The Gut'Reapa' (orcs and gobs army, probably image heavy soon)

[Txan]

Nice, might wana add a lil more red

[Urgat]

Nah, no more red I think. Bah, dunno, I'll see. Anyway, another wip of the wyvern, as attachment. I got to admit I'm a bit at a loss as to how to paint the shaman himself... Though I tend towards making him a savage orc shaman, he does look quite too feral for a regular orc. Also that'd allow me to have some fun and give the wyvern some warpaint.
How does one put warpaint on an angry wyvern, you ask? Well, the shamans headbut' it first

[Malorian]

People that like chaos dwarfs sure like them a lot... The amount of converting/skill it takes to make the army is just mind blowing...

Cool looking wyvern. In a tounament last year I got to see some old wyvern models. Always good to see something different

[Warlord Ghazak Gazhkull]

The wyvern shaman looks great, I really would like to own such one ah well maybe one day.

Greetz
G

[Urgat]

ebay is your friend for such things

[Urgat]

Hop, yet another update on my slowly progressing chaos dwarf warriors (note: armours on these guys are not finished):


I've given up on the dark grey skin, two reasons for that:
1) No matter how hard I tried, I just couldn't make it contrast well with the armours, it would just look wrong
2) I'm already painting my dark elves with a greyish skin, and I figured I didn't want to paint two armies with the same colours. As I'm not actually painting normal skin tones (haven't decided how I'll paint my ogres yet, so they remain... brown, since I undercoated them brown for some reason), well, why not?
One thing though, I wasn't too sure on what skin tone I'd use, so I've tried three different ones (the first three on the left). Wasn't too sure which one I liked most, so I asked my girlfriend. She told me the clearer one (first one) looked more realistic, but she still prefered the third one. The second one, imho, looks more sickly, too... So that didn't really help me, the three having their pros and cons...
So why not just use the three? It'd give some varations to the unit, while the armours and bases maintain the visual cohesion. It's not like everybody's got the same skin colour in the real world too, so why not dwarfs? So for now that's the plan.
What do you think?

[bob_the_small]

Nice looking CD, can we get a bigger/closer photo of them?

[Urgat]

Thanks I'll post a large close up of one when I have one completly done, if you want.

[rtunian]

Fellow goblin big and warbosses, I suggest that you think beyond the scope of "fanatics may hurt a lot", and plunge into the marvelous realm of "even if they don't deal a single wound in the battle, fanatics DO hurt a lot"

i'm glad i decided to read instead of just looking at the pretty pictures!! speaking of which, very nice work!! my favorite is the 'chaos' goblins, very creative and well done~

one thing that's a little confusing is that in the above quoted post, you give some great advice for using fanatics, yet i seem to recall several times much more recently that you have sworn off of fanatics entirely, even advising others not to use them.

did you have a falling out with them? or am i confusing things you've said with things that someone else said?

[Urgat]

Nah, you're half right, I'm mostly not using fanatics anymore, but I don't think I recommended not using them. That post was in reaction to many topics that had appeared back then, with new people starting all night goblin armies (BfSP syndrom), and there would systematically be someone that'd say "take lots of fanatics, they'll wreck insane damage on the opponent." Anybody fielding fanatics knows that this is rarely true.
Well anyway, it was just my musing on fanatics, I do still use them from times to times, much much less often than during 6th edition, and, well, that post resumes how I use them when I do field some. And I find it still works well, btw, so I haven't changed my mind on that
But I've figured I didn't like them so much anymore. First, I got really unlucky, and got a series of battles where I basically rolled low upon releasing them, and then on next turn rolled 6 and stepped on them. It might make you smirk the first time, but not 5 times in a row. It makes you curse, honestly (yeah, I got that kind of "luck").
And then my chaos friend figured his knights could simply walk over them and not die anymore, and even use them to release the blighters. As basically a good two third of my battles are fought against him, and they appear to have lost most psychological impact on him, well, they don't really serve any purpose anymore. And my advices in that post work only on people who still think fanatics hurt. Still works fine on medium save troops or elite infantry, still, but I find myself rarelly facing those, it's either lots of knights or lots of weak troops that won't care (zombies...)

[Urgat]

Of making my own fantasy universe.

I'll post about that as I've always wanted to, and that blog provides me with a mean to do so.

So I've been creating my own fantasy universe, obviously. I'm confident many people do the same, after playing warhammer, or reading about a fantasy novel, or playing a fantsay game. The process would, I suppose, usually start with "it would have been cool if this was like that", or "I would have done that differently". Then the idea would take a life of its own, and evolve, evolve until it reached a stage where it would be rich and massive. I believe that's what I've done with my own universe. I've started mine drawing sketches in my textbooks in school instead of listening to my teachers (). I did tons and tons of these. At the begining, I actually created three different universes, a fantasy one (Veil of Darkness - in short, VoD), a sci fi one (keeped changing name), and one inbetween, some alternative WW2 technology style universe with a shattered earth and lots of non human species (Oleon Wars - OW). The fantasy one would looked a lot like Warcraft, back then. It had orcs and so on. They all had heroes and stories and stuff
Much later, I merged the fantasy world and the Oleon Wars world into one entity. The orcs were replaced by the barbaric species from the OW universe, the Ghors, and their sidekicks the Lemurs and the Chimps (I'll let you guess how they look like, should be difficult to figure out).
Now I'm writting a novel (well, a series of novels) based on the VoD universe, now mixed with OW.
A basic outline of this world woud be that it's quite similar, geographically, to our own world, like Warhammer (there's a major background reason to that, though). It shares many things with our world (religions, languages, etc etc) and has additional things.
The world is, rather ironnically, called the Eden's Garden, since the history of this world starts after the biblical Apocalypse, or so it is said. Nothing very Eden-like about it though. Most of the world is covered with the so-called veil, some kind of cloud-looking tear in reality that obscures the sky, and from which powerful arcanic energies fall down on Earth via eerie looking rains of plasma, mutating and killing everything it touches. Only mountain ranges and large water bodies are freed from the Veil, for it does not seem to expend above these, and that's where you will find the major cities of the world. Humans have settled under the Veil too, but it is a sad place to live in, constant vigilence being required not to fall to the arcanic rains. Without the thick leather coats that protect them, these people would soon disappear to leave the place to other atrocities. The beasts and the plants are often victims of the arcanic rains, and it is not rare that a tree takes a life of its own and starts praying on the living creatures nearby in these acursed places.
But humanity is not weak. There is the all powerful Kingdom of Gaelia (Empire would be a more proper term, but I didn't want to call it that), regrouping Gaelia itself, its western sister Brestia, and the Eastern Marchs. Its military might ranges from men-at-arms and knights to canons, alchemical-powered steel golems (think 40k dreadnaughts with huge swords and shields, to make it simple) and its fleet of flying warships (big zeppelins). To the north-west, the mighty kingdom peninsulas of Britania and Caledonia are torn between the animosity that exists between them and their southern neighbour and the northern barbarians that sometimes raid the countries for some unknown purpose. In the south, beyond the seas, the great minds of the Arabian countries observe the worlds and gauge the influences of the Black Towers from which the Veil appears to originate.
hop, map! (in french, sorry):


All those people live in relative friendship with the elusive Khorrigans, Felims and other humanoid species that dwell in the wilderness, and are to most but myths. From the east, past the Gardir's Gap, come the Khanite Clans, composed of feral humans not unlike the northmen that assault Britania, and the powerful Ghor tribes.

And I think that should be sufficient for now.

So, expending from that, I've been starting making rules for a wargame ala Warhammer (why of course). I'll probably post them here some day if I get to translating them and there's a flincker of interest shown (not gonna bother otherwise). The idea was to have something dynamic, fast, not too complicated while being complex enough to make things more than just a mindless slaughterfest. I'm not going to lie, I started from Warhammer (my main reference, after all), and thought about what I wanted to keep, and what I wanted to go.
Originally, I didn't want to keep the turn system, I wanted for each player to play in alternance, but it awsn't so easy to do, so I kept the turn system, but I've made up that action point system:
in short, you get a certain number of action points (AP) based on your army list (let's say the most basic troops give you a couple AP, while a canon gives none). To trigger an action (move, shoot, cast, etc -fighting in melee is free), you need to spend an AP. This also appeared to serve as army list limitation (a welcomed side effect I didn't expect), so basically you're free to take anything you want, but if you don't take at least a handful of base troops, you won't get to do much per turn (the mandatory general automatically gives a few, so you never have zero).
You can also keep half your AP in order to be able to react to the other player during his own turn (countercharge, counterspells, crossifres, things like that). I have yet to try it on the scale of a real battle, but the small tests I did worked surprisingly well.
For the rest, everything is based on modifiers of averages. Take a knight unit charging. With its stats compared to the stats of what is charged, it is bound to make on average a certain amount of damage. depending on die rolls, it may do better than anticipated, or it may do worse, but they will never completly fail (well unless you throw them at the mightiest foes). There is no "always" or "never" in the rules. Everybody strike at the same time, no going first or last in melee.

Then, the major change is that I wanted to get rid of everything that can result in arguments. It's a game and I don't want such garbage plaguing it. So everything that works with guesses is gone. So hop, I decided to use hexagons. With hexagons, everything is easier, heck, you can even easily decide random movements thanks to a D6 (six sides, handy, heh). Teh only thing a ruler is needed for is to draw lines of sight.

Let's have two shooting examples; first, an archer shoots at something that is 7 hexas away. Your average human archer has an accuracy of 3, and is armed with a composite bow (+1 to wound). To hit, that archer rolls a D6. Just add the accuracy of the archer to the result of the dice. If it's equal or more than the distance of the target, it hits (simple, no?). So he'll hit on a 4+ at range 7. It also has the advantage of making units gradually more easy/difficult to hit as they're closer/farther away. An archer that has his target standing just in front of him just won't miss. So don't do it, obviously.

[There's a many different weapons that give different modifiers, a longbow will give a comfortable accuracy bonus, a javelin gets a bonus for being thrown while moving, a sword gives different bonus to an axe or a knife, etc etc]

Well that's it for now, next exemple, and maybe more stuff and art later.

[Urgat]

Some Ghor concepts from before I looked at how gorillas actually looked like...:

And one I was working on today, untill my thumb decided it had enough:

THE real Urgat, from which my orc general took its name. Looks much more the part of the evolved gorilla, compared to the previous ones who, let's be honest, look more like hairy orcs ><
Ghors don't have regular cavalry, instead, they ride small units of very large beasts such has rhinos, bisons, mammoths, all armoured for more fun. I guess they're quite equivalent to what rhinox riders are in battle.

[Urgat]

Gaelian knight, so you see the look of a typical Gaelian troop:

[Txan]

So, Gaelian is the humans, and the Ghors are liek the orcs aroudn there?

[Urgat]

Something like that yeah. The Gaelians are one of the human countries, and the Ghors are one of the species that make up the Eastern Clans.

[Urgat]

I can't seem to stay focused for long on anything these days, so the new update is not CD, is not gobs, is not my own stuff, is not a wyvern, it's a...

...black orc big boss. Nothing out of the ordinary really, just toyed around with highlights on metalic paints and that's pretty much it. I've had that guy stored away for ages, couldn't be motivated to do anything big, so i figured I'd paint him. That's one more out of the way, so to speak.

edit: in case someone is wondering, the base comes from a dark elf mini I bought from Freebooter. It was perfect for that dude, really, rises him up (making him appear bigger), allows for the mini to be better seen, and helps rank up as well. And he fitted on it like a charm, just needed some pinning and hole filling, I added some gravel and that was it.

[mrtn]

Nice one.

[Dungeon_Lawyer]

THAT is one mean looking black orc bigboss. Its great to see your army , which was impressive to begin with, get bigger, better painted, and better based as one scrolls through the pages. Ok break time for me is over-Back to painting my steagadon!

[Urgat]

Thanks for the comments, they keep me going
Anyway, next in the series of "I may hardly ever use him, but what the heck", here is my boss with two choppas:

That's the ork nob that was given in a white dwarf issue along with a terminator. I figured I'd do something with him, so after adding ogre ironfists, an ogre sword, a skeleton axe blade to turn the grenade into a smaller axe, and a few pointy bits from various sources, and hacking away the ponytail (I hate them) and the futuristic bits, there you go, a big bad mean orc boss. Probably big enough to be used as a big or even warboss, actually. He's going to be a pain to rank up, I guess, but I have no unit handy to try it.
too much sun, the lighting completly washed away the shadings on the pic, ah well...

[Urgat]

Mmmh, I'm turning to you because I have a small design doubt concerning my future hobgoblins, and so I want external advice. Ok I have two options between which I'm hesitating:
1) normal heads, using gob faces and greenstuff for the droping nose and the smurf hood.
2) think immortals in 300. The sneaky gits kind of make me think of them, plus that sorts of fits with the general CD dwarf design, so hooded, with iron(gold/brass whatever) masks to make them more mysterious and menacing looking. But they won't look much like hobgobs anymore.
So, what would you people do? Which option would you choose?