"Orcs and Gobbo Army for Oathmark on the cheap!" Topic

Having finished an Undead Oathbreaker army, and started a Dwarven army, I wanted an Opfor army for them to have fun with so went about creating a quick and dirty Orcs and Gobbo army for Oathmark. I had some luck finding a very affordable source of cannon fodder style orc figures, as detailed in this blog post. Thanks for your interest and thanks for your time.

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Nice looking horde, Walt. How about adding some thumbtack shields to some of the swords-orcs (or slung on the back of the archer-orcs) for variety?

As much as I think em4 are some of the rats in this hobby of ours, those figures are useful. They originally came as the Grenadier boxed fantasy game.

They make Dwarves to match these Orcs -- same prices. Three poses: X-bows, Spears, and Axes. They are very affordable figures. Only figures less expensive, would be 1/72 plastics, from Caesar and Red Box's Dark/Light Alliance sets.

For armies for which you want uniformity in, these em4 hordes fit the bill, very nicely. They are superb for assembly line painting: make the same brush stroke, on each figure, of each pose, one after another, until you make the final brush stroke, finishing that group of castings. En masse, they look very good. Cheers!

"Nice looking horde, Walt. How about adding some thumbtack shields to some of the swords-orcs (or slung on the back of the archer-orcs) for variety?"

An excellent idea.. I'm trying to give these guys a little more color here and there.

Walt

Here is a video of a chap doing drawing pin shields on his EM4 Orcs
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Another fella doing the same with his Dwarfs.

YouTube link

Great idea – thanks for pointing them out!

em4 also has shields. I bought some for my Orcs and Dwarfs.

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Very cheep

Drawing pins, a staple of the hobby.

I've seen a lot of good things done with those old Orcs and Dwarves over the years.

I thought the rules that went with them weren't bad either.
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I was today years old when I learned that Britons and Australians call thumbtacks "drawing pins". Another memo lost in the pond…

Had to watch the videos to learn what a "drawing pin" was. I suspected, as I have seen thumb tacks (USA term) employed before, for shields (by me, no less). I am genuinely impressed by the blue shields with the white mountains. "So easy, even a Caveman (named Slag) could do it." Cheers!

"As much as I think em4 are some of the rats in this hobby of ours" what have they done as I have consider buying stuff from them?

I don't complain about them. They sure did okay by me when I wanted to bulk out some armies. I just wish they had a way of restocking things quickly. I suspect they don't.

I use shields printed on cardstock and glued to the figures. I have the orcs and dwarves from the original set.

Its been years since I did business with EM4 but they were good to me back in the day. I have nothing but kind words for them!

The comment was news to me too. Had someone else made it, they might have been called out.

I've made several orders from them over many years. Never any problems.

Thanks.

John

I expect the issue is over various Grenadier licenses or perhaps a question of paying the sculptors. I know there's been some dispute between EM-4 and Mirlton over ownership but I don't know any real details beyond what's been said here over the years.

I've always wanted to see sets for other races, Elves, Men, Goblins, and Undead. Possibly with a separate weapon and hand and a separate head so you could swap things around a bit. I'd probably want a mounted figure for each race and three poses.

If the models were originally for a game boxed set, with regular figures sold as metal casts in blister packs perhaps, then that may answer a few things:

They are just left over moulds, perhaps even just left over unsold casts?? This may even answer the dispute between companies, if one has the moulds and the other is selling off old stock?? More likely em4 has the moulds,but they may be small moulds, or even hand operated ones?? This could explain delays, as if regular injection times couldn't.

This also explains why there is no other races, if they were just two plastic armies for a starter box. And being leftover tools/stock, the cost in new tooling may never achieve a profit being sold the same way. They are just skimming some cream.

Basically…

Back in the day Grenadier licensed out the moulds. So there were moulds in the United States, Italy, and Britain. Mirlton doesn't seem to have the plastics from the Fantasy Warriors game and Mirlton seems to have some metal moulds that EM-4 doesn't have. It seems EM-4 has access to them as well as the Space Rangers, giant robots, Combat Zone troopers and gangers, and Silent Death ships. These are all in the silver colored plastic and may have come out of the same facility from the beginning.

If I ever win the lottery I'll pay Marc Copplestone to sculpt more races and I'll buy Mirlton a Siocast machine.

A thumbtack:

A drawing pin:

Labels swapped not because we use a different name for the same thing, but because they are not the same thing and cyberspace is full of lazy morons.

When I search the Internet, I get that the two terms are interchangeable, and Push-Pin is interchangeable, as well. Your Drawing Pin image does not show for me, here. Not sure what your version of Drawing Pin is. Sorry. Cheers!

I'd be interested in seeing this myself. Sounds intriguing

I suspect it could be the one with the plastic vase shaped handle. However, it would predate plastic, so could resemble a regular metal seeing pin?

This is also called a thumb tack in North America.

These are also called drawing pins in the UK, Australia, etc.
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They look great Walt!

Xin/Jeff

Actually, a better option for a "rough look" are the wooden discs that are in craft and dollar stores. They cost, well, about $1 USD and have a wide variety of wooden disc sizes, a whole bunch are suitable for rough looking wooden shields for horse armies.

Here's a pic of where I got the idea from, sorry, don't have pics of my own stuff:

If the link doesn't work [sorry, I'm not a technical wiz] it's the last photo from this blog post here:
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Note that it is very easy to simulate damage on these wooden discs – you paint normally [roughly for orcs] then just scratch them with a hobby knife to show the bare wood showing thru.

Hope that is helpful.

Excellent idea! Thanks for sharing, Stalkey and Co! Cheers!