Some Ral Partha and Citadel gnolls

Gnolls are always handy monsters to have around - whether as generic beastmen or to fulfil specific roles in games such as D&D, Frostgrave and Elf, Knyghte, Pyke and Sworde. 

They are ultimately derived from Lord Dunsany's story How Nuth Would Have Practised His Art Upon the Gnoles. The first edition of D&D makes this plain, along with the suggestion that the creatures were part gnomes and part troll - surely the inspiration for the original Citadel gnolls, which were eventually renamed "great goblins".

So why did they become hyena-men in later editions of D&D? I think it's just part of a general trend by which the "giant class" creatures - essentially a hierarchy of ever-more dangerous goblins - started to be differentiated through animal attributes. So kobolds became dog-men, goblins preserved the archetype of the Tolkien orc, orcs became pig-men, hobgoblins monkey-men or ape-men, gnolls hyena-men and bugbears bear-men. 

Interestingly, gnolls have preserved their animal identity through the various iterations of basic and advanced D&D as most of the others have not. Perhaps that's because hyena-men are just a more evocative concept - conjuring the ghouls of Arabic folklore as well a whole range of unsavoury habits. Hemingway summarises these nicely (if a little unfairly); his description is a great starting point for GMing gnolls:

"The hyena, hermaphroditic self-eating devourer of the dead, trailer of calving cows, ham-stringer, potential biter-off of your face at night while you slept, sad yowler, camp-follower, stinking, foul, with jaws that crack the bones the lion leaves, belly dragging, loping away on the brown plain."

A Chronicle hobgoblin

 Here's a blast from the past: one of Nick Lund's Chronicle hobgoblins, which were produced by Citadel in the early 80s. 

When I was a child, these were some of the most sought-after miniatures for their sheer heft and menace. They were also a staple of the Joe Dever/Gary Chalk armies that featured in White Dwarf and the like at that time.

 The later, slottabased Chronicle range were finer sculpts with plenty of attractions of their own, but they lack the bulk and brutality of the earlier range:

Fangor Gripe and friends

 These are three retouched orcs finished today. I originally painted Fangor Gripe, the cyclops-orc, seven years ago: you can see him here. The early photos flatter the old paintjob; he looks a lot better now in the 'flesh' and considerably less washed out. My previous post shows the female orc on his left; the orc chieftain on his right was first painted around 1991 and is also shown in that post in his decades-old state. 

Fangor is a classic from the first Citadel range of slottabased orcs. These are among my favourite miniatures. 

The chieftain with sword and flail is an earlier Fantasy Tribe orc. His sword was broken when I acquired the figure in the late 80s or early 90s, and I replaced it with one that might have been cut down from a bit of scrap or something. The Fantasy Tribe orcs followed the AD&D Monster Manual in the weapons they =carried. 

An ugly old Fantasy Tribes orc

 

Here's a particularly nasty-looking Fantasy Tribes orc from the early 80s. I've got loads of these fellows based up; they make nice little palate-cleansers between sections of larger projects.

Space rats!

 Here are a couple of scuttling aliens for sci-fi skirmish games. The chap on the right is a straight-up Mantic Veermyn; the one on the left is a converted GW Skaven night runner. There are few things more puerile - or more satisfying! - than glueing a blaster on a fantasy miniature and calling him a spaceman. 

Orcs for Mordheim

 

These are the first figures for a Mordheim orc warband, for an all-day campaign next weekend. The crossbowman is the 'boss', an old Citadel C15 armoured orc tooled up with some extra armaments and a quiver of bolts for his crossbow. He's not the biggest or meanest of the C15 orcs, but he's one of the ugliest, which must count for something!

The smaller fellow is a Marauder orc. The first wave of Marauder orcs are pleasingly short and squat, which means that older Citadel orcs work well as leader types alongside them. Despite his short stature, this chap might see service as a 'big un', given his melee-focused gear and high-end armour. 

I'm painting this warband in a D&D or Gamorrean scheme: essentially the same thing. Citadel orcs were originally D&D orcs (and possibly even closer to Gary Gygax's vision than the Monster Manual illustration; Gygax said at one point that he'd envisaged upturned snouts rather than full-on pig heads), so it seems appropriate. I'm painting the orcs a variety of greens, greenish-blues and browns, with the pink snouts and ears the unifying constant. 

The world's oldest Space Ork?!

 

This is a converted Fantasy Tribes Orc from Citadel. He dates from 1982 and is a variant of FT06 (Orc Swinging Axe). His axe has not escaped the 80s, so I thought I'd make him a sci-fi figure in the tradition of Gary Chalk (whose converted C15 Orc Chieftain with assault rifle featured in an early White Dwarf).

I have a small warband of converted old-school orcs underway; next up will be Copplestone and Lund conversions.

Oh, and happy Year of the Dragon! Here's my son's latest offering to celebrate the Spring Festival: