EARTHMEN OF BISM

Another lot of pre-slottas I painted up earlier  this year, they are Red Orcs from Citadels Fiend Factory range, I remember asking my Dad to pick me up a pack of orcs from some shop in Portsmouth while he was down there on business, and he came back with a little bag of 3 of these guys.....

Not how I imagined orcs at all, but I suspect the then very young Perry Twins were following on from Bryan Ansell's Age of Joman orcs which have the same long lugubrious faces.

Somehow I've managed to build up a unit  of these figures , mainly by getting the odd ones and twos in job lots of figures and I was wondering how to paint them. Then I remembered the Pauline Baynes cover of C S Lewis' Narnia book The Silver Chair which shows the Earthmen of Bism all looking very dejected and I thought that this look suited the Red Orcs very well.

I'm not a huge fan of the Narnia books (although I enjoyed this one as a youth), Aslan is so infuriatingly patronising and holier than though (unsurprisingly as he is supposed to be God masquerading as a lion), but I decided to get painting and here is the result.

Full unit with Giant Tusker support. Led by The Lady of the Green Kirtle (a were-snake in the story)

Close up of the Lady, a Ral Partha figure

The standard showing the Lady in Snake form (Minifigs skull on top)

Light relief in the form of Captain Arnold Grubber, his nagging wife Constance and their offspring. He has a sentient shield called Cross Watkins, but I neglected to take a close up pic of it.

Rear view shots showing the different cloth designs based on the book cover. I painted the chainmail as loose knit cloth.

Close up of the Tuskers.

Not my favourite figures, it has to be said, but quite fun to paint. Some undead coming next.