undead Oldhammer army. For anyone interested in using these models in Oldhammer, some stats have been created on Rab’s Weekly Digest that you’re obviously welcome to use.

Ral Partha Europe – Undead Ogres Review and WIP

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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.

Das Schwarze Auge - Undead Ogres, Ral Partha Europe

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.

Das Schwarze Auge - Undead Ogres, Ral Partha Europe

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.

Das Schwarze Auge - Undead Ogres, Ral Partha Europe

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.

Das Schwarze Auge - Undead Ogres, Ral Partha Europe

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!!