This is my Orcs and Goblins army in all its unpainted glory. These greenskins have never played a game of Warhammer. I'm sure some of the older orcs have played bit roles as dungeon fodder in some Warhammer Quest games back in the 1990s, but that's as far as it went. I'm hoping to change this in 2018 by taking them to Nerima or Koganei for a game or two of Kings of War. My Empire and Dark Elves are veterans of many tournaments - my High Elves have seen the odd club game or two in Australia - and now my Tomb Kings have seen action on the tabletop in Japan of all places. It's time for the Orcs to have their day in the sun.
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| My Orcs. There was no conscious decision to collect them, they just accrued over the years. |
Waaaaaaaaaaaaaggggghhhhh!
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| The Ogres in the Goblin Regiments are actually relics from my childhood - they come from Milton Bradley's HeroQuest, the game that started it all for me. |
Looking at this great mass of plastic and metal a few things come to mind. One is that I will never ever finish painting this army. For miniature gamers life could be described as a race to get your miniatures painted, with the person who has the highest ratio of painted to unpainted miniatures when they die becoming the "winner". What a depressing thought. This is easily remedied by throwing everything into a dumpster, however. If you don't own any miniatures you can boast a perfect ratio, and perhaps even claim to win at life. For those of us who can't quite shake the need to hoard material things we do our best to chip away. We even delude ourselves with grand declarations of "I won't buy any more miniatures until all the ones I own are painted". Yeah, OK mate, you tell yourself that.
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| The base of the army are the Orcs from Warhammer 6th edition. |
I don't know what my ratio stands at currently - maybe 1 in 5 of everything I own is painted? My Orcs are a big millstone in that regard. The ratio gets muddled further by the criteria you use for "painted". If you mean completely based, detailed, shaded and highlighted then my ratio drops even further. I consider all my miniatures to be works in progress, which is why I never varnish them. I reserve the right to pick up a miniature and revise, alter or improve it at any time. It's an easy out when having your miniatures critically evaluated - you can always say, "Well, it's not quite finished yet" to avoid a final appraisal of the painting job you did.
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| The army was further bolstered by impulse purchases over the years. |
I discovered, though, that there is some gratification in seeing the transition from unpainted to painted in the photo record. Hence I've decided to take a photo of my whole army, so as to compare it to a future photo maybe one year down the line, and do it every year for every army I own. I would like to do the same for my Deadzone proxy project. I don't care how long it takes, or even if I ever complete any of these partially conceived projects. But for me collecting and playing is a lifelong hobby now, and so this blog and the pictures within it can serve as a type of record for where this hobby goes for me. I have over two decades in miniature gaming - admittedly, with a hiatus of 10 years or so - and I can't envision myself chucking out these things out. So even if I paint at a rate of one miniature a year, a record of some kind would be good.
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| Normally I don't like to buy second-hand miniatures, but once I paint over them they become mine. |
Thanks to PubCon's warbands I have an excuse to paint a small group of 20 orcs or so, which is eminently doable, and far less daunting than an entire Kings of War army. I have no qualms about taking unpainted forces to the club meets in Nerima and Koganei, and the players there have no problems with it, so there's nothing stopping me from taking these guys for a couple of games even if I can't get them painted up. It would be nice to bring something more than just a bunch of grey plastic Orcs, though.
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| Some of the Orcs were painted over the years as dungeon fodder for Warhammer Quest. |
2018 will be the year of the orcs! Waaaaaaaaaaaaaagggggghhhhhh!
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