Pages

Sunday, October 11, 2015

Workbench Update: Orcs and Elves

At long last, we're back! October is going to be crazy, but finally got time to pull the camera out and showcase some of the stuff I've been working on.

Here's the full complement so far - plenty of Ringwraiths, a handful of Spectres (hoping to grow up to 10 of them), and plenty of Orcs. Army is all in dark hues and once I get the basing done, should have a menacing horde.



Bit closer look at the army - youll see that most of the spearmen don' have their shields yet, but those are coming. Took a few games to figure out that being able to shield after the front rank dies really, REALLY helps. It also helps when S2 archery wounds your second rank on 6s instead of 5s...
These guys are technically Orc Warriors with Orc bows, but will probably use them as Orc Trackers. I do think Orc Warriors have their place - mostly for their slightly increased resiliency when the enemy gets to them in melee. On all other counts, though, I generally go with the 4+ shoot value. 
A close-up on a few Ringwraiths and my spectres. Four down, rughly six to go.
In contrast to the Orcs, the Elves are in clean colors - blue and white (how traditional) - and unlike many of my armies, they don't use spears.
It will take more than a row of Orcs to take down Erestor and his High Elf guards. That is probably why the Orcs brought a Ringwraith...
The Elves in white and blue ready themselves for all comers, hiding their bows behind a solid wall of shields. When battle is finally joined, the Elves unleash their secret weapon, Arwen Evenstar, to keep their shield-wall from being wounded for a round (and opening up some prized archery targets).
Hoping to get some games in with these guys soon (both Elves and Orcs). Keep watching this space in the coming weeks as we test out scenarios for the November THRO-esque tournament of 2015!

Tiberius

2 comments:

  1. Orc trackers are nice. Or you just give your bow-orcs spears... It is really awesome to have the extra support when the lines close.

    ReplyDelete
  2. For 5 pts/model, trackers are hard to beat. At 6 pts/model I'm personally of the mind that the orc warrior's D4 instead of D3 is not enough to justify the extra defense.

    My personal recommendation: don't worry about your archers being shot. They're chaff units, designed to redirect fire (including melee damage) from the rest of the ranks (as Mordor/Angmar armies thrive on numbers with support/control heroes + damage monsters).

    And on the point of learning how to properly run orc spearmen... *raises hand* thank you, thank you, ;)

    ReplyDelete