Kings Of War: Old Man Morin's Orc Amy: Part 2 (The Thinking Behind The Madness)

By Old Man Morin

Welcome back gang,

As some of you know I have been resurrecting one of my most ambitious hobby projects ever, a heavily converted and sculpted Orc & Goblin army for the new Second Edition of Mantic Games Kings Of War, see part 1 of that project here. Now you might be saying, "But orcs and goblins are different armies in KoW," and you would be right, but this is a project that was initially created for Warhammer Fantasy Battle that I am bringing over to version 2 of Mantic's massed battle game. 

Some of the back rank boys

Remember these guys?

When we last left off I was explaining the reasoning behind my stylistic choices for the army and was talking about how I created my orc models using dice, orc heads and a lot of green stuff. 

The theme of the army revolved around the idea that a group of Black Orcs lead an army of escaped orcs and (hob)goblins across the World’s Edge Mountains into Old World. This got me thinking about what an orc refugee would be wearing as he travelled with his mates through snowy, rocky mountain passes. I would imagine that he would probably be wearing whatever he could get his hands upon… the skins of anything he kills in his path. Heavy cloaked orcs. Yeah, that’s the ticket!

Here they are a little less naked...

I watched the Chris Nolan Batman movies again and had an idea. The boyz in the background would have heavy furs draped over their shoulders like Batman when he is shrouded in his cape (with just the faces showing). The boys in the front rank, on the other hand, would throw back their furs and expose their arms and chests with the fur cloaks hanging down their backs.

Now clearly Mantica is not the Warhammer World. But as I discussed in the previous post, Abyssal Dwarves (The Mantic version of Chaos Dwarves) are slavers who use orc minions to do their dirty or menial work. The idea of an army of renegade orcs still works. The only unit that does't seem to fit is my mob of heavily armoured black orcs. I am waiting until I get the final printed copy of the Version 2 rulebook (which contains the orc army list) before I decide what to do with these guys.

A horde of 40 orcs

In Kings Of War, you do not buy units by individual models but in units instead. Units of infantry typically come in three sizes. 10, 20 and 40 models. During the game, as units take damage, unlike Warhammer, you do not remove casualties. Instead you keep track of damage using counters, this means that you can build units into fixed movement trays that will not change. I think that, the more I play KoW, this will give me some awesome modelling opportunities. 

As I am just learning the game... I am going to stick to the basics... for now. By having these models on rounds, I can plug the models into any sized movement tray I like depending on how I would like to use the models at my disposal. I have two units of 34 orcs just about done at the moment and another set of front rank orcs in the wings that I need to finish the sculpting on. With that many models and a few small unit fillers I can easily run two hordes of 40 orcs or a horde of 40 orcs and 2 regiments of 20 orcs... variability perfect for a player that is learning how to play a familiar but new game.

Did someone say unit fillers? My take on trolls...

Next time I will get into allies and the goblin side of this army. Until then...