Red goblins!

The first edition of Warhammer (before my time, but I acquired a copy at some point when I was a kid) featured several types of goblins: great goblins, night goblins and red goblins. I think there were generic goblins in the rulebook too, though they were soon dropped. Of the three main types, only the night goblins survived into later editions of Warhammer; they still seem to be going strong.

The great goblins - formerly gnolls - were very nice models, as were the night goblins. The red goblins, though, suffered from coming first. They were some of the first Citadel models, originally featuring in the Fiend Factory range, and weren't up to the same standards as the other two varieties, which were produced slightly later. They'd earlier been sold as "red orcs" and, I think, merely as "orcs" and "half-orcs" too.

An original Citadel red goblin (with cybernetic simian friend)

They did, however, get a nice John Blanche illustration in the Forces of Fantasy supplement:

I always liked the phrase "red goblins". So I decided to paint some up. I've got countless orcish odds and ends scattered around the lead pile: old plastics, ones of a kind, duplicates of miniatures that I've already painted up. I thought that red hide and black uniforms might provide a way of uniting those into a biologically diverse tribe - and getting miniatures out of boxes and onto the table.

So, here are my first two red goblins: an old Warhammer Armies orc with a night-goblin head; and a Battlemasters orc I got on eBay a few years ago. Joining them soon will be an AD&D hobgoblin, an AD&D goblin, a C15 armoured orc and even a skaven conversion (who's to say goblins can't look like beast people?).