Shadespire Orcs – They're Very Green!

I know I said in the previous post that there may be a new purchase soon, but even I didn't expect it within 48 hours. A fortuitous need to go to town during my lunch hour yesterday saw me drift by the GW store on the off-chance they had the Shadespire Orcs in stock. Needless to say they did, and the associated green dice, and before I knew it I had completed (for now) the set of available Shadespire warbands and coloured gem dice.

Now, as you may know I am not an Orc/Ork player – never have been, never had any interest in them. Yet, whilst I was sticking them together I took in all the detail on the models and I really like them. I think the poses are a little more clumsy than the other warbands, but maybe that's an Orc thing. Bull has expressed his dislike of the new armoured Orcs on several occasions, but seeing them in their bare green plastic I began to wonder whether it was the gaudy yellow paint scheme that's put on them by GW that's putting him off. The models themselves are rather cool (I think) and if done in a black/rusty metal (i.e. traditional Ork) colour scheme they could look awesome.

One of the most interesting things I discovered, having all four warbands together on the desk, was the variety in model sizes. The scale of the individual warband seems to almost be a correlation with the number of models in the warband. For example – the Liberators and Ironjawz are by far the largest models and have 3 and 4 models in their respective warbands, the Bloodreavers come next in size and have a warband of 5, then the Skeleton Guard are quite small and are 7 in number.

Models aside, the real star of the show is the gaming board artwork. Having compiled the gaming boards for Aetherium, I take a lot of interest in seeing how others solved problems we also had – these are very effective boards indeed. The underlying artwork is simply stunning, yet doesn't detract from the grid, it's all nicely balanced.

I have to say I think the starter box is really good value at £35-40 (depending upon where you purchase), and the game itself is neat and compact both in terms of core box content and expansions (unlike Imperial Assault which is taking over my gaming cupboard).

I hear two additional warbands have been announced – Dwarves and Skaven, the latter can be found on YouTube somewhere – and I was told today that there will be another Liberator warband (with crossbows?) and another Khorne warband (with a boss who has a daemon pet). To be honest, none of these really tickle my fancy, so I'm more than happy with the 4 warbands I have!

Perhaps for the first time, there is nothing hobby related that I want for Christmas!