Tuesday 27 May 2014

Acceptable in the '80s: Marauder Orcs and Dwarfs


White Dwarf 116 had little Warhammer Fantasy content. As I have said in previous posts, the game was finished with and a new success was looming on the horizon, Warhammer 40,000. For the next couple of years, articles that expanded on the skirmish system published in Rogue Trader in 1987 were expanded and developed to turn the game into a fully fledged battle system. Additionally, we are now in the era of the BIG BOX GAME, and so a great many pages of White Dwarf were spent detailing these releases, most notably the first edition of Space Marine. 

Still, there are gems hidden here and there. Such as the subject of today's post, the Marauder Orcs. I have shared by opinions on the Goblinoids before, and you will be aware that only Kev Adams can truly bring these creatures to life in miniature form. But I must admit, the Morrisons did a really good job with theirs!

The sculpts ooze the cruel malice of the orc race very well but still retain the comic touches of earlier releases. I am particularly fond of the different interpretation of the armour. The Morrisons give us a rather Mongol themed look that is distinctly different from the Citadel range. On the downside, these models are large. This was the beginning of the increase in size of models that the later '80s saw and the the design change from realistic clothing and weaponry to oversized 'comic book' equipment that still presides to this day. Still, this is still a characterful range with plenty going for it. Does it have any fans out there?


Also released in WD116 were some Marauder dwarfs. Sadly, there are no painted examples here and the range is shown purely through old fashioned line drawings. I don't really know a great deal about the MM10 dwarfs, as my knowledge is primarily of the renaissance style dwarfs that came a few months later. Any readers out there care to review these? If you have a large number of these models it would be interesting to hear you opinions on them or even see some photographs.

Cheers, 

Orlygg.

4 comments:

  1. I'm not much of a fan of the marauder orks - I have a couple spare that I plan to flog on eBay. The dwarves are another thing entirely as for me they ooze character.

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  2. I had the Orc with the raised fist in the last row, it was a very nice and imposing figure suitable for a champion of some sort. At this time I gamed an army of Dwarves but also gamemastered Warhammer Fantasy roleplay so I needed a handful of each protagonist race. I later converted him to Blood Bowl by simply chopping off his axe.

    As for the dwarves they are quite nice, some were more suited for roleplay like the two wizards (!) and the engineer throwing a bomb, while others were better suited for battle. I quite liked this range, and they were on par with the imperial range in size and sculpting quality. I still have a lot of them left, but they are in sorry need of repainting.

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  3. I have a soft spot for the orks myself, they are nice models to paint. Subedai painted up some nice ones recently: http://thelostandthedamned.wordpress.com/2013/10/21/the-fighting-big-uns/

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  4. Hi, I'm a huge fan of the old Dwarfs. I've got quite a large collection and I'm trying to get every single dwarf from that era painted @ my blog. http://db-dwarf-quest.blogspot.co.uk/p/blog-page_20.html

    Cheers.

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