Bzang Po's mustering of his Horde

Guess I might as well make a gnoblog of my attempt at building my ogre army. It's not as well painted or converted as some of the armies on here but then again, I'm not that good of a painter and my converting history has been filled with orky vehicles which doesn't really count since veryone can do those properly...

Anyways, Idea was to get the oriental feeling a bit across without going overboard and it becoming in your face style of conversions etc. Just some simple small tweaks left and right. For most models I simply went for the least patched together look so there was some semblance of order and structure in the army. Our local club already had enough of the stereotypical bashed together tribes. So I just decided to get try and get the feel across by using a coloscheme you see in those tacky chinese take-aways, red and gold.

Anyways, on to the pictures since they say more than my silly ramblings (even though some are a bit unclear, not much of a photographer).




Bigger is better, and anyone who says different is playing the wrong army... very simple weapon swap but it has made my tyrant infamous in our gaming club as the person (monster/whatever) who positively has the biggest weapon around. I like that... (off course he's a b**** to rank up and cannot get into b2b contact with anything larger than a flattened gnoblar, but it's a price I willingly paid, practicality is overrated anyways... )





My first actual attempt at converting a big and expensive model. The body is the hunter, arms come from the tyrant kit, as that one got the really big two hander. It was kinda scary hacksawing the original arms and replacing them with these but in the end it looks pretty ok, the putty in the gaps still needs some cleaning up though. The sword in the back was to hide the gap the hunter normally has to hold the spears. It, like most other bits, comes form an orc sprue. Flag and the top ends all originate from the plastic orc boar kit. Not yet finished painting the little bugger but he's kind of my favorite mini in the army at the moment.



Simply removed a bit of the excess spikes etc and painted, nothing special but then again, don't use them that often.




Again, simply stuck to using swords and avoided some of the weirder faces etc and painted them up. The banner is a (yet again) orc banner cut in half and pinned to the ogre top, simple but effective imo.




I didn't really like the original ironguts models, to cobbled together and not enough armor for my taste. That and they had clubs which I really didn't want to use. So I gave them oriental looking halberds (at least I think they look like that... ) and shoulderpads from yet another orc sprue (if you haven't guessed by now, I am a bit of an o&g player). The chainmail is my first ever attempt at using greenstuff. Off course it wasn't untill afterwards that I realised that chainmail is supposed to look like linked chains rather than a single perforated sheet of metal... Something for the future I guess... tried to give the gold a bit more of a beaten look but my imagination is a bti limited by my painting skills I guess...



Okay, so I only painted this one, a friend of mine put it together in a few minutes just to try and show me a bit about converting. It's representing my butcher at the moment. Idea is to convert me a butcher who looks like those tibetan monks, but I don't trust my skills enough to tackle that project so for now this fella does the job just fine.




And off course more greenskins. I hated painting these boys. I got into ogres to get away from painting o&g and got stuck right in with painting yet more greenskins. I used the giant box and the extra gnoblars on the various spreus to good effect, the box of 24 gnoblars grew to a unit of 45 and 8 trappers. But I guess those won't be needed anymore. Personal favorite here is the flattened gobbo from the giant sprue, I like to imagine how that particular gnoblar has ended up beneath the tyrant's bottom or some similarly unpleasant spot... I tried to give the unti a more random and non cohesive look by using mostly browns for the clothing and a lot of variation with detail colors (even though the amount of color is limited on these models).

Anyways, that's what I managed to paint and build so far, c&c welcome...

Very nice. The color scheme and simple modeling choices you made got the feel across very well.
I recommend taking a look through the various space marine transfer sheets, and seeing if one of them has an Cathayan/Nipponese design that you could loot for your purposes. Stick that on some gut plates, pants, coats, and banners, and it'd go a long way towards selling the theme.

And maybe try painting jade. All of those little stones and jewels, paint them up as green jade rather than grey stone.

The half an orc banner came out fantastic by the way. Great idea there.

I like those halberds!

Very nice. The color scheme and simple modeling choices you made got the feel across very well.
I recommend taking a look through the various space marine transfer sheets, and seeing if one of them has an Cathayan/Nipponese design that you could loot for your purposes. Stick that on some gut plates, pants, coats, and banners, and it'd go a long way towards selling the theme.

And maybe try painting jade. All of those little stones and jewels, paint them up as green jade rather than grey stone.

The half an orc banner came out fantastic by the way. Great idea there.

Hmm, that's a good idea, I didn't really know what to do with the stones that were to difficult to remove so I just went for grey since that doesn'attract to much attention, but jade is a far better idea. Thanks for that one. As for the transfers, when the bases etc are done before they get varnished I'm bringing them over to a good friend of mine who's studying japanese, he agreed to putting some kanji (or whatever they are called) on the banner, gutplates etc so it'll actually have meaning as well...

And the halberds are really easy to make just get a loose ogre hand, the top and bottom half of the banner pole and an ogre sword on top, job's a good one. tho the pinning is annoying as you have to be carefull which I'm not.

Thanks for the comments and tips so far...

good job with the unit fillers on the gnoblars, it adds a bit varyation to a usaly overlooked unit. the conversions seem to have came out well too. keep it up and good luck

Well, after having spent way to much time on my IG army modelling and painting wise (almost done now though  ) I decided to get back to my ogres and finish the army for once and all.

Only addition since the new book is a firebelly as I really like the model and I thought it woul dfit in well with the rest of my army looks wise. Áfter some quick small conversions (as usual with me it's more of swaps really) which meant removing the hammer and replacing it with a lance tip from a boar boy and giving the model the lion gutplate from the hunter and some small green stuff touch up bits it's ready to get undercoated. I'll get pics up soon. This being my first finecast mini it was kind of an adjustment modelling the little tyke. I have to admit though I was unpleasantly surprised by the casting quality, not in the way of bubbles etc as there were barely any but a lot of surfaces were really roughly finished. Also it seems that being able to bend it sives GW carte blanche to make models which simply don't fit without repositioning, which kind of annoys me a lot, the head/hand with the firebelly were horrid to get right. Ah well, it's together now so I guess it's something to look out for with any further purchases.

The unit standard for the iron guts is built aswell, as is the hunter now (finally).

Two things I can use some advice on, I got the old Golgfag's box set for my maneaters (it was simply to cheap not to get, and the new dude looks fugly as heck). Wondering whether I should convert them to fit in with the rest of the army or leave them as they are and paint them completely different as well so they will really stand out as ogre's who aren't from the local area. Any suggestions? Second, I need some extra stuff to make it a ncie rounded off points total, I'm tempted to get a thundertusk right now but it'll be a bitch to convert (when done it'll look awesome ofc but it'll take aaaages), other option is to get a final box of normal ogres and turn them into a few iron guts and bulls so I get a total of 11 iron guts and 13 bulls? I'm still kind of on the fence when it comes to this, not sure what to do right now...

So after a break there's some more stuff finished (or almost finished) for my horde. The bsb is finally done, all that is missing is for it to have some freehand kanji painted on it. The firebelly I chose to give blue flames as I was afraid that normal yellow/red would not stand out very well with an army that is mostly red/brownish (and yes, I do know blue flames usually burn without smoke, but hey, it's magic  ). The gutplate I replaced aswell as I found the one the firebelly came with not to be very in tone with the rest of the army. Same went for the maul/hammer thingy he has, that has been replaced by an orc spearblade (tip, not sure what it's called). The maul left over will be donated to my savage orc boss so my greenskins get something in return for giving all their gear to the ogres  . the fb kit was a bit of a dissapointment quality wise, I expected a lot more for the price I paid, I think from now on my characters will either be 2nd hand metal or just converted from plastic bits and models.

Anyways, enough prattle and talking, some pics.



and a picture of the entire army as it stands, it is still pretty small but I don't feel like turning into another exercise of patience like with my O&G horde