The Bronzecast Ogrions & the Normalites of Vanillashire.

Hi everyone,

I have finally finished the Normalite Archer Horde.  I still have yet to test it out on the tabletop.

As regards the campaign I am playing, things are going badly.  Out of six games, I drew 2 and lost 4. This means in the next phase of the campaign, I will start out as a subjugated nation. To add insult to injury I am subjugated to Ratmen!!!  The one faction I have never liked.  I hate my life so much right now!

This means my lord and furry commander can order me around and can decide where my army goes and who it will fight.  What a nightmare!

That is all for this week. I might start something more ‘showcase’ and less ‘tabletop’ next.  I also want to get back to practicing my oil painting.

Until next time, stay safe and have fun.

NR

Hi everyone,

I played my first game this Saturday morning – I lost miserable – but I failed to paint up all my units.

In order to maximize my options, this week I spent most of my free time buiding up all my remaining units that were still in their respective  boxes.

Now I can slow down, and try to paint up a unit every two weeks instead of every week. This will give me some time to paint up other stuff.

Below are several photos of what I built up and have left to paint.

So that is all for now.  I will continue to paint and finish this project but at a more casual and less regimented routine.

I failed my goal, but the army still looks good on the table. Now to try and win a battle!

Stay safe and have fun!

NR

Hi everyone,

Today all I have is a quick update for the Archer Horde I am painting up.  I managed to finish the second line of archers and now I have to paint up the last line.

This will be the last unit I will be able to finish before the campaign starts on the 5th of April. Therefore, I will start gluing things together in order to play with the units that are not painted up.  These consist mostly of the Normalite cavalry and all the characters.

This will be the last push before gaming starts.  I hope nothing pops up to misdirect my efforts to finish this unit. So wish me luck.

Until next time, stay safe and have fun.

NR

Hi everyone,

I have been using up all my spare time with the Ogrion army, trying my best to get it ready. Today I have finished the first part of my last Normalite Infantry unit – a horde of archers.

I decided to make an archery horde because my army lacks shooting and is more melee focused. Hopefully this with help address that deficiency.

I will placing roughly 30 models onto the base and I will work one line at a time starting from the back and moving forward.

The statues came from old tourist souvenirs.  They were the top part of a pen! I kid you not. I repainted them in oil paints.

Next up were the archers. In the Perry Miniatures 100 year war English army plastic box set there are only 24 archer models.  Therefore I needed 6 more.  I took these from some plastic Dark Age archers from Gripping Beast.  I just made some minor conversions with the heads.

Like all the other Normalite regiments, I wanted this horde to be led by a mounted nobleman. I just decided to give him a bow instead of a lance.

Hopefully by next week I will have painted up the second line, and maybe – just maybe – they will be ready for the first battle (but I doubted it. They will be on the field for the second battle).

Until next post, stay safe and have fun.

NR

Hi everyone,

I have just finished the last Ogrion Infantry regiment in this army. This is also an Ogrion Archer Regiment (Ogre Boomers). There were ten models in a box so I could make 3 regiments from them altogether.

These are the only Stormcast Eternal models that I bought brand new and at retail prices. This is because I could not find them cheaper and second-hand. If anything I found several lots that were painted up (very basically) and selling at triple the cost!

Now all I have left to paint up are my last two proxy ‘monsters’, a proxy chariot regiment, one horde of Normalite archers (goblins),  two regiments of Normalite cavaly, and several characters (which I will leave till the end).

There is no way I am going to paint up everything in this army before the first week of April.  I have to resign to the fact that it is not going to happen.

Therefore for the next post I am just going to build as much up as possible.  That way at least I can play with them.

Until next time, stay safe and have fun.

NR

Hi everyone,

A quick post this week.  My second regiment of Ogrion Hounds (Crocodogs).  This now leaves me one regiment of archers and a regiment of Ogrion Riders (Ogre Chariots). I also need to finish painting up the Slasher, Mammoth and Characters besides three units of Normalites.

So it is safe to say I will not manage to finish painting up this army before the first week of April, but it will be all built up and ready to play.

Until next week stay safe and have fun.

Regards,

NR

Hi everyone,

I have taken a break from painting and spent the time customizing an Isperia sphinx model from Wizkids.  This is a very cheap model despite its size.

I want to use it as a proxy Red Goblin Slasher, so I had to remove the wings and add a firing platform. The platform is scratchbuilt from an old GW Imperial cannon sprue.

After building up the proxy Slasher, I can know use it on tabletop in my games in April. If I don’t manged to paint it up by then, I can always paint it at my leisure after the campaign.

Until next week, stay safe and have fun.

NR

Hi everyone,

The Ogres have three types of shooting infantry: Shooters, Boomers and Goblin Spitters. I have already done a horde of Shooters which are the long range ogre variant.

Here I am presenting the short range alternative; ie the Ogre Boomers or as I call them Ogrion Archers (because they have bows!, what was I suppose to do!).

I think I will do the next regiment of Ogrion Hounds (Crocodogs), because I have a bit too much on my plate at the moment.

Until then, stay safe and have fun.

NR

Hi everyone,

I have finally finished painting up the giant, and just managed to take the photos and post them before going to bed!

From the last post, I added highlights and lowlights to the skin and apparel.  Everything was done in acrylics in order to match the style with the rest of the army.  If this was not the case, I would have painted this in oils.

As you can see, the armour is painted in the style of the Ogrions, and the clothes have the same colour as the Normalites.

I painted a little object-source-lighting along the legs and arms with blue oil paint.  I just wanted a bit to embellish the lightening. With oil paints this takes only 5 minutes!

I am not sure what I am going to do for next week.  I still have 9 Ogrion archers to paint up, so I might start working on them

Until next week, stay safe and have fun.

NR

Hi everyone,

This week I decided to work on the giant.  This is a cheap model of a Storm Giant from Wizkids, that I am using as a proxy for a Mantic giant.  It is not as big as the Mantic giant, but it is inch for inch just as powerful (with all that lightening!).

The model comes pre-primed , but had a lot of mould lines and required a lot of cleaning. I then had to re-prime the model.

The next step was the paint the armour in the same quick method as the Ogrions. Then I painted the clothes as the Normalites.  This will tie the giant into the theme of the army.

Next week I will simply highlight and shade the rest of the base colours.  Unless the end of the world hits us like a meteor, I should have this finished by next week.

Until then stay safe and have fun.

NR

Hi everyone,

The next horde up are the Ogrion Hunters.  I decided to do these simply because I am getting tired of painting bronze statues and I need to finish them before my morale collapses!

The Ogre Hunters from Mantic Games have a variety of weapons, therefore I had to do several minor weapon conversions to stimulate this on the Ogrions.  I also painted the ‘furs and leather’ as ‘fur and leather’ – in order to show that they are hunters.

Overall, this unit took me the longest to finish, but it is probably my favorite horde.

I am not sure what to do next week.  I really want to start the giant, but I might not have enough time to do it justice.  I don’t want to paint it as a statue, so it is going to take a bit more work than the average regiment.

But that is a problem for next week.  So until then stay safe and have fun.

NR

Hi everyone,

I finally finished painting up my 4th and last Ogrion Warrior horde.  With this last horde of warriors I have a strong core for my army.

At this point, I have enough troops painted up to play. Therefore I can now focus on other stuff for the army like the monsters or characters.

I am not sure what to do for next week.  I have another 6 Ogrion Hounds (Crocodogs) to paint up – I could do those, or I could take a break from the bronze painting and work on the three monsters I bought several posts ago.

I will see how I feel tomorrow morning. Until then stay safe and have fun.

NR

Hi everyone,

This week, I chose to paint a horde of Ogrion Berserkers for the army, because they are a unit I think I would enjoy playing with. Berserkers can be identified because they have 2 single-handed weapons.

Therefore I bought some 2nd-hand early Stormcast off Ebay.  They were very cheap with an inch of paint.  I had to strip them and make some adjustments and conversions.

For next week I want to finish up my 4th and last Ogrion Warrior horde. These warrior hordes form the core of my army, so I want them painted up before the campaign starts in April.

Until then stay safe and have fun.

NR

Hi everyone,

I have just finished the 2nd Normalite Militia (Red Goblin Rabble) and used up all the miniatures in the box.  I actually had to use and convert some figures of different ranges.

Just as a caveat, I am not building this army around a gaming strategy, but on what I have.  I only buy new stuff when I don’t have a good and recognizable proxy. In fact, I bought some monsters as shown in the previous posts and I will buy some Stormcast archers as well.

Otherwise, I have a horde or regiment of every troop choice in the army list, except for the warriors of which I have 4 hordes.

No min/maxing for me. We will see how it goes!

That is all for this week. Next week, it is back to the Ogrions!

Until then, stay safe and have fun.

NR

Hi everyone,

Another quick post about a reiment that required a lot of work. Below is a regiment of Normalite Militia or Red Goblin Rabble.

The process is the same as the Normalite Militia, except that I added shields from the very early 1990s. I had them laying around for years, and I finally found a use of them. This time I put the mounted leader up in the front to distinguish them from the spearmen.

Next week I will post the 2nd Normalite Militia unit I have.  Until then stay safe and have fun.

Regards,

NR

Hi everyone,

Finally found the time to finish basing the Normalite spearmen, so this will be a short post.  I have some free days this week and I intend to push the work on the Normalites.  I will try to finish the two Normalite militia regiments (Goblin Rabble) by the end of January.

That is all for this week.  Hopefully I will finish the next regiment by late next week.

Until then stay safe and have fun.

NR

Hi everyone,

I have started to paint the first 2 of 4 boxes of Perry 100 Year’s War figures, that I have for my Red Goblin proxies in my Ogrion army.

I was never going to use these for a 100 Year’s War force anyway, because I was never going to paint up all those diverse colour schemes and heraldry. Also, since Perry miniatures are a bit smaller than normal fantasy ranges, I think they would convincingly pass as goblin proxies.

Altogether, I will be able to make one unit of Sharpsticks (Spearmen) and two units of Rabble (Militia). To accomplish this, each regiment will have 13 men and a leader on horse. This will bring the number up to 15 models per unit and in line with the ‘preferred model count’ (PMC) for Kings of War.

(The fact that there are less on a base will give the impression that the regiment is weaker because it is not at full force – that is the idea!)

As regards painting, I wanted something very simple.  I knew that it would take me at least twice the work and time to paint up a regiment of Normalites, than to paint up a horde up Ogrions. Not only because there are 3 times more miniatures on a regiment, but also because there are more varying details on the models.

So my I decided to keep the paint scheme simple with a two colour pattern.  I also would not paint in shadows – that would be the job of oil washes. This way I would speed up the production of these miniatures while keeping the result neat and tabletop worthy.

In the next post, I will have based this regiment and I will post the finished result. Multi-basing these miniatures to match my Ogrions is going to be a chore in itself, but I wanted to post something this week.

Until next time stay safe and have fun.

NR

Hi everyone,

Below is the third Ogrion Warrior Horde with Two-Handed Weapons. Unlike the other warrior hordes, these have cloaks, so I painted them up with a white colour scheme like the Ogrion Shooters.

The cloaks added so much more work, but I think the look is worth it.

I just have one last warrior horde to paint up, and the core of my army will be ready.

For next week I have decided to paint up my first Normalite (Goblin) regiment. The Normalites are far more time intensive.  There are more models per base and involve more colours. I only have 6 regiments of Normalites to paint up, so I better pull up my socks and get started.

Until then stay safe and have fun.

NR

Hi everyone,

This week I have something a bit different.  I just received a present from my alter ego – The Nightrunner – 3 monsters for my Ogrion army. I have been thinking on what to go for as proxies for these monster choices. These monsters are from Wizkids:

1] A Storm Giant for my giant selection.

2] Isperia, Law Incarnate instead of a Goblin Slasher.

3] A Cosmo Wolf instead of a mammoth.

I was surprised how cheap these are.  I bought them (I mean Nightrunner bought them) from Ebay from a shop in Germany and they arrived in just 2 weeks.

In the coming weeks, I will start to work on these one at a time, but before that I will put all the monsters on their bases and undercoat them so I can play with them if I don’t manage to paint them before the campaign starts.

Until next week, stay safe and have fun – and happy holidays to all who celebrate them.

NR

Hi everyone,

I have finished another Warrior horde.  I have enough to make four hordes altogether.  These will be the mainstay of my army, unlike the other hordes of which I only have a horde of each.

I am not a min/max type of player, and I enjoy playing only with what I have and not what I would like to – just like how the great generals of old fought.

This army is taking shape very nicely and is building up well.  I have to start the Normalites sooner or later, but I am sure a regiment will take much longer to finish.

I will choose what I will start next tomorrow.  In the meantime I have received several monsters for this army that I bought on the cheap and I will prepare a post for that soon.

Until then, stay safe and have fun.

NR.