"But there were some others that were horrible: man-high, but with goblin faces"

This was a very quickly painted half-orc - two hours from start to finish. I just blocked in base colours, drybrushed with silver-grey, added metals, added washes and then spent a bit more time on the face and hands.

He's one of the later range of Aly Morrison's C10 half-orcs. I prefer the earlier, solid-based ones, as they're nastier-looking. The later, slotta-based ones like this chap are more comic and loutish rather than grim and murderous like their predecessors. Still, the later range are nice, characterful miniatures all the same - perhaps more at home bullying hobbits in the Shire than hewing down Theodred at the Isen (change their livery and give them axes, and the earlier bunch would do that job nicely).

This fellow will probably see service in our D&D games as a brigand, an untrustworthy hired scout or even a PC.

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?).

A half-orc witch

Ready for a Black Hack game tomorrow: a half-orc from Aly Morrison's slottabased range for Citadel. I generally prefer Aly's solid-based half-orcs, which are grimmer-looking and less comic. But this is a nicely characterful one with a typically expressive Morrison face. And she's the only female in either range.

I painted her in much the same method as my recent Chronicle and Grenadier orcs: black gesso undercoat, base colours and one highlight for everything except the flesh (where there's a wash and a second highlight). I did allow myself an additional highlight on the green shirt, though. 

This method is very quick, so I'm swinging back towards black undercoat as the default. Pebeo black gesso is so solid and fast-drying as an undercoat that it makes the prolonged drying time of white spray seem a real hassle.