Warhammer has a bad habit of making me want to drop everything and grab its shiny new models, and the revamped Mordor Orcs make me want to dig out my old collection of minis for Lord of the Rings (or Middle-earth Strategy Battle Game, to give its full legal name).
Even though they missed the Big Autumn Warhammer Preview last week, don’t think these Mordor Orcs have been shoved under the rug because they’re not up to snuff; they look phenomenal. As someone who only truly got into Warhammer thanks to 2001’s Lord of the Rings wargame (before then I’d mainly dabbled), they make me feel all kinds of nostalgic. These take the old design and improve on them with modern advancements that provide greater dynamism and detail, all while holding on to what made the originals special in the first place.
If you want to kick off gaming in Middle-earth again like me, there are a couple of approaches you can take: you can either grab the War of the Rohirrim core box at Amazon or pick up an individual Battlehost. There’s one for each faction, and you can find plenty at Amazon right now.
For starters, these models look as though they’ve marched off the screen; besides perfectly recreating Weta Workshop’s brilliantly designed armor and costumes, a few of the models have clearly been based on movie extras you can spot throughout Peter Jackson’s trilogy. I immediately clocked that roaring orc from Fellowship’s prologue with staples on his nose, for instance.
In addition, they don’t completely abandon those old miniatures; they mimic many of the same poses, but they feel less stiff. It’s a similar approach Warhammer took with the revamped Warriors of Rohan, and it’s every bit as effective. Like those models, you can also arm them with a variety of melee weapons or bows. There will be some alternate heads too, letting you personalize your squad.
In essence, looking at these models makes me feel rather misty-eyed – and I’m already drawing up plans for a new army ready to serve the Dark Lord.
It’s unclear when these new models will arrive, but they’ll launch as a separate box as well as a Mordor Battlehost with a full army. Besides 24 of the refreshed Orcs, you’re getting a handful of Warg Riders and the Witch King of Angmar, both on foot and horseback. (These are older miniatures, but they still hold up.)
In addition to all this, Warhammer has announced a Battle Companies book that allows you to upgrade and personalize your forces across a longer campaign.
There’s a lot to look forward to when it comes to Warhammer; fans are already hyped for the new Legion of the Damned Kill Team, for example.
- Browse Middle-earth Strategy Battle Game at Amazon