Meanwhile, back in Midgard...

Hi folks. I've had a few months off. Not necessarily for good behaviour. But now it's cold, wet and dark of an evening I've retreated back indoors to the painting table. Amongst other things, this summer I got to visit some fascinating ancient monuments, in many cases for the first time, which in turn has inspired me to crack on with my 15mm/18mm Dux Bellorum project. While I probably have enough Saxons to cobble together an army, they are sadly lacking opposition. So, the priority was to get some paint slapped on some Forged in Battle 15mm Welsh teulu I've had kicking around for ages.

As well as the unit of 'noble warriors' (as they're termed in Dux Bel), I also knocked up a command base. This is in anticipation of the Midgard Heroic Battles rules, slated to drop next month. I've been eagerly looking forward to these rules, which are happily compatible with the Dux Bel units I've painted to-date. The major difference miniatures-wise is that Midgard armies have between 3-5 separately based 'heroes' per side. 

I think the photo above gives all you dyed in the wool 28mm players a good idea just how wee 15mm is! I so enjoyed modelling this Welsh warlord that I immediately painted a hero base for the Saxons, using 18mm Wiglaf miniatures.

Given that the Wiglaf lads are taller than their FiB counterparts, I built up the base of the Welsh hero with Greenstuff so that he could look his enemies in the eye. I used banners from Little Big Man Studios for both bases.

I've also managed to paint some Wiglaf Saxon skirmishers. These were a quick and dirty effort, if I'm honest. I tried to keep the colours more muted than usual, possibly indicating a lower social status. I do wonder whether I should have used less miniatures per base and angled the miniatures to make them look less uniform? Oh well, they'll do the job for now and there are plenty more minis in need of daubing.

STARGRUNT – ‘Nam in Spaaaaace

 

I guess it must have been early in 1991 when I called into a local indie games store/comic shop to buy some proxy minis to use for Rogue Trader. While I loved Citadel sculpts, my paper round money only stretched so far…  As I went to pay for my minis, the beardy chap behind the counter asked if these were for playing 40K. When I said yes, he thrust a copy of Stargrunt by Jon Tuffley/Ground Zero Games into my mitts and said that I should check out this exciting NEW ruleset. It was an A5 pamphlet, which looked to have been written on an electric typewriter and then photocopied, with a handful of rather naive illustrations and a few grainy photos. It certainly had none of the slick production values of its 1996 successor Stargrunt II (which is still available as a free download from GZG). As a young punk, though, the DIY aesthetic really appealed to me and so I bought a copy. As it happened, I never did manage to play the game back in the day, but while nearly all my RPGs, wargames rulebooks and minis were sold off, given away or lost by the end of the 1990s, my copy of Stargrunt survived squirrelled away in a stash of punk zines.

When I was getting back into gaming a few years back, my entry point was playing Craig Cartmell’s excellent FUBAR one-page rules using 15mm GZG/Stargrunt minis. Basically, rules I didn’t need to invest more than 5 minutes reading and a platoon’s worth of infantry grunts for around £20. Magic! Needless to say, I fell back in love with miniatures and wargaming, but I was also curious to explore a bit more of the Tuffleyverse. So, a little while ago my buddy and I dusted off the Stargrunt rules to see how this venerable ruleset actually played. It was also a game I appear to have lost all the photos of. Bugger.

In his introduction to the rules, the author writes that, “Stargrunt actually falls somewhere between a conventional wargame and a Role-playing Game.” As we’ll see below, this is a fair description. And where a game like Rogue Trader allows you to ‘roleplay’ the commanding officer, Stargrunt does a good job of presenting the battlefield from the lowly infantryman’s perspective. That said, in common with many old school roleplaying games, there is a fair bit of bookkeeping and maths required. The pullout-and-photocopy roster rather optimistically gives you enough slots for two 12-man squads and two vehicles. As we’re partial to a few beers with our wargames, we found one 8-man squad each was plenty enough to keep track of!

Example squad roster from the rulebook

The first order of business is to give your squad members names. This isn’t essential, but really adds flavour to the game. These are the guys whose story you’ll be following after all. Next, you roll a d10 for each squad member to determine their individual level of experience – which will be either Green, Regular or Veteran. This roll is modified by the scenario you’re playing. For example, a militia unit on patrol will more likely contain some Green troops with little or no combat experience, while a special forces unit rescuing a hostage is more likely to have veterans within their ranks. Veterans are also less prone to panic checks than other troops (they stay frosty). We decided to play a simple scenario with two opposing regular army units on a recce (using a table full of houseplants to represent impenetrable jungle). Both sides rolled a good mix of experience levels, but with my buddy having a Green NCO. Think Lt. Gorman in Aliens.

The experience mechanic is worth dwelling on a bit, as we thought this was one of the standout element of the rules. It is also the genesis of a core mechanic which would evolve through Stargrunt II to Tomorrow’s War and the Ambush Alley stable of games. Essentially, experience level determines which die a trooper will roll against a given target number. The Basic Die Roll for each level would be d6 for Green, d8 for Regular and d10 for Veteran, although under certain circumstances the die size can either shift up or down one. So, a Green trooper rolling Basic Die Minus would use a d4 and for a Basic Die Plus would roll a d8. A good example of this is testing to see if a trooper fires their weapon effectively. The target number required is 4+ when not engaged or 7+ when engaged with incoming fire. The trooper rolls their Basic Die if stationary, but their Basic Die Minus if moving across open ground or their Basic Die Plus if in position in cover. This rather nicely simulates troops becoming pinned, ducking for cover or squirting off shots without aiming.

The other stat worth flagging is Confidence Level (CL).  This deteriorates on first sighting the enemy, first coming under fire, taking casualties etc. but can also be restored incrementally by causing an enemy to retreat, taking an enemy position or receiving a stern talking to from Sarge. If CL reaches 0 then the squad will decide to bug out, withdrawing towards their table edge unless the NCO can rally them.

With the initial bookkeeping done it was time to get down to some action. Squads are split into two fireteams, which are the basic unit in the game. At the start of each turn orders are given to each fireteam (Fire, Move, Observe or Rally) and the players take turns to activate a fireteam, revealing their orders and carrying out an action. We liked this a lot as it allowed one fireteam to dash across open ground while the second team was on overwatch or laying down covering fire. Within a couple of turns the squads had sighted each other through the dense jungle foliage and started to let rip. The shooting mechanic was a huge departure to what we were used to. Once you’ve established who has actually fired towards the enemy you tot up the Fire Rating of all the various guns (essentially the volume of lead or lasers being poured at the enemy) and compare it on a table to the Target Rating, which is based on the number of targets and whether they are in cover or not. This gives you a ‘to hit’ number to roll on a d12 against each member of the target fireteam. We were a couple of pints in by this point in the game and the initial calculations probably took a bit longer than they should.

With laser beams and bullets ripping through the air it wasn’t long before we started taking hits. Once you’ve scored a hit you then roll on another table (I know! Old school, right?) against the impact value of the ammo-type minus the value of the body armour being worn. The result will either be no effect (the bullet just nicked an ear), stunned, wounded, incapacitated or killed. While stunned troops will shake it off at the end of the round, wounded or incapacitated troops are going to create a whole new series of problems to deal with. Abandoning the injured badly effects the squad’s CL, but this can be negated if their buddies drag them into cover and attempt to stabilise their wounds. Obviously, the guy administering first aid is also now out of the fight until he can stop his comrade bleeding out. We absolutely loved this rule. It felt incredibly thematic and brought to mind films such as Platoon and Full Metal Jacket.

By this point, things were fubar for both sides. Half the troops were either dead, injured or attempting first aid. With all the incoming fire it was proving near impossible to stabilise the worst casualties and the CL of both squads was dropping rapidly. If the mission had been to capture and hold a position, maybe I would have ordered ‘fix bayonets’ and tried out the close assault rules (which look brutal), but as both sides were out on a recce, both began to withdraw, laying down covering fire while carrying their injured buddies back for evac.

Troops from the high-grav planet of Grudge out on patrol

So, once the dust had settled, what did we think of Stargrunt? Well, the rules definitely showed their age in some regards. I think game specific tokens and coloured gems for the different experience levels would have helped with some of the bookkeeping, but even then two squads each + beer would still have been a stretch. There are also issues with the rules around having different ammo for the rifles and the SAW when working out hits (we followed the author’s advice and stuck to the same ammo to keep things simple).  And, to be fair, we didn't try any of the point fire weapons, such as plasma guns, which resolve their damage separately anyway.  Things we liked included the alternate activation of fireteams. This combined with the orders gave the feel of everything happening simultaneously. The sliding-dice system is genius and having a fixed target number for shooting effectively was welcome. What we really, really liked, though, was the cinematic feel to the game narrative. You could feel the panic rising within the squad as things fell apart, as injured comrades were dragged into cover, as plans were abandoned and orders ignored, as soldiers basically lost their shit. The game does a wonderful job of eliciting empathy for toy soldiers fighting a made-up war on a kitchen table, which is pretty remarkable. So thank you Beardy man, wherever you are. That was a top recommendation.

Hob Plains Drifters

 As mentioned in a previous post, for supposed steppe nomads the 1980s Citadel hobgoblins were sorely lacking in cavalry. The main reason, of course, is that the range wasn’t a priority for the Studio. Beyond the redesigned slotta range in ’85, the hobgoblins got a wee rocket launcher in ’87 and a temple dog rider in ’89, and that was that. Presumably if hobgoblins had been selling like hotcakes then wolf or hobhound cavalry would have been a thing, but I guess they were just too niche.

In the ‘throw all your toys down and let’s have at it’ world of early Warhammer there was always a work around. The Second Citadel Journal (Autumn 1985) contained The Dolgan Raiders scenario, in which human steppe nomads and their centaur chum attack a hobgoblin caravan. The hobgoblins hire the questionable services of some goblin wolf riders, led by one Gutrot, to act as scouts. Obviously, goblin wolf rider miniatures were readily available, so this neatly side stepped the problem of no hobgoblin cav while introducing a fun subplot. In the scenario Gutrot hates the hobgoblin commander Bagnol, so if the scenario is played as 2v2 then the Gutrot/wolf riders player gets extra victory points if Bagnol is killed!

Another workaround for hobgoblin cav I have seen employed by Oldhammerers has been to use the Chronicle N15 or Grenadier orc wolf riders as proxies. I think this works well enough alongside the N12 or Grenadier hobgoblins, as Nick Lund’s orcs and hobgoblins are all pretty hefty units, but I think it works less well alongside Aly Morrison’s slighter C36 hobs. I've also seen people use the 4th ed. Big Hat hobgoblin cav, but they're ghastly.

Chronicle and Grenadier wolf riders I originally bought to use as proxies

I was really pleased, then, when I saw Oakbound Studio were releasing a couple of packs of hobgoblin wolf riders. The wolf riders come in packs of 3, armed with either bows or polearms. I’ve been after some shoot-and-scoot wolf riders for a while so I picked up the bows pack. Here’s 2/3 of the pack coloured in.

As these are Oakbound gobbos, the sculpts are very characterful but also a touch more whimsical than 'spikey death bits'. Scale-wise, though, they are spot on. I think these will work great for a unit of skirmishers, but my quest for C36-compatable mass cav continues.

The Good, The Bad & The Lead Rot

 

The painting queue has been overrun by 1980s hobgoblins, shouldering past the orcs and booting wee Saxons out of their way. The latest batch were so keen to be painted that they forgot to put their trousers on! From left to right we have a DL2 (1984), a pre-slotta C36 (1984) and a slotta C36 (1985), all sculpted for Citadel by Aly Morrison.

They were undercoated black several years ago and it really was high time they were painted. However, when I started to apply the base coats I noticed that one of the hobs appeared to be suffering from early onset lead rot! I suspect that the mini may have been like that back when it was undercoated, but for the life of me I can't remember.

I sought a second opinion on the Oldhammer Community Facebook group and had the diagnosis confirmed. But what to do? In the end I decided to paint and be damned. Either the rot is now inert or it's slowly eating away at the old soldier's insides. If it's the latter then at least he'll get a few turns around a battlefield before his leg falls off.

Hobgoblin banners and shields from WFB 3rd ed. Warhammer Armies

I've also been taking stock of the hobgoblins I'd painted previously. These were my first tilt at a project when I was getting back into gaming. Many have seen a fair bit of action since as a unit of mercenaries in our games of Dragon Rampant. The four C36 hobs below needed some minor battle damage touched up, but otherwise I think they still pass muster.

Likewise, I'm still happy with these two. They are 'Manic Hobgoblin Hero' from the BC2 Monsters Starter Set (another Aly Morrison sculpt) and a Chronicle N12 hobgoblin by Nick Lund (both 1985, I think). It's odd that while the new slotta sculpts for the C36 range leaned further into the Steppe warrior aesthetic, the Chronicle range went in the exact opposite direction. The N12 hobgoblins all have fantastical versions of Samurai arms and armour, with many having a central horn reminiscent of  Japanese oni. Thankfully, this chap has a helmet on and shouldn't look too out of place alongside the older DL2 hobs.

And I'm still ridiculously pleased with how these shields turned out. I'm looking forward to painting more.

I was never going to be satisfied with all the old paint jobs. Rather than just strip and start again, I attempted to renovate the three below by painting directly on top of the old varnish. They're still not going to win any prizes, but they are a definite improvement and will look fine among the ranks.

The chap on the right is the oldest mini in the army to-date. He's 'Grizlock the Hobgoblin' from the 1983 Dungeon Monsters Starter Set. I don't know who sculpted him, but if I had to guess I'd say maybe the Perry twins? Answers on a postcard, folks.

A Fistful of Hobgobs

I fancied a bit of Oldhammering recently, so I dug out a fistful of 1980s hobgobs to colour in. They're all Citadel C36 hobgoblins sculpted by Aly Morrison. The chap on the left (Dut Doomaxe according to the old catalogues) is an early slottabase miniature from 1985. The other 3 are unnamed pre-slottas from 1984. 

There's an excellent potted history of Citadel hobgoblins on ...the Leadpile blog which goes someway to explaining why the early ranges were such a hodgepodge mess. Hobgoblins had been depicted as generic barbarian-types for the Fantasy Tribes range, proxy bakemono opponents for the Samurai range, militaristic baddies with Chinese-inspired arms and armour for the AD&D range, and eventually Steppe nomads in WFB 2nd ed. Despite having mercenary contingent lists for both 2nd and 3rd ed., this iteration of hobgoblins would be killed off at the end of 3rd ed. I guess the niche for nomadic, wolf riding marauders was already well served by the evergreen orcs and goblins (not helped by the fact that all the hobgoblin miniatures were footsloggers). There also seems to have been little appetite at GW for developing the East of the Warhammer world. For my money, though, the C36 range knocks the later Big Hat hobgoblins into a cocked hat.

Hobgoblin banner designs from WFB 2nd ed. Ravening Hordes book

I'm fortunate to have previously collected several dozen C36 hobgobs (the going rate on eBay is currently a bit too spicy for me). So, given that I recently took Tolkien to task for Orientalism, why am I so enamoured with this range? I suspect it's because they're peak 1980s fantasy. The aesthetic is 1-part Conan the Barbarian to 2-parts NWOBHM* sleeve art. In fact, while I was painting the latest batch, this tune from The Comic Strip presents... More Bad News was firmly stuck in my head!

For my money, though, the most metal of all the Citadel hobgobs are the Despoiling Hobgoblins of the Darklands (Regiments of Renown RR15 - 1985) sculpted by Jes Goodwin.

I still need to track down Grunmunter the Beast and a few more troopers, but no self-respecting hobgoblin horde should be without these scallywags. And on the subject of hobgoblins I'd like to track down, if anyone has a C36 Baron Brightgore they're willing to sell for less than the price of a kidney, then please do get in touch.

*New Wave of British Heavy Metal 

Smøl Saxons

 

Wiglaf Miniatures 18mm unarmoured Saxon warriors

I’ve been obsessed with post-Roman and early medieval Britain for decades. It was only a matter of time before I decided I wanted to game the period. For a ruleset I picked up a copy of Dux Bellorum: Arthurian Wargaming Rules AD367-793 by Daniel Mersey, which is essentially an update of his 1998 Glutter of Ravens ruleset. Mr Mersey is probably best known as the author of Lion Rampant and Dragon Rampant, which have been our go-to rules for beer and pretzel games nights for a fair while now.

Dux Bellorum itself is an ‘element’ based wargame and uses a system of Leadership Points to represent charismatic warlords attempting to influence the battle. I like this mechanic as it presents an opportunity to use cunning to break the grind of shieldwall-style combat. The rules also allow you to purchase Strategies for your army, everything from an experienced general to excessive amounts of mead to stampeding livestock. 

Ruleset chosen, it was time to build some armies. While there are many wonderful 28mm ranges for this period available, I don’t actually have enough room to play 28mm mass battle games at home. For this project I wanted a game I could play on the kitchen table.

The obvious solution would have been DBA-style basing, but 3-4 guys stood in a line just doesn't do it for me. I thought maybe I could fill up a 40x20mm base with 10mm minis instead to get that 'warband' look, but having bought some packs of the lovely Pendraken Late Romans I realised my eyes just couldn't take it. Damn!

Forged in Battle 15mm Saxon raiders

Plan B was to increase the base size and go with 15mm. 60x30mm bases is definitely the upper limit of what will work in the space I have, but at least I'd be able to cram the minis in. I bought a couple of packs of the Forged in Battle Saxons to get me started. These bases are predominately from the WE-GX05 armoured raiders pack, with a few bods from the WE-GX01 noble infantry adding a bit of variety. 

Forged in Battle Saxons

I made a schoolboy error on the first two bases and forgot to leave space for a cohesion die holder. As a workaround, I mounted the dice holders and some extra nobles on 2p pieces to accompany their units across the battlefield.

Cohesion markers

I really like the Forged in Battle range. There’s a bit of variation in scale, between 15mm to 17mm to the eyeline, but the sculpts themselves are a cut above most of the other offerings out there. That said, when I heard that Daniel Mersey was launching his own 18mm minis line, Wiglaf Miniatures, specifically designed for the 7th century and sculpted by the genius that is Mark Copplestone, I knew I’d be going all in.

Wiglaf Miniatures unarmoured Vendel culture warriors

At the time of writing, Wiglaf have minis for armoured and unarmoured Saxon and Vendel culture warriors, some personality packs, skirmishers and Saxon cavalry. Welsh and Irish are in the pipeline, but may not be available for a while. I have enough Wiglafs to build the majority of options on the Saxon list. I just need to finish painting them…

Wiglaf Miniatures armoured Saxon warriors and Warlord

With the cavalry I reversed my basing policy of cramming on minis, as I think that cavalry in this period would have operated as ‘light cavalry’. If I ever get round to going back a couple of centuries and building an Arthurian force, then obviously King Arthur would be based as heavy cav to capture that Sword at Sunset vibe.

Wiglaf Miniatures Saxon cavalry

I was dubious that Forged in Battle and Wiglaf would work together. You can see from the size comparison photo that the Wiglaf lads are noticeably larger, but I don’t think this will be as apparent at 2’ away when the dice start to roll. I have a vague plan about finishing the Saxons and some Welsh opposition in time for Xmas so I can play some knockabout games with the kids over the holidays. There, I’ve written that down now so I can’t weasel out of painting the rest. 

Forged in Battle 15mm Welsh heavy cavalry and Wiglaf 18mm Saxon cavalry

Cracked Rock Orcs

I love orcs, me. Reading The Lord of the Rings as a kid, I really wasn’t too fussed by elves singing about the stars (large chunks of poetry were skipped on the first read through). What I liked best were the bits where we meet the orcs: Shagrat and Gorbag talking gangster then murdering each other or Grishnákh trying to shaft Uglúk and swipe his prisoners. The orcs were all total bastards and, I thought, thoroughly entertaining. I don’t think the Professor would have been impressed.

The term ‘orc’ is used occasionally as a synonym for goblin in The Hobbit, but it was with the publication of The Fellowship of the Ring and The Two Towers in 1954 that the ubiquitous baddies of the fantasy genre properly burst onto the scene. In recent years, however, Tolkien’s orcs have become controversial figures. A blog about toy soldiers is probably not an appropriate forum for a deep dive into these debates* but, for what it’s worth, I’m not sure that the way in which the orcs were developed within the Legendarium or are written as characters indicates a racist intent. If anything, orcs are probably best imagined with Brummie accents! On the other hand, the physical descriptions of orcs have not aged well. These tend to lean into the worst kind of Orientalist stereotypes and use some particularly unpleasant tropes to 'other' the orcs. While this may not have raised so much as an eyebrow 70 years ago, for a modern audience it can make for an uncomfortable read. I started to wonder if I could build a recognisably Tolkienesque orc army but without all the problematic bits?

 

The Class of 1954

 

1954 also saw the publication of The Broken Sword by American science fiction author Poul Anderson. As with Tolkien’s works, Anderson was inspired by the Matter of the North – the myths, sagas and heroic poetry of early medieval Northern Europe. However, where Fellowship… begins with Bilbo’s birthday party, The Broken Sword kicks off with an entire family being burned alive. The story is set in Viking Age Britain, with the conceit that mythological beings live alongside but beyond the sight of most mortals. There are two main warring factions: elves, who are thoroughly nasty pieces of work, and trolls, who are much, much worse. The main protagonist, Skafloc, is a human raised by the elves to wield a cursed sword (elves can’t touch iron). The sword makes him invincible in battle but will ultimately extract a terrible price. It’s a visceral read with child abduction, black magic, incest and fratricide all major plot points. As an aside, the book had a huge impact on a young Michael Moorcock, who’s own work would go on to inspire Chaos as the big bad of the Warhammer franchise.

This, then, was my way in. After Tolkien, my orcs would predominately be smaller in stature than men, fanged, twisted and ugly (but hopefully not in a problematic way). I’d use ‘goblin’ and ‘orc’ as interchangeable terms; the bigger warrior-types would be ‘uruks’ and the smaller types would be ‘snaga’. The aesthetic, however, would be an alternative Dark Ages Britain. Most troops would have a spear and central grip shield. There would be lots of mail coats (which is happily how orcs are also equipped in LotR). My one concession would be equipping some officers with scimitars, mostly because I think scimitars look cool.

Dear reader - meet the Cracked Rock tribe.

The Cracked Rock is the orcish name for the high pass cleft through the northern mountain range. The goblins use the same name to refer to the imposing fort which guards the mouth of the pass. The fort was built before the Fall and was once garrisoned by Imperial troops. When the Empire withdrew from these lands the fort was occupied by the Cracked Rock tribe.

Until recent times these creatures had contented themselves with internecine warfare with the surrounding orcish tribes and murdering anyone foolish enough to traverse the Old North Road through the mountain pass. That was until the rise of the Cracked Rock tribe’s current Boldog. Within the span of a few years nearly all the neighbouring tribes of the mountains and foothills have been subjugated. The Boldog maintains his position through distributing plunder to his warriors. With the mountains now conquered his roving eye will be looking further afield for richer pickings.

As I started to look around for miniatures to use, I came across an orc kitbashing thread on Lead Adventure Forum. While I’d never used plastic kits or  green stuff before, this looked like a lot of fun and a great place to start.

I picked up a couple of sprues of the Gripping Beast Saxon thegns kit to use as a base. I’d read that the Gripping Beast plastics were slightly smaller than other modern 28mm kits, so they sounded ideal for my purposes. To give them a proper goblin stoop I cut off the necks and then set the heads lower and slightly forward. I then pimped them with orc-y bits from a selection of sprues – Oathmark goblin infantry, Wargames Atlantic goblins and the old Wargames Factory orcs (now produced by Warlord Games), who have some brilliant Angus McBride-style heads. Neck joints and crucifixes were then disguised with my rudimentary attempts at sculpting furs. For a first crack, I think they came out pretty well.

This meant I had quite a few leftovers, in particular Oathmark goblin bodies. These seemed pretty close to what I was after, and once kitted out with Saxon spears and shields really did look the part.

While I enjoyed my first foray into kitbashing, my preference is for miniatures with a lead content. Discovering Ragnarok Miniatures armoured goblins was a bit of a eureka moment. Not only were these exactly what I was after, I also realised I was not the first person to think ‘orcs, but Dark Ages’. They are fantastic sculpts. The banner is from Myriad Miniatures’ Osmoticmeld range – a collab with Ian Miller.

The Ragnarok range is owned and sculpted by Colin Patten, who, it turns out, is a massive Tolkien nerd. What I hadn’t realised was that Colin had previously founded several other miniature companies, including Gripping Beast (who now distribute the Ragnarok range). One of his other ventures had been Vendel Miniatures, who carried a substantial ‘not-LotR-honest-gov’ range. The range is currently being produced by Thistle and Rose Miniatures in the US, but I couldn’t justify the cost of UK import duties on top of the shipping. I began to stalk eBay instead and months of patience was finally rewarded with a job lot of Vendel orcs.

The orcs come in three sizes – small, large and massive (I think the really big guys are from the command pack and are meant as champions). I’ve a decent sized stash of these left to paint, meaning the Cracked Rock tribe is now sorted for rank-and-file uruks. The banner below is an old Grenadier wolf rider banner. I'm not really satisfied with how the banner and shield design turned out and intend to re-do them at some point.

Next priority was for some snaga meat shields  skirmishers. My main gaming buddy likes to pack a firing line, so I know from bitter experience the value of screening troops. The archers are from Crusader Miniatures and the slingers are from the Oathmark goblin slaves kit.

I've made a start on some character models. The standard bearer on the left is another miniature from the Osmoticmeld range and based on Ian Miller's Helm's Deep illustration. I tried to paint him to match the illustration, but I made a right hash of it. In the end I settled for a much simpler scheme (which works OK). I also wasn't intending him to be part of this project. The miniature seemed too high fantasy really. However, he's sort of attached himself to the tribe, so I guess he's here to stay. The miniature on the right is the Great Goblin from an Oathmark character pack sculpted by Mark Copplestone. I think the sculpt is an absolute belter and will likely be used as the Boldog himself. I'm looking forward to painting up the shaman and musician from the same pack.

Ian Miller - Helm's Deep (1979)

A start has also been made on some cavalry (or is it wargary?) The wolves are Reaper Bones dire wolves while the riders are predominately the Oathmark wolf riders kit with a few extra odds and sods. There's plenty more of these I still need to build.

And finally... they have a cave troll. This chap is a Knucklebones Miniatures digital sculpt. He's a bit short for a troll (only 35mm tall). I suspect the vendor I bought him off may have printed him out at the wrong scale. Even so, I love the McBride vibes of the sculpt and painted him up accordingly.

MERP cover by the late, great Angus McBride

That's the Cracked Rock tribe to-date. There's still plenty to add to this force, most obviously I need more wolf riders, but there's also enough here to throw down for a game. It's been a really enjoyable project to work on so far and I've developed some new skills along the way. As always, constructive criticism welcome.

* For a balanced discussion on the issues around Tolkien's orcs you could do worse than this episode of the By-the-Bywater podcast.