Willmark:
As many of you know I play 3rd edition Warhammer and I am also assembling a Nippon Force that can be used for 3rd Edition or as a 5th/6th Edition Dogs of War force.
An outgrowth of that is I’ve also been working on Regiments of Renown. One good thing is I have two old school RoR. The first is Golgfag’s Ogres. Now, I’ve had a love hate relationship with these guys for 20 years. I got them fairly cheap (looking at it) back in the day as it were; plus I got the set with eight ogres. So not a bad score.
The problem? I’ve never quite liked the minis themselves as I truly like the rest of Jes Godwin’s ogres much more as well as the Marauder giant ogre minis. These guys have always left me as meh… Their poses and weaponry; some of them having really primitive weapons (like the stone headed club on the musicians hip), etc didn’t really help.
Despite all this they saw lots of action with middling results back in the late 80’s/early 90s, mainly in my 3rd edition Empire Army. Sometimes they even served as mercenaries for my 3rd Edition chaos army (when not using them as a Khorne force under Slaves to Darkness rules) in larger battles, and even my for dark elf host, likewise a 3rd edition army of mine.
Even though I used them frequently, I never liked their paint jobs either. Before I settled into their latest paint job (see below) I probably tried three different times to give them an adequate appearance. Each time my heart wasn’t in it and it showed. I even tried to sell them with no takers from 2009 onward. I also got into “Oldhammer” to a degree and tried to trade them away with no success. So for the last 4 years they had been sitting in a box for labeled for trades.
Here is how they appeared prior to the paint being stripped off for the billionth time; I have no idea what I was thinking for the standard? Looks like crap! The rest of them? Ugh.
About 8 months ago I tried yet again to give these minis some attention. This time around I worked on retooling their weapons utilizing the sprues left over from my black orcs. I added spears for some troopers, helmets and different weapons, even for Golgfag himself. I set them aside and got busy with everything else in life this spring, summer and fall. About a month ago I looked at them again. They looked absurd with their modifications. Fortunately, I didn’t do too much modification to the lead itself.
So once again I repaired them back to their original configuration and glued them onto their battered 40mm bases where they sat until last night, then a breakthrough.
Now to backup: the very first White Dwarf I ever bought was #140 which had the 1991 Golden Demon Awards in it. Since I was poor back then I rarely sprung for WD as I’d rather put my $ towards minis. On Page 29 however was a modified version of the command group of Golgfag’s Ogres with modeling putty for hats, added feathers, etc. While well done, it didn’t really fit my style of modeling or painting, let alone the fact that I didn’t really start to convert armies or units to any real degree until around 2005. But the fact that minis that I had were in White Dwarf and I was struggling with the look of mine didn’t really click or at least I tried not to consciously mimic what was presented. Maybe that was the issue? I liked the look of them, but didn’t want to wholesale copy them.
Flash back to a month ago and I primed the ogres and they set on my desk until last night. I picked one up then another and the rest. Before I knew it I was onto something. I broke out WD #140 again and decided to use it as a guide for my unit, but paint them and add modifications I wanted: a skull here, some old school mushrooms, shields etc. And as I went I found I liked the look of them, at least better. I hacked off the items I didn’t like and modified one to carry a flail (his mace head is missing). The end result? A unit of 8 ogres usable as true mercenaries for my various armies with a paint job I actually like. I painted the bases and their movement tray a more neutral brown unlike my chaos dwarf army that features gray bases to mimic rock; I wanted the ogres to be more universal that can be used by any army that can pay them among by 3rd edition armies.
Anyways if you read this far, here they are:
One thing I kept was the orange “skunk hair” for the unit champion, I was inspired by the cover of the 1st Edition WFRP book so it stayed.
Pics are still meh, I need to get some more lights for my light-box. Suffice to say the minis look far better then the pictures indicate.
Next up? I have 11, 3rd Edition Mengil Manhide Dark Elves at the ready! They have undergone some mods over the years too but largely back to their 3rd edition form, but that is another post for another time…
EDIT: I actually have three Regiments of Renown from 3rd edition, I forgot my Throg’s Hobgoblin Despoilers for my Dark Elf army.
