Brutalquest Project: Hall of the Orc King

 Hi!

I have been footling about trying to settle on a suitable project to start the year and happened to be perusing Game in Perth when I spotted they had several boxes of Epic Encounters in their sale. 

A little pondering later I ended up picking up a copy of Hall of the Orc King for £25, reduced from almost £40.

Aimed more at the RPG crowd, it none the less has 20 chunky Orcish types along with a built in campaign that suits the sort of narrative driven approach that I'm trying to do.

The set comes with nine different sculpts which are of a decent quality, especially as they worked out at 80p each with a mixture of troop types, characters and even some rather nice cavalry to add a bit of spice to encounters.

You get four Orc cavalry mounted on bears and wielding bows and short stabbing spears. while each sculpt is identical, I plan on doing a wee bit of conversion work to them to give them a bit of individuality and they're surprisingly nice figures to boot.

You also get three archers and three spearmen. Fairly workmanlike poses and sculpt quality but should be fairly easy to either sculpt on a hat or do a head swap. I'd actually like to have had another basic troop type with something like a sword or axe but I can always add to the mix at some point in the future.

The first of the specialists are a bit odd, Orc Brewmasters with a barrel of Orc Ale on their backs and spiked tankards to thrash people with, the second specialist is a Gladiator who comes with a pair of swords and a bad attitude.

Next up are the heavies, a pair of half troll types with spikes growing out of them and heavy flails and two Orc Butchers who wouldn't look out of place as 15mm scale Ogres. These two sculpts are probably my favourites of the set as they've got tons of character and I'm really looking forward to painting them.

Finally you get the Orc King himself and a Shaman to back him up. Interestingly, for the key characters in the set, they're pretty dull but will give me some characters to lead my Orcs on Aeroth. I suspect I'll do a head swap on them and eventually upgrade them to something more interesting but as already mentioned, they cost 80p so I can't grumble too much.

As a whole the boxed set is well worth the cost and comes with a battle mat and campaign book too which is nice (although the infantry figures are based on 30mm rounds and the map is gridded for 25mm which seems a bit silly). 

The sculpts themselves are pretty nice and look like they'll lend themselves well to a coat of paint and the plastic they're made from is better quality than some manufacturers as none of them have wobbly bendy weapons and the sculpts have an interesting level of detail without being too busy.

I'm hoping to paint up some basic boys to act as villains and plan on chipping away at the set as a whole over the next few months until I get the lot done and if I add say a few Gobbos and an Ogre or Troll to the mix, I think I've got enough stuff for a nice campaign in the making.

I'm hoping to get a sample figure painted up in the coming weekend to see how I get on with them and will post an update when I've got it done but I'll be keeping my eye out to see if Game do any other sets in their sale (I'd been sorely tempted to pick up some Heroquest supplements they had in the sale but I've not got the core set yet so thought it may be a bit silly to get add ons rather than the basic game).

We shall see if this rather random addition to my collection helps in the hobby slump but I'm quite interested to see how I get on with them and would recommend folks take a peek in their local shops to see if there's any bargains to be had...

All the best!