Forge World Upgrade Your Middle-Earth Gundabad Orcs
November 3, 2017 by brennon
An upgrade pack has been added to the Forge World website offering you the chance to upgrade your Gundabad Orcs with a more commanding look and feel to them.
The kit comes with all manner of cool weapon upgrades which can be used to make your Orcs look a bit more fierce as well as those dominating and powerful helmets which you can see in the middle there.
Much like with the Uruk-Hai designs which came to life in Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings we're seeing some of the same design choices flowing into these models where even their shields are effective weapons.
Some cool upgrades indeed to get your Orcs looking even more badass.
What do you think of the kit?
"...we're seeing some of the same design choices flowing into these models where even their shields are effective weapons"
Supported by (Turn Off)
Supported by (Turn Off)
Supported by (Turn Off)
amassing to attack Rohirrim
I thinkthe investment in LotR and Hobbit has suddenly stalled with this idea. Would have been great to get a plastic unit of Gundabad Orcs rather than a head swap for the few metal figures available. Forgeworld have at least given us the ability, albeit an expensive one, to field a Dwarf army but the Orc input has been aimed more at large figures. It feels like someone cut Forgeworlds funding .
The Hobbit releases are starting to pick up. With the 33% cost reduction in Finecast warbands, The Generals Handbook thingy and the Battle Companies book announced yesterday things are slowly picking up. Adam Jay and the team are doing good stuff. The FW models are top quality,no more pricey than the Finecast models and infinitely better than the plastic sculpts.
Things are a lot better than they were 2 years ago when we could have been looking at the complete end of support for the game.
£40 for 12 models in the appalling material that is finecast is still unacceptable, and there is still the added cost in time and money in filling in all the bubbles with green stuff, and in the end the material is far too brittle to be used in fine detailed miniatures. Its a real shame about this range, the game and the staff are fantastic, but the later films were not a patch on the first and the pricing is restrictive to fanboys only.
Yup
I wouldn’t disagree that finecast is the devil’s arse biscuits of a material and inferior to metal and resin. However they have made efforts. The main problem is now the number of gates in the mould that they put in to prevent bubbles rather than bubbles themselves. Still rather fragile material though.
The new price of just under £4/ model is not ridiculous now compared to other companies and is objectively better than £5. Is that too much for a licenced figure? Possibly. Certainly the £12+ for character models is very high.
But for me the issue is whether things are improving or getting worse. And undeniably things are improving from what was a very low base. We are getting occasional articles in WD for instance, new paper products as well, which I never thought would happen.
And of course we have seen the shift to Forgeworld. This means no more Finecast for new models and some new sculpts every month. You can call those who pay Forgeworld “fanboys” if you like, but their prices for Hobbit models are the same as for 40k and AoS. Plus there are still plastic models (and metals!) at 40k/AoS comparable prices too.
Are things ideal? No. But the direction of travel is very encouraging and at least attainable if not exactly discount.
After all, a couple of boxes of plastics and a few character models will get you a long way in the game as you don’t need huge armies – 30-40 or less for some.
If you like the artwork and are prepared to pay the asking, then it is fun. The game mechanics are arguably some of the best GW have ever produced, and certainly there are fewer balance issues than with 40k etc. (at least historically, 8th ed is an improvement ).
Personally I rage quit in 2007 afyer being massively involved, but recently I have got back into the game, largely because of the improvements in attitude of GW and the thriving fan community.
Norba makes a reasonable facsimile, 12 euros for 10 pikemen models:
http://norbaminiatures.com/en/the-battle-of-the-ring/68-lanceros-orcos.html
Same deal for their warriors:
http://norbaminiatures.com/en/home/67-guerreros-orcos.html
I think they actually better than the FW models, IMO of course.
Well, the pikemen anyway.
Nice find!
Those are good looking parts.
What scale are those @cpauls1 ?
True 28 I believe. They were made to go with the LOTR system.
Do you guys think this heads would work with other manufacturer models? I am think perry HYW and WGF/Warlord orcs.