Lead Legionaries: Warhost 28mm Orcs - 'Gut You Like a Bonefish!'

Tuesday, August 26, 2025

Warhost 28mm Orcs - 'Gut You Like a Bonefish!'

Beginning of an orc horde -- 8 Warhost 'Linebreakers' (28mm metal figs from Hobday & Hicks)

Somewhere, Theoden is looking down at me, sighing, "And so it begins..." With this first batch of 28mm Orcs, I have begun my "2026 Project" of painting an Orc army for Dragon Rampant. These are metal miniatures from the Warhost line produced this year by Hobday & Hicks. I purchased them when my friend Jeff Gatlin was running one of his 50% off sales, downsizing (and eventually shutting down) his gaming business. I bought two packs of four "Linebreakers" and two packs of orc archers. Frequent readers of Lead Legionaries may remember I bought way more than that a couple months later of 28mm metal Gripping Beast Orcs (from their Ragnarok line).

These sculpts have lots of personality and very vile looking, ferocious Orc faces

I began with the Warhost ones because it gave me a chance to experiment some. I am a bit of Tolkien traditionalist when it comes to my fantasy. No green orcs or no D&D pig-noses for me! I take the description from the text of the Lord of the Rings and interpret it as I think it is meant. Described as "sallow" skinned, and dark (even "black" in one passage), I am interpreting that as very dark-skinned creatures with an olive or yellowish hint to their flesh. My particularity about orc skin color necessitated a test batch, and what more perfect group than the one from a different line than the rest?

Left-hand fig is one of my favorites, every time I picked him up to paint I would recite Orc lines

After priming them with White Gesso (I was tempted to buy a bottle of Black Gesso and use that), I painted the skin areas with a craft paint from Delta Ceramcoat called "Walnut." It has a more watery mixture than some, and settles into low areas acting almost like a wash if you don't put it on thickly enough. After the base coat had dried overnight, I dry brushed it with two different colors. The first was a Folk Art craft paint called "Raw Sienna" -- a medium leathery tone. The next day I did a final highlighting with Delta Ceramcoat "Khaki." I was very happy with how the skin tone came out. Much to my surprise, there was even an olive tint, especially if next to green clothing. Not a bright, Games Workshop green skin, but a true olive complexion, as is sometimes used as a description for Mediterranean flesh tone. I was worried that the eventual black wash would ruin that, but I was happy that it did not. It just made them more dark skinned, which is something Tolkien refers to more than once in Lord of the Rings.

I like how the dark red clothing looks on the Orcs, and their patched-together, repaired armor

Next up was the metal and armored parts of the figures. The Linebreakers are heavily armored -- most in chainmail and a couple in scale mail. There is a lot of great detail on the armor, too. Some have metallic discs or bands attached in random places, as if to patch up holes made in them (and also, likely, the previous wearer of the mail shirt!). I painted all the metal, including the metallic part of their weapons, in Iron Wind Steel. There was one scale armored orc that I painted the individual scales bronze, next (leaving the sides, tops, and bottom steel), as well as a couple Orcs that got bronze discs attached to their chainmail. For the rest, the steel received a light drybrush of Silver. Here and there, I went back and added steel to rivets and such and then painted the center part copper. For the most part, though, you see a sea of dark metal with only a hint of a silvery glint here and there when you look at this batch of Orcs. That was definitely how I wanted it.

Half of the Linebreakers were armed with heavy, two-handed weapons & the rest with crude swords

The next step was to paint the clothing colors. I surveyed my paint racks and wrote down a list of colors that I think would look good for orcs. Most were darker versions of a color (like red), or pale versions (blue or green). I had no real plan at this stage, just working my way, in general, from the "inside out" on the clothes they were wearing. Cloaks, hoods, and such would be last. There were a couple colors, such as the pale yellow, that I probably won't repeat. Otherwise, once dry brushed to give a worn look, I think most of the colors work well. I will probably do more tans next time, and I definitely liked the olive and pale greens next to the dark orc flesh.

Filing out of the ruins was vile batch of dark, sallow-skinned Orcs, edging stealthily forward

Another interesting and unusual detail on these metal sculpts was the "Orc take out" many seemed to have hanging from their belt or around their neck. These appeared to be hands or other random body parts carved off of a dead enemy. I assume the orc must be carrying them around in case he got peckish and wanted a snack! In one case, a severed head is tied by its hair to the Orcs belt. I painted all of the carved off body parts with a very pale flesh, and liberally added Iron Wind Blood Red to them. Straps and belts were painted leather, various hilts of knives or swords often got some bronze on the them, and this batch was getting very close to being finished. I used a pale yellow for both the eyes and the Orc teeth, where they could be seen. The eyes received a dark brown dot for their iris/pupil.

I decided to do my normal base flocking on the Orcs, rationalizing they're invading fertile lands

I really like how these "Orcses filth" (as Gollum would say) came out. These are really cool sculpts, with lots of fierce-looking character. The only thing I didn't like were the "knuckle dusters" or metallic domes the characters carrying swords one-handed had molded on their off-hand. I Googled what they might be, and one result said they were intended to be metallic reinforcements for their fists to either smash enemy faces or perhaps deflect blows? I also felt there was a chance they were supposed to be metal bosses for a shield that was sculpted with a hole in the middle (for the boss to poke through?). There were no shields in my Linebreaker packs, though. So, I painted them up as dubious, un-Tolkien like, knuckle dusters or brass knuckles.

The trio of craft paints that I used for my Orc flesh -- base coat Walnut, and two dry brush highlights

The next batch, the Warhost archers, is just underway on my painting desk. There is another batch of figures and some terrain and scatter in front of them, though. So, stay tuned here for more updates on the coming orc horde....!

MINIATURES Acquired vs. Painted Tally for 2025