Well, after putting a whole lot of time into them this weekend, and now some finishing off time today, I’ve finally finished the first 6 Ogres. Yes, they took me the better part of a month to do. I’m not fast, but in my defence, despite being pretty happy with the way they turned out, I found them an absolute bear to paint, My problems with them are twofold. Actually, threefold:

1) Too much fine detail. I really like Remy’s sculpts in general, and these guys look quite good if you can get past the Johnny Bravo proportions and knocked knees. The thing is he overdoes the tiny details, which are then shrunk down even more by the restic that Mantic use. There are WAY too damn many buckles and studs on the leather straps and such. If there were just a couple of figures, as in individuals, or commander-types then I’d have no problem here, but as rank & file, it’s just maddening to have to paint.

2) Arms across their bodies – Since these are missile troops, they have their arms across their bodies as they hold their blunderbusses and crossbows. it exacerbates the issues above and makes them far, far more painful to paint than open-armed ones like the melee models would be.

3) Not enough variety. Three torsos used and reused for the BB, Xbow, 1h&S, 2h and “hero” models that are also quite specific in their details and poses, paired with a total of 6 unique heads – only 2 of which I particularly like, and a couple that are awful. Then one set of arms each for the crossbows and blunderbusses. This is going to mean a hell of a lot of repetition. There;s also not a lot that can be done with them. I’ll be chopping topknots and trying to figure out how to apply helmets to these guys as I assemble more, though the GW OK models’ heads are a touch too large to use. Yes, the GW OK bodies are also very limited in posing, but they seem to make up for it with a large variety of arms, weapons, heads, gutplates and the like.

Let’s add one more point:

4) I need to paint another 6 of them – 3 more of each. D’oh!

I’ll be doing them next, so I can put painting Mantic’s Ogre Shooters behind me for awhile.

Anyway, enough of my bitching. At least the bright side is they turned out pretty well, so I’m happy with them in the end. I did enjoy assembling them and even needing to heat up each piece in very hot water was a bit of fun, as it allowed me to somewhat vary their arm poses slightly.

The light is a bit glarey in these photos, but it’s the best I could do today. It’s creating a bit more contrast than I’d like, but that’s life. The figures still need a couple of final things done to completely finish them. First they need to be varnished. I wanted to get the photos before the matt varnish flattens out my blending – something that always annoys me – and following that I’ll be adding some tufts (sorry Cash – I like ’em!) and then some weathering powder to dirty up their feet and blend them in with their bases a little.

I also found my Pin Vice this morning, as well as some larger bits, so I drilled out the barrels of the blunderbusses. I think I mentioned it before, but I ended up basing these on Citadel 40mm square bases for consistency in the force, which is largely made up otherwise of the classic GW models.

I’ll take some new group shots down the line when the whole 600-pt Army is finished. And then again when it bumps to 1200 and 2000pts. As you can see, these figures could be easily proxied into Warhammer Fantasy Battle if you want a different look to the Ogre Kingdoms models. Additionally, since it’s been Kings of War Week over on Beasts of War, I thought I’d throw them a link since I’m painting these Mantic Ogres for a KoW list anyway, so whoring myself out slightly is a no-harm, no-foul kinda situation in context…

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