What big double handed weapons you have Mr Wolf...

Another unit I got to finish was Golgfag's Mercenary Ogres, or the Red Dogs of the North as I've christened them. The name comes from the name of Golgfag's clan name - Rutdrogg. Kind of sounded like Ogre dialect for red dog to me anyway! And for red dog read wolf.

The original posts and background can be found here, here and a bit more on the shield designs here. I notice from the dates of those posts that it's only taken me four years to finish off the unit!

I think I have to thank Leadasbestos for the champion - it was a while ago though! The additional troopers came from the fair hand of Steve Casey on his first go at the Bring and Buy at Vapnartak. That was a good weekend as I also hooked up with other Oldhammer stalwarts Padre and Hetz.

What with the large time gap between painting up the two halves of the unit I was faced with the added challenge of colour matching - think I just about managed it. Thank goodness for Army Painter dark wash!

Gart'hud the champion is a great addition to the unit and is a mini I've coveted for a while. Don't know if it's the crew cut/mullet hair-do or the strangely simian pose that appeals to me.

Another additional challenge amidst the pre-BOYL rush was coming up with another three free hand shield designs to fit in with the theme of the unit - red dogs. These turned out a little simpler than the originals but I think they look the part.

Above are the newer designs and below the original ones I had a bit more time to lavish on.

It was quite refreshing to be doing designs with such a limited palette and working with red on black meant that I had to layer the colour up to make the red stand out - good learning process. I had a lot of fun on the standard, trying to give the impression of a staring wolf face from the various rags hanging from the banner pole.

The only other change I made to the original minis was re-basing them from the enormous 50mm scenic bases they were on to nice regulation 40mm scenic bases. Not because I'm a particular stickler for the rules but the ten of them together would have taken up a huge are of table!

The last post I'd like to redirect you to in case you missed it first time is the little solo game I played to familiarise myself with 2nd ed. Plus I'd just finished the first half of the unit!

Keeping the Wolf from the Door