Ok so the title of my Blog sort of says it all. Well maybe not all.

So here goes. My first ever Blog. Now to reveal my evil and cunning plan to take over the world.....what...what do you mean it isn't a plot to do that. Are you sure? Oh OK then.

It seems global domination is on a back burner but until then I plan on doing a few articles about some wargaming (and maybe Role Playing) projects I am working on.

Due to a decidedly huge boost of nostalgia I recently decided that I was going to get into Oldhammer (Warhammer Fantasy Battle 3rd Edition for those that do not know the other term) and as per usual I needed to do it on the cheap....welll...as cheap as I can and still have loads fo fun toys.

I have Dark Elf, Skaven and Lizardman armies sitting in cases in storage in the UK but as I live in Austria that does not help much. So looking into my RPG range fo figures that I had planned on using for Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay I discovered I had the start of a number of armies.

Due to some judicious trading and selling of odd old and sometimes hard to find items I managed to get the funds together to expand these into useable armies and/or Ally/Mercenary units.

The first one is an Orc and Goblin army. The core of which is provided by a series of one piece scuplts in plastic that came from Grenadier's Fantasy Warriors game. The game is long out of print but the lovely guys at em4 miniatures (http://em4miniatures.com/) still produce the figures and do packs of 50 of one pose for £7.70 (£0.16 per figure roughly). These and some Grenadier metal Orcs that I picked up from Mirliton (http://www.Mirliton.it) formed the base of the army.

The 3 poses are with a sword, with a spear and with a bow.

For the most part I planned on using the figures as is, maybe adding shields to help differentiate the units but musicians and standard bearers and maybe heroes presented a slightly larger problem.

Luckily the poses lend themselves to conversion work.

The 2 poses best suited for conversion are the spear and sword ones.

There is some flash on these figures but it is easily removed with a sharp knife.

Sorting through my bits box I came up with a number of banner sections and instruments and the odd weapon from other kits (mostly GW ones) so I promptly started to hack figures up and glue them back together like a modern day Dr. Frankenstein.

As you can see a variety of banners, weapons and musical instruments were added to great effect. And with the easy availablity of bits from kits on eBay, from where GW now put so much into a box that there are too many options, it is not expensive to pick up conversion bits.

Here are the command units in with their regiments.

I then started to work on the archer units but by then the bits box was getting a little low on bits so I improvised. Still need to add a few more figures and do the musicians for the units but you can see the direction I am going in.

All in all I ended up with 210 plastic figures and with the conversion work this turned into 10 x 20 Orc units. All for under £35.