A space ettin!

I realise that I've had this fellow in the works for more than three years (!) now, but he's finally done. He's a converted ettin from the Descent boardgame. 

Ettin, of course, is an archaic English word that means 'giant'. It's cognate with the Norse jotun: both words seem to stem from a root that means 'eater'.

 In the Monster Manual, Gary Gygax describes ettins as two-headed giants that are evidently "closely related to orcs". He probably got his concept of the ettin from the fairy tale Red Ettin, which features a three-headed giant who keeps two-headed cattle. I thought a sci-fi version might do nicely as a space-orc chieftain.

A space black orc

Here's an "orc veteran" for Grimdark Future - the first of a small unit that I hope to finish this evening. 

With my space orcs, I'm trying to keep the pink snout, ears and lower lip as the unifying characteristics, with a bit of variety in the skin colours - mainly green but also black, grey and brown - and possibly blue and dull red too.

This guy was the test for black skin; I was aiming for the original colour scheme for Citadel black orcs, as seen in Gary Chalk's illustration for Warhammer Armies (or was it Ravening Hordes - I forget). 

 

More space orks!

The band of space orks is slowly growing. I'm going to mix eras and manufacturers entirely freely for this project; whatever these little green men are, they're going to be a widely variable species. 

 

Kitbashed space orcs!

A friend of mine who used to play a lot of 40K suggest that we give One Page Rules' Grimdark Future game a tryout in the summer, so that he can use some of his exquisitely painted armies. I haven't played 40K since the first edition, but the OPR rules look nice and streamlined: a bit of Song of Blades and Heroes (with the Quality stat); a bit FUBAR (with the alternating activations); and a bit Kings of War (the general streamlining): all good things, and the rules and list-builder are free to boot.

I was planning to paint up a lot of first-edition 40K space orks for the summer session, but I'm aware that time and work commitments may limit what I can do (and I don't want to rush those old treasures). But I have no qualms about speed-painting kitbashed EM4 plastic orcs (wonderfully cheap and readily convertible). I converted one to sci-fi a while back, along with an associated metal Nick Lund Grenadier orc, so I thought I'd convert a few more. 

One welcome discovery has been that the new Frostgrave cultists have bulky arms and gloved hands that work nicely with the EM4 orc torsos. The arms (and chainsaw) of the figures in the first photo come from that kit. Stargrave scavenger arms and various other sci-fi bits make up the rest. 

As far as I can see from the Grimdark Future rules, the orc profile is all about aggression rather than toughness (as in the original 40K, where T4 was an ork's main advantage). So these smaller, rather simian orcs should look the part so long as they're armed to the teeth.