Some new old orcs and some old old orcs

On a whim, I picked up some of the EM4 plastic orcs - possibly the cheapest 28mm miniatures out there. My main aim was to have a steady supply of miniatures for my kids to practice on, but I quite fancied a crack at them myself. So I've been converting a few and painting up some others. The first three are above.

To get these done quickly, I decided to give myself a sort of Dogme set of rules for these. The basic rule is 'one base colour, one highlight, no shading'. I only allow an additional highlight colour for flesh, to make it stand out a little more. The clothing is done simply with a flat colour and a single highlight. That makes painting them very quick indeed. I also permit myself a single brown wash over armour and leather, and an initial wash over the flesh before I add highlights.

It's worth noting that - despite what the internet says - these miniatures work perfectly well with polystyrene cement. I don't know whether the manufacturers changed the plastic at some point, but there's no need to rely on superglue, as various websites insist you must. I've swapped weapons and  helmets around using GW, Fireforge and Wargames Factory parts, and they all weld on perfectly with polystyrene cement. The three above are unconverted; the next batch will look quite different.

These miniatures were originally designed for the Fantasy Warriors game, which was released by Grenadier as a rival for Warhammer. I never played it, but I did pick up some of the accompanying metal orcs a long time ago. The EM4 purchase encouraged me to dig them out of the leadpile.

The metal orcs were designed by Nick Lund, who also wrote the Fantasy Warriors rules and was previously the owner and designer for Chronicle Miniatures, a company that was bought by Citadel Miniatures/GW in the 80s. The plastics were by Mark Copplestone, but in the style of Nick Lund. And it's a very distinctive style too. There's a marmite quality to the Lund sculpts. Some write them off as hopelessly crude. For me, though, and for many others, they've got a sort of primal power on the tabletop. Like the Perry twins, Lund was exceptionally good at getting a natural dynamism into his poses. And with his monsters and dwarves, he was tremendous at conveying power and brutality.

I see his miniatures as falling into three phases. The first phase consisted of the original Chronicle miniatures, such as his orcs, hobgoblins and kobolds. These are sometimes a little naive, but have a lot of visual impact. They look so brutish that I generally use the orcs as 15mm ogres and the kobolds as gnoll-type things in that scale. The ranges that Citadel produced and advertised were a big advance on the very earliest ones. The ogres and wolfriders are marvellous.

Chronicle black orcs - used as 15mm ogres

In the second phase were the slottabased black orcs and hobgoblins produced at Citadel, including Eeza Ugezod's Death Commandos. These were the best Lund miniatures ever produced, with the early dynamism combined with much sharper detail:

A slottabased black orc

The Fantasy Warriors metals for Grenadier were the third phase. These were largely a step back from the Citadel/Chronicle slottabased miniatures. I suspect this may have been because of the speed they were hammered out at. In particular, the boxed regiment produced for the game was pretty rough. And yet ... many of the blister-packed miniatures are really nice. They're a little rougher than the Citadel ones, but they have all the old charm.

Anyway, I painted up a few of the old FW metals using the same minimalist approach as the plastics. And I've got some more on the way, along with the converted plastics.