How To Get Ahead With Battle Standards

It was about time my Savage Orcs had a Battle Standard; a dominating centrepiece to strike fear into the hearts of the enemy, and give the army something to rally around:

Hmmm.
I have to say, it's not really that impressive...

Oh, I see.

Da 'Am Fists

"Da fastest and da smelliest Orcses. Dey rides about wiv da pork choppas, in one big rack, or two streaky rashers."

"Also, dey paintz a stripe down the middle of their 'eads, which iz symbolic of the Aristotelian principle of da golden mean. Waaagh!"

After much painting and assembling, all the Savage Orc Boar Boyz are now done. My original plan was just to smarten up the paint scheme of the handful I already had, and maybe switch around the banner and shields.

I should know by now that my meticulous (*cough* obsessive compulsive *cough*) streak would take over. And once I had the new boars on the chariots, I was always going to go the whole hog.

As for the new boars themselves - they make fantastic remounts (luckily the old metals fit onto them - I never thought to check), although their dynamic 'leaping forth' nature makes them a real pain to rank up (as do their long tails). This was why I had to assemble them all in one go, but I think magnets will help to keep them in place.

PIGS! ... IN! ...SPACE! THREE RANKS!

Th'Orc For The Day

I have arrived at a conclusion as to why this Savage Orc army seems to be taking such a long time to complete...

I'd get there faster if I stopped buying more of the damn things on eBay.

"Put him in the Dettol bath!"

This particular Savage Orc Big Boss stormed my letterbox this morning. It's the only command model of the '92 metal range that I haven't got - and so I really didn't have a choice in the matter.

In fact, totting up the collection, I have almost all of that savage orc range: command, boyz, arrer boyz and boar boyz. A total of 41 different models (we're not talking about the subsequent 7-type monopose range of change-a-weapon-and-repeat).

I'm short just 3 infantry models, that are apparently so unpopular (or carefully hoarded) that I've never even seen them on the market.

Of course, the army's complete now. So even if I saw them, I wouldn't want them. No sir, not at all...

Who's Da Boss?

(or, if you're reading this in the UK, circa 1991: "The Upper Hand")

Despite having a considerable amount of Savage Orcs to paint up, it became apparent very early on that I had no model that would make a suitable Warboss (putting half my command models on chariots probably didn't help that).

I know it is heresy to spend your money anywhere else than GW, but their only representation for a brutal chieftain of a barbarian tribe was this twinkle-toed prancer...

Tr-la La-la-lally!

Preferring my Warbosses to have both feet on the ground, I looked elsewhere, and discovered a rather splendid 'Orc Brute' from the Avatars of War range (it's no Mantic Games, where you can pick up massive numbers of troops at a good price - but the character models are superb).

Behold my treachery.