Tolkien’s Orcs and Goblins – and their multiple representations – have always fascinated me. As a kid, I had a highly eclectic goblin/ orc force including models from Citadel, Marauder, Denizen, Akheton, Dixon and a large number of home-cast Prince August miniatures.
Returning to the topic in the 21st century, I built my new force using a basis of Games Workshop LOTR and Oathmark plastics. The kit bashing potential of modern plastics is huge, especially as Orcs don’t need to be anatomically perfect – so you can mix and match a whole variety of different parts.
Historical plastics are also a great source of potential, especially if you’re wanting to emulate artist John Howe’s Orcs. These lean heavily on 15th century armour and weapons which can be easily borrowed from the Perry Miniatures Wars of the Roses kits.
Robed Orcs feature in the 1978 animated LOTR film and I had a go at emulating them using some Gripping Beast plastic Arab infantry as a basis – you can read a full article on this here which includes how I painted them.
Wargames Atlantic released their Goblin kit after I’d put most of my army together, but I was still able to get some of the minis into action. Some of these have the distinctive ‘Carolingian’ style helmets used by the late Angus McBride in his iconic artwork for the Middle Earth Roleplaying game in the 1980s.
This style is also used on the Wargames Atlantic digital Orcs, a unit of which can be seen below. These are apparently in the pipeline for a release in hard plastic which I know will be welcome for many Middle earth gamers!
At this point, it’s worth mentioning the Trolls. This unit of delightful chaps are from Reaper Bones – all labelled as Ogres but very befitting for ME Trolls. The leader has scale armour, once again influenced by McBride MERP art.
Knucklebones also do some STLs for Orcs with a similar vibe – here’s a handful that I painted a few years back.
Warg riders are a key part of Tolkien for me and definitely needed to feature in my force. While great value for money, the plastic Oathmark wolves didn’t quite feel right to me, so I pursued a number of options, eventually settling on a core of plastic wolves from the Blood Rage board game. These fitted the Oathmark riders really well which were then customised with a range of plastic parts.
A pair of leaders were put together with metal wolves by Mierce Miniatures and plastic riders. I’m really pleased with these two – they look properly menacing!
Here’s the whole Force lined up for a game of Midgard Heroic Battles – it’s still growing!
You can see a video short of the whole Orc Force here.
mogsymakes 