My Orc and Goblin army

My Orc and Goblin army

My Orc army has been produced over my 29 years of on/off playing Warhammer. Basically when I first played Warhammer I played a lot of battles against Dwarfs with Orcs, before developing an interest in chaos thanks to the mighty Realm of Chaos books. When I got back into Warhammer, I wanted some continuity from the early days while using  a mixture of my old models and some of the best of the new models. It comes to 4000 points based around the 8th. edition Orc and goblin list, although it roughly matches this using a list based in third edition Warhammer Armies. But the aim is to play loose games of third edition based Warhammer with it. I am still in the process of adjusting rules to fit some of the new profiles for models such as the Arachnorak and squigs so that I can easily play with my version of 3rd. edition. But a bit of friendly play testing and adjustment should work this out. After all I don't do competitive gaming and it is playing out the narrative and the challenges this throws up that is most important.

So, the background!

In the Grey Mountains, the Dwarfs' of the  seven holds of Eira Gwyn fought a devastating 20year war of attrition against invading groups of Orcs. The battles would range from bloody sieges to personal, small scale skirmishes aimed at keeping mountain passes open. Finally a bloody push managed to drive the majority of the Orcs into the forests that marked the beginning of the Empire and allow the final five years to be based around mopping up the small groups of Orcs and Goblins that remained in the areas around Eira Gwyn and what the Dwarfs considered their territory.

The Orcs in the forest entertained themselves by fighting amongst themselves, beastmen, bullying the local spider worshipping goblin tribes and avoiding two nasty Orc characters. These were Finbad the Unrepentant and Gomidja.

Finbad the Unrepentant was a huge Orc who refused to accept that Orcs were defeated in Eira Gwyn. It was rumoured that he, along with his small band of big 'uns, was planning another big war. This was fine, however, despite their love of violence, Dwarfs did not like getting massacred and embarrassing defeats. The Empire was too strong around the  forests, the beastmen were too strong and the Dwarfs were definitely too strong to take on in a big war. Little fights were the order of the day and more fun. Finbad didn't accept this, but if you told him he would simply show you how good he was at war and completely destroying his opponents. He was very good, or so the Orc corpses would suggest.

Gomidja, on the other hand, was weird and dangerous. He was a powerful Orc shaman and he only appeared when he had a dark purpose, casting magic that caused deveestation, but also made the average Orc warrior feel strange. It was not clear what he believed in, but during the Eira Gwyn war he had turned up to battles and sieges where he then focused on plundering and capturing specific objectives, despite what the Orc chieftans tried to tell him what to do. It was also noted that any Orc who tried to tell him what to do met with a very sticky fate, meaning that he was left alone and any help he gave was gratefully accepted, even if it wasn't that helpful.

The Red Back tribe was the largest tribe of Forest Goblins and they were sick of the Orcs. It was bad enough fearing the Beastmen of the forests, without having to avoid the new influx of Orcs. After a while they decided to get their shaman, White Tail, to do something. The shaman decided to consult their god Araknorak, Red Back.  After a slow start the sky darkened and the drumming and dancing of the ceremony took on a life of it's own. The clouds darkened and spiders swarmed through the trees, White Tail and his assistants danced and let the sacred spiders bite them. Then at it's height, White Tail was struck by green lightening and from the sky and fell to the ground. Red Back emerged from the cave and stood over the prostate goblin before lifting him and cocconing him in silk.

The spider remained guardian for the rest of the night as the other goblins looked on in fear and awe, As dawn approached, a ripping sound could be heard. From the cocoon White Tail emerged. HE looked around at the hundreds of goblins and spoke! He told the Goblins he had ea vision. He would lead the Goblins against the Beastmen at skull rock clearing, freeing up the entrances to the Snarling Moon Night Goblin tribes caves. The Night Goblins would be in their debt and free to collect the forest mushrooms that were prized by their shamans. They would ally with the forest goblins. White Tail then assured the awe struck Goblins that they could then order Finbad to join them and he would, because he would see the Goblins power at defeating the Beastmen. They could then take on the Empire and be free from hiding from bigger foes. Foes would hide from them!

From the darkness of the woods an unseen watcher smiled and lent on his staff, tired from the spell he had just cast. Gomidja's plan was beginning, he would take Finbad to watch the battle at Skull Rock and from here he would build an army!

Pictures

All done with a poor camera which is unfortunately over harsh on the highlights.

A group photograph of the Orcs' and Goblins' ready for war.

Finbad with Harboth's archers in the background

Above is Finbad the Unrepentant with Harboths archers who joined his army in the interest of violence and looting. Harboth's archers were a Christmas present in about 1989. I never painted them until I started collecting Orcs' and Goblins' a few years ago. They are one of a few links in this army to my past gaming.

A Black Orc hero and White Tail, the shaman who thinks he is general

I basically built the platform for White Tail to give the impression of grandeur and the potential for magic power. All of this is borrowed from Gamidja who has his own (non- Orcish) aims and oacts but needs an army that would not follow him alone. Finbad is also Gamidjas puppet but is manipulated differently with Gomidja persuading him that they both have the same aims.

Lunarus, forge world shaman and one of my favourite miniatures.

The army is very strongly shamans. I noticed this as I painted it, but it fits with the narrative I'm developing for my battles with unseen and unknown power struggles between magic users of all races being partly behind all battles. This is above even some generals who never truly understand the wars they fight.

Red Back

Finally a shot of Red Back, the model that I got form my wife for my birthday three years ago that re-started my Orc and Goblin collection. The photgraph definitely doesn't do it justice and I will eventually get some better daylight ones done. I used an airbrush for the first time while painting this and I learnt quite a bit about painting as I did it. It is not the best thing I've painted, but  it is the largest and it showed me how inspiring some of games Workshops modern models are, despite what some older gamers say. In the bottom left corner are some Nigh Goblin archers. I really didn't want to paint such a big unit in balck. In fact I almost didn't bother with such a big unit but felt it fitted with my idea of how goblins would fight. In the ed I used brown in instead of black since I felt it gave a better, more gritty look and seperates them from the cartooney image of Night Goblins in 4th. and 5th. edition.

I won't list the exact army here, since, as I mentioned, I am still trying to work out how to play games based on third edition rules with some models that did not exsist in that version. There for there is not an exact list or points values. But then who needs point values, this is narrative gaming with each model and unit having it's own story!

More on Orcs', my solution!

I spent slightly more than 24 hours getting round to writing this, basically once again my world sped up and I had to drop things to keep up!

In my last post I basically had a negative rant about Warhammer Orcs' nad found that they were at best simply a copy of human raiders, complete with a few nasty overtones. Why bother with Orcs' when you have the more interesting chaos raiders? Or Beastmen from the forests? Or Skaven from below?

Does the idea that they rape and pillage make them different from many historical armies and the perception of most raiding forces? Why not focus on the nastier and more mysterious Fimir than the neanderthal turned green skin Orcs? At least the Fimir have an air of mystery mixed with real horror and revulsion, a left over factor of their source material from Celtic mythology.

Orcs going into third editon had no real culture and were just a brutish bad guy who the best that could be offered was some comic writing. Yet the solution to this came from Games Workshops development of Orcs, starting with 40K.

Around 1991 games workshop developed the concept of the orc for 40K, basically making it the Ork. I think the same problems pervaded with the orc being a bad guy with a gun but little else. The big developments were the idea that Orc society was something that was inherent in the minds of the orcs, not some constantly changing political society that humans live in. Culture amongst the orcs did not develop, it was programmed into them, they just knew how to develop weapons, technology and so on. Hierarchy was simply the largest at the top and war was simply an instinct, not a means to achieve something (although this instinct did allow them to plan and implement grand ideas such as conquest and enslaving so that they could build for more conquest and enslaving.)

With this the concept of the Ork changed too. Language was not taught, it was known, Orks didn't have family  unit, they grew from fungus and then joined tribes, conveniently getting rid of the long standing sore point of Ork wifes waiting and bringing up little Orks in a family unit based society. The reproduction of Orks was done by spores with the spores being released when Orks were happiest, basically when they were violent and at war.

Now returning to Orcs, the Warhammer equivalent. fourth edition hinted that these things occurred and introduced a more unified idea of Orcs. I can't see why it doesn't serve the Old World that was presented in WFRP better to have this idea of Orcs. Basically do away with the idea that Orcs (and goblins) are like some kind of raiding barbarians with a tribe based on family bringing up their young. Replace it with the simple facts that Orcs occur like fungus and war is their instinct. Tribes are built around this and can occur almost out of no where. While orc settlements can be found, caves can be infested with goblins and so on, there is no such thing as an orc kingdom or goblin kingdom, just large groups who from alliances behind the biggest and strongest leaders.

Orcs' in my Warhammer world are like this and this is the background I will base my games on, giving them a different purpose to other races. So:

Orcs and Goblins

The Myth

Consisting of tribes of brutal raiders from the badlands, intent on pillage and destruction. The abomination of the Half Orc shows their intentions. They will plunder and at times invade for territory. They are followers of dark gods' and pure evil. It is only the fighting amongst themselves that prevents them form completely over running the Old World.

The Reality

Although goblins often have malign intent, the Orcs main aim is simply violence and as much of it as possible. The Orcs are produced from spawns, like fungus, which grows more orcs, goblins, squigs or snotlings where ever it falls. They have similar intelligence levels to humans but rarely study, with most of their skills coming from instinct and the only learning done is learning better ways to be violent. They gather in tribes which are little more than collections of warriors behind the strongest leader who then takes the orcs to war. The stronger leaders tend to unite several tribes although  this rarely lasts long due to infighting. The more violence the Orcs experience, the more spores they release, resulting in the more Orcs. The Darklands to the east are over run by Orcs as a result. hHowever their inherent disorganisation has also meant other factions have been able to enslave and dominate large numbers of Orcs.

One of the horrors of fighting Orcs is the notion of half Orcs. Although rare, they tend to live longer than most Orcs due to possession of a judgement that is not based on simply finding the best way to commit acts of violence. A half Orc occurs when Orc spores infect a dying human or recently deceased corpse If the human was living he soon dies of a raging infection. Basically this corpse nourishes the Orc which as it grows absorbs some of it's DNA. Normal Orcs are asexual, while half Orcs can be make, female or neither. Some can even reproduce and legend has it that some noble families have Orc blood in them. This last factor has been exploited by the Chaos Dwarfs in their experiments with breeding different strains of Orc.