Goblinoid Citadel Combat Cards

On the back of completing my unit of Ruglud's Orcs, I realised that I have painted two more greenskins in my attempt to recreate the cards from the Citadel Goblinoid Combat Card collection.

I'm making them by hand, which means they are far from perfect, but they use photos of my own miniatures and when the deck is complete I plan to play with them with my kids. Hopefully they will still be kids by that time.

Ruglud's Armoured Orcs

Just in time for the end of Orctober, here is my regiment of 21 Ruglud's Armoured Orcs:

Here's the command group, the banner is taken from a Fighting Fantasy illustration in the Masks of Mayhem:

And the two main characters, both of whom appear in the Gonlinoid Combat Card deck, of which I'm working my way through slowly..:

Phew, that was a bit of a struggle, painting an entire unit in a month. Thankfully my colour choices and painting processes kept it quite quick and simple, it was the basing that was a pain in the arse. Now onto something different...

Goblinoid Combat Cards: Ulg Bonechewer

Ulg Bonechewer; not quite an Orc for the end of Orctober, but a Goblinoid none-the-less. 

He really will need all that WS 9 to be able to wield that massive flail

As I work my way through recreating the Goblinoid Combat Cards, I decided it was time to do a little converting (it's been a while) and so I hunted down a Grom's Bodyguard Goblin (which seems to have been the base model for the original conversion) and with the addition of a few plastic bits and some greenstuff I put together this fella.

He seems suitably armoured for a Goblin Chieftan and more importantly has that wicked, sneering grin that I associate with the early Goblin sculpts. I used my normal Goblinoid skin recipe, even though I was very tempted to go Goblin Green for the shield head as a throwback to the original model and rushed through a pretty swift paint job. Done! Enjoy!

Orctober - Giant Orc Chief and Bodyguard

A 1986 Citadel Flyer introduces a Giant Orc Chief and his Bodyguard (LE11) to the public and some 32 years later I’ve got to put some paint on them. I never owned this pair back in the 80’s and only purchased these in my attempt to collect all the miniatures from the Citadel Goblinoid Combat Card range. I didn’t love them before I painted them, but you kinda get intimate with the lead when handling it delicately for a few hours as you turn the plain metal cast into a character. And I’ve now fallen for the couple.

I often think about the sculptors intentions when they made these models, as I paint. Was he given a brief to make these two characters, was there a bigger picture (perhaps some scenario to play them with) or were they purely two orcs sculpted and subsequently put together and the theme added later? I always assumed that the horned character is the Orc chief, but he’s hardly giant or imposing enough to be a chief. The supposed bodyguard is just the same size and has a much sterner facial appearance, perhaps there’s been a switch of role here; the chief in disguise? In fact why would such a renowned giant Orc chief even need a bodyguard? Is he worried about an attempt on his life? Does he have lots of enemies within his war host? I can imagine this being the case, just think of all those dastardly orcs (and goblins) sneakily plotting to remove him from the head of the horde. All of this conjecture of course adds to his character and has me yearning to invent some narrative game where the Chief and his bodyguard have to survive the assassination attempts of a variety of foes. Could be an idea for a future BOYL game...

Anyway; to add to the character of these orcs,  I decided to use the influence of Fraser Grey’s style on my shield designs; those puffy, rounded and sleepy faces protruding from the shields have always seemed  apt for these orcs and Grey’s style left a lasting impression on me from seeing his work in early White Dwarfs.

Goblinoid Combat Card: Rungit Spleenchewer

Following on from my 40k Ork, here's my last involvement for this year's Orctober, another fantasy orc Combat Card for my collection:

Paint the model in my own scheme (based loosely on the original). 

Take a photo of it.

Resize the photo, cut it out to fit the shape (using scissors)

Glue it onto the colour photocopied template.

Fill in the name and stats with felt-tip / paint.

Here’s a few more shots of Rungit himself, with his lovely old-school shield that came with the model.:

And the original card next to my hand crafted version:

Handmade Goblinoid Combat Cards

I decided to make my own set of Goblinoid Combat Cards, using photos of my own miniatures, having seen the great work of Nico with his Frostgrave version and of course Fimm's completed set of Goblinoid miniatures. I have decided to take my version of the project in a slightly different route and go as old school as possible, eschewing Photoshop/Illustrator for the layout of the cards and instead going down the handmade collage and freehand route.... Here are the first three (I think I will go over the gold writing with yellow paint to make it truer to the original cards and to give a greater contrast - the gold is lost a little on the green card). The first three:

The idea being that when I have a complete set, I can give them to my son as a Christmas/Birthday present (he's currently 4 but may be a teenager by the time this project is complete) and we can play together with my hand made cards with photos of my own miniatures. Of course we could just play with the miniatures themselves, which I have only just realised as I'm typing this!

The template:

To make this I used some green card and cut it to the same dimensions as the original, including the curved corners. The stat area was a strip of pale blue card, cut out and stuck down, followed by a thinner strip of white on top. The area to house the photograph of the mini was a smaller white shape on top of a slightly larger piece of black card. Some careful pencil lines were drawn in to give me the space to carefully write the title of each stat in place. You can also see the pencil lines for where the names and titles of each character will go. The template was colour photocopied onto nice thick card (I will laminate the cards at a later date).

Now of course we all make mistakes, mine was to colour photocopy this without removing the pencil lines or the white central shape. This meant that every colour photocopy has the pencil lines on (and can't be rubbed out - aaah!) and the photo I take of each completed mini has to be cut out to exactly the same shape as the white, if it's too small the white can be seen around the photograph. But no biggie, I can just black this out if necessary.

Finally on the colour photocopy I then decided to hand write the characteristics of each goblinoid. Partly because I have no idea how to do it on a piece of software but mostly because I prefer hand making and the irregularities that accompany that anyway. Red felt tip for the number stats and white and gold permanent markers for the namings. I will change the gold to yellow I feel though - agree?

Goblinoid Combat Cards - sculpting shields

As I toil away on a few other, quite large projects, I decided this weekend to have a break from painting and break out the greenstuff. I wanted to make the shields on my recreations of the Goblinoid combat cards, in relief, as I've always admired the shields of Kev Adams and Fraser Grey who did this originally. It's a chance to test my sculpting skills and to add my own twist to the iconic Goblinoids rather than a direct copy of the originals, which is what Jeff is doing in his same project (he started way before me though). The skin colour, when I come to paint these, will also be in my own style rather than the lurid greens on display on the cards.

When sculpting, I used very small blobs of greenstuff in the way that I watched Kev Adams work last summer. Building up in small increments from lowest areas to most raised seemed to make sense. Using some small sculpting tools I was able to shape the forms of the face before adding a last layer of detail when all the base work was complete and solid.

So first up, with an actual bead for a beady eye; a jolly shield, winking at us:

Followed by a backhanding, horned skull:

(Halfway through sculpting this, I realised that the horned skeleton was posed giving a backhand slap - needless to say it was way too difficult to sculpt this!)


And then the epitome of angry and evil:

And finally a burning skull:

This was a fun few hours/afternoon's worth of work and working on such a small scale has given me some added confidence going forward with my sculpting. The next shields I'll sculpt will be more in the Fraser Grey style, much more rounded, smooth and exaggerated features...

Citadel Combat Cards: Goblinoids

It was always going to happen; constructing a Warhammer 3rd Edition Orc and Goblin Army, similar to the one I collected as a teenager in the 80's and sold as an adult in the 2000's. Upon my re-introduction to the hobby, I'd started to collect the odd Goblinoid model for my Lost and the Damned Retinue project (Orcs and Goblins) and then this slowly grew to more of a warband and now the next step is to grow it into a full scale army using the same classic models that I once owned.


But to make the collecting aspect more interesting (and more difficult) I recently purchased the Citadel Combat Cards, Goblinoid edition with the aim of collecting those specific greenskins first to add some additional models to the growing horde. Now I'm not one to do things on a total whim, a fair bit of research is always conducted first. An initial scour of eBay gave me hope in that there are a lot of O&G classic models being sold there and for decent prices too. A secondary search for others who may have undertaken a similar task bought me to Fimms BlogSpot where he had actually completed the task in it's entirety (although I'm unsure whether he's painted them all yet). Using his own research I have discovered that some of the Snotlings are very rare, that one Goblin has been heavily converted by Kev Adams and that some of the models have been mirrored when photographed to provide a better fit within the combat card composition.


So rather than collect them all first as he has, I'm going to collect and paint along the way, which will hopefully give me ample time to complete the project (it took him 3 years just to source the minis!). I already have a few of the required models painted up (my rule here is: the model must be the same, but painted and based in my own style to fit in with the previously painted greenskins). So the first three completed models:

And then with their respective cards:

To end this post I should say that I've now got this additional idea that I'll eventually combine my photos with the same combat card template (any suggestions on how to do this easily?) to create my own card system (as the amazing Nico has here for Frostgrave) and finally, if anyone has any of the models from the set, I'd be very interested in buying or trading (especially these pesky, rare Snotlings: