For a while, I have been toying around with the idea of updating the old Green Skins. Don’t worry, I don’t want to give the Blank Land Orcs a complete overhaul because as they stand at the moment, they have their own playstyle, which is totally unique to any other army in the game of Three Plains and very different to most orc armies from other fantasy games.
So what do I want to change; well I can sum it up in just two headers, which are: ‘Making My Green Skins more Animated’ and ‘Changing the Size of their Models’. Let’s get straight into it.
Making My Green Skins More Animated!
Just as a point of reference, here is a common Three Plains Orc Grunt, Saw and Blue Orc underneath.
(Btw, you can download the Blank Land Orc models for free HERE!)
So what’s wrong with them? To be fair, the green skins have technically better models than the Herlanceians have, which makes sense as I created the Herlanceians first and then the orcs. However, I feel the Herlanceian models have aged better because humans generally form up into far more organised units than the orcs do. So the Herlanceians still look fairly good when they are in a unit, even if that group is only made up out of the same model. Whereas, the green skins are meant to be a rabble of warriors who can just about keep in rank and file. So all their models in a unit should look very different from each other.
It would be nice to see some of my orcs’ waving their swords and shields up in the air and screaming at the enemy. You know being more animated.
Also, just another thing to mention, but the more eagle-eyed among you might have noticed that all of my new models have had their black lines reduced.
The reason being, for smaller print and play models, such as my (15mm and below), black ends up dominating the print and can blot out a lot of its detail.
For a while now, I have been avoiding using black to outline everything whenever possible. Instead, I use a dark related colour to highlight a feature.
Take a look at the new Terror Rider model underneath, where you can see I have cut down using black. I think the model looks better for it.
Some of the dark lines on the model are not even black, but a dark grey and look better with the naked eye rather than over my crappy camera. The red gens and the rider’s arm look quite nice with this blending technique.
If we take a quick look at one of the new Jigor models I have been working on, I have taken this style a step further and only used black for the outside line of the model.
Changing the Size of the Model
In Three Plains the game and just about all fantasy wargames, and law, the green skins are believed to be generally stronger than humans and elves. However, in this game currently, their strength rating is the same as a human or elf…
Now if you have read the rules, you might think there is nothing weaker than a human or elf in the game, as their single base attack has no modifiers (which is also true for the Blank Land Orcs). However, you would be wrong.
Three Plains gets around this problem by simply giving weaker creatures a bigger base. For instance, an Herlanceian Guard model has 2 figures on a 20x20mm base and has 1 attack. Zombies are a little bit weaker than humans are in this game (or not as good in combat at least). Therefore, their model contains 3 zombies on a 30x30mm base instead, which makes them just a little bit weaker in combat than the human spearmen. This is because more humans can cram into combat than zombies.
Returning back to the Blank Land Orcs, the reverse is also true and can be applied to my orcs. For instance, instead of having 2 orcs on a 20x20mm base, I would like to have just the 1 figure on the same sized base. This would make an orc as strong or as deadly as 2 averaged humans, which also would have the benefit of not having to change too much in the game.
The new model’s figure would be much fatter and wider and would look something like this underneath.
Since the Blank Land Orcs are essentially an infantry army, creating one new core model would affectively be enough to make this update possible and not too hard to do.
This new orc model would have 3 main stances in both blue and green. They, in turn, would have many different attachments of arms, heads, armour and weapons to allow the creation of a wide number of different looking models in a unit. Furthermore, this new model will also allow me to create all the different units in the army, simply by changing its colour or adding or taking away its armour and weapons.
I think on the next poll I will give members a chance to vote on starting this process, which will only be a start. So I will look at creating the basic model to base all the other new ones from. I will not be updating the entire orc army…
Anyway, I hope you have enjoyed this post and let me know what you think, as it’s always good to hear from you guys.
Thank for popping by 🙂
Dave
Btw, if you have wondered on here looking for print and play orc models, check out their other ones on the WarGamingVault HERE