That’s right apparently they’re the benchmark of giddiness...
The reason behind this unusual mindset is I’ve nearly finished another army project. My O&G have been a relatively quick project having really only started the bulk of it in April but are now nearing completion.
It was an army I never really thought about doing as the background fluff is totally not my thing, ‘were stupid and only want to fight, why? Just cos’. Not really something that draws me into an army. But then I realised they were really uncommon on the tournament scene which is always a big draw (my previous main armies being Dwarfs, TK and WE all of which are pretty rare) and the models were available off Ebay/trades pretty cheaply which again has a great appeal. So I decided to pick them up, doing various trades to get the starter for the style of army I wanted, so I’ve ended up with tonnes of Gobbos I probably will never put on the table now I’ve begun writing lists but that doesn’t really matter as I’ll painted them all up regardless.
I decided very early on I wanted this to be a quick, but good looking, army. The paint schemes I developed were all about churning out models at a high rate with only a few colour choices but with maximum impact. To that end I had decided the Gobbos, Orcs and Trolls would all have different skin tones but everything else would be consistent across the range. There was one small change that occurred to vary from this, I moved to using a muted purple cloth colour on the Orcs which doesn’t appear on the Gobbos who have grey. To contrast the muted and natural colours I wanted a brighter base colour and went for a reddish brown coloured base, but again with muted grass tones, I think that has helped bring out the models a little and avoid the issue of all blending into one big lump.
The first thing I started with was an utterly generic netlist army, I do this quite often for my armies for a few of reasons:
1. I don’t have to think at all about what I need to buy
2. It means if I go off the army then I’ve actually got something that I can sell which should recoup it’s cost
3. It’s usually the netlist for a reason, it should work ok on the table and from there it’s just a case of tailoring it to the play style I like.
At the time the netlist was: lots of savage orcs, big unit of gobbos, 2 doom divers, 2 rock lobbas, 2 mangler squigs and some other junk to fill the points. As is the way of things that appears to have moved along a bit in the intervening period, from what I’m hearing trolls are now a big thing, entirely unrelated to this I’d bought a load of trolls, why? Because they look awesome and are totally different from an infantry horde army, the other added bonus is it cuts down the model count quite a lot too! So I’ve ended up still sticking quite closely to the netlist, which is fine by me, just goes to show you should probably try everything out the book when building armies regardless.
The particular list I’ve been painting was for a club tournament that happens every September, the event is called forgotten Heroes, it harks back to the previous edition where pretty much everyone maxed out their allowance of lord characters and you never saw the lowly heroes. So Lords were banned (1999pts) but in 8th that didn’t prevent them, so they’re specifically banned now and the hero allowance is bumped up to 35% to still enable a reasonable selection of characters to be taken. They also play that characters get a look out sir vs spells like dwellers when in a unit.
My Army was going to be:
Orc Big Boss, Great Weapon, Obsidian Lodestone
Savage Orc Shaman – Lucky Shrunken head
Black Orc BSB, banner of discipline
38 Savage Orc Big-uns, extra hand weapons, full command
5 Wolf Riders, Musician
10 Trolls
3 x 1 Orc Boar Chariots
2 x 1 Doom Divers
1 Rock Lobba
1 Snotling Pump Wagon
1 Giant
Now anyone looking at the list will realise it’s not fully optimised but it’s designed for 1 particular thing. The characters are a delivery system, all 3 go in the savage Orcs and the combination of the lucky head and the obsidian lodestone gives a 2+ ward save vs magic and a 5+ ward vs shooting. Combine that with the T4 means that unit will usually get across the board at close to starting unit size.
Next to them are the trolls who’re using the general and BSB to ensure those leadership tests are passed LD9 with rerolls has them moving most of the time. Those two units are designed to steamroller anything put in front of them.
In order to ensure they reach their target destination I’ve got the chariots, pump wagon and wolf riders who are there purely to clear out chaff & skirmishers from around the big blocks so they are free to charge important targets. Finally the war machines can help me bombard my opponent’s line as I advance towards them to soften up anything I particularly don’t want to face.
That leaves me with the giant who is along for the ride on the basis of being painted and having some really nice anti monster ability which generally speaking the army lacks.
Not having any lord characters hurts the army a lot, it means that the general, BSB and Mage are all a bit more vulnerable than I would like, so once the trolls make combat it’s likely they’ll end up getting one good fight then probably the general will be dead if my opponents target him so the trolls become useless, but that’s a sacrifice I’ve had to make to get the LD9 into the list for the early game benefit. If lord choices were available then the Lord is ld9 base and can get protective items on him, plus the BSB can be protected too. That would use up all those points currently invested in the giant but removes a big vulnerability of the army.
As a painting project I’ve really enjoyed the O&G, the models are quite simple on the whole but have good clearly defined detail and my standard approach of basecoat, drybrush, wash has worked really well for quickly churning out a good number of models. The army also has masses of variety of options and I’ve barely event touched half of what’s in the book.
I’ve got one unit of Savage Orcs but could also have Orc Boys, Black Orcs, Orcs/Savages with bows, boarboys and savage boarboys. Then there are the squig units: squig herds, squig hoppas, mangler squigs. And then the various other gobbo options in spider riders, arachnarocs, wolf chariots, bolt throwers and then there are 3 different types of trolls should you want more variety of which I’ve just used generic ‘trolls’.
Knowing I have a solid core of an army to work with and the ability to add a load more stuff with plenty of variety means this army has massive appeal as a painting project, something I’d simply not thought about before starting it, so can see myself working on additional units for this on a fairly regular basis whenever any other project starts to get a little stale.
I started painting the army in April 2012 and I had a pretty consistent burn rate of models, peaking in June with 41 models painted, most of which aren’t in the army as they were gobbos. Surprisingly the model count of the army is actually very low, only 64 figures in 1999pts, historically I’d always considered O&G a horde army but the build I’ve come up with is very much an elite army. When I go up to 2400 I think it’s only going to increase to 80-90ish.
Anyways enough rambling on, here’s the link to my final army shot.
http://i29.photobucket.com/albums/c264/dafruk/Orcs%20and%20Goblins/8756735B-83F5-429B-B35D-8E50C048223A-5330-0000056FB39E72BE.jpg
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