Our Dearest War and raidings...

Right a bit of Oldhammer this time!

Eeza Ugezod's Mother Crushers earned themselves a place in my heart after I read the fantastic (and surely Clockwork Orange inspired) translated excerpt from the Orcish Volees Adgitz - some form of war diary written by a surprisingly eloquent Orc, which serves admirably as background for this Regiment of Renown.

'We goes miles this day. Last dark we kills many wittering souls, poking and cutting them - but not having times to make it slow and get them good and screechy. We gets on the Great Crossing and suddenly all around there'. Stunty Long Beards (Dwarfs) -trapping us boys and making pain threats. Then they goes all grinning silent, and crashing through the crowd comes a Great One, all drunk up, with great iron boots sparking as it steps, and long spikes and jags hanging off them, all dressed up for Orc stomping. It comes roaring and swaying towards us, swinging its club and making us boys windy and tearful. And the stunties are laughing, saying at last they'll have our pretty fangs to make their stunty women grin and dance. And us bold boys - we bunch up close, but cannot help a little wimpering. But Eeza Ugezod's got no wimper. He waves his axe and swears he's going to cut Great One's feet off and pop them in its face. With this he goes off fast forward and sharp hacks the Great One. Its knees goes one way, its great screaming whiskers goes another. The stunties has one look and go all quiet and shuffly. Then Guted - our champion - he gives an honest war shout and we goes off at them cutting up their little bodies, this way and that, and we collects much headskin with hair on it and ties it to our belts. We paints their juices all over the Great Crossing and we calls it the Red Span. We push all the stunties off it, but keeping a few for screarnings later and food for the march. We leaves not too many boys deadstiff and continues our way to make our dearest war and raidings.'

The background for the Mothercrushers contains several of what I assume must be puns - standard fare for these old Citadel releases of course! However, there's a couple that still flummox me.

I'm sure the Volees Adgitz must be some Orcish corruption of the title of some French (possibly Napoleonic - crossing the Alps/The Great Crossing?) war memoir or famous military text. The name of the Chaos Champion who ultimately defeats the Black Orcs must also be some kind of pun - Edis Edis anyone?

Let me know if you can shed any light on them!

Having enjoyed Warlord Paul's recent posts on tactics, it's interesting to see them mentioned here - namely the Black Orc tactic of using massive Juggernaut columns, supported by archers and Wolf Riders on the flanks, to smash through enemy opposition. Suitably crude but effective! I reckon I need another two or three ranks before this lot make a column big enough in my mind's eye for that.

We'z cummin' to getcha!

Interesting also to note that in 2nd ed. Black Orcs get +1 on their animosity rolls - I haven't got a copy of the rules to hand but judging from the rules description it sounds like they are more likely to fall prey of animosity because they "naturally victimise smaller Orcs and Goblins" - a bit of a far cry from the disciplined, animosity blockers they were to become in later editions!

Amongst the ranks of mono-pose troopers I have one individualist - one of Nick Lund's other Black Orcs. He was originally going to be in a second unit of Lund Black Orcs I'm slowly building up but I needed him to make up the ranks for Ugezod - and so to does our individualist with his non-regulation shield!

As Eeza has formerly done a bit of moon-lighting as Hagar Sheol in my Orc's Drift project he ended up with a shield design to fit in with the hand motif befitting of the Severed Hand tribe, albeit with a slightly loftier type of hand gesture than many of his tribesmen!

Ugezod of the Death Commandos fame - a younger punk version as opposed to his older self commanding a more main stream unit?

And here's the command group - I've grown rather fond of the Guted mini - the champion on the left, much as I have done with Nick Lund's sculpts on the whole. I'd love a large unit of his Orc Wolf Riders...

I could have done with turning the standard bearer around a bit more to see the Orcish runes I painted on the banner - excerpts from the Volees Adgitz no doubt!



You've got to love the crazy monkey with cymbals style pose of the "Musician" - not sure his fellow Orcs would be too enamoured of him after a few hours of listening to him though...

So what's next - well I suppose I'll have to make some plans and post the obligatory New Year's post and then promptly ignore all the projects I intend on tackling as soon as the next new shiny thing comes over the horizon!

However, what I will say is that the Goblinoid bug has bitten me again and I have a large unit of Grom's Goblin Guards (2nd version) waiting to be finished off, along with some Boar Riders, another large unit of Goblin archers and the obligatory fanatics! It's about time I got some of the more exotic troops into my Goblinoid horde...

I haven't forgotten about Lustria and there's a whole bunch of 15m Martians threatening imminent invasion some time over the next couple of months so watch this space!