Empire Ogre Swordsmen assembled!

3 Ogre Swordsmen await the wrath of the painter's brush

A milestone has passed with the assembly of my first 3 Ogre Swordsmen unit fillers. I've been looking forward to this for a while now, and it means I can now focus on getting them (and their little friends) painted.

I'd love to tell you that it was a simple matter of gluing everything together, however it was not quite that simple. I had to file down a few areas (such as the arms where they meet the body). I also had a lot of flash to cut off some components, there were bits with small gaps that required filling, one of the joins between torso and legs required a fair chunk of green stuff, and I had to pin the swords in place and come up with a method for making pommels.

Despite all of this, I am delighted with the way they've come together. Obviously they're not perfect. I am now seeing things about the proportions that I ideally might like to change, and having more variety in components would have saved me from things like using the same head twice across only 3 models. But some of these things will fix themselves over time as I develop additional components, and I learn what to look for.

The biggest problem with this batch is the mould lines on the models' faces. I was in a real hurry to copy the heads I had made, as they were the final hurdle before I could put these guys together. It saw me use the minimal amount of Instant Mold that I could for each head, largely because I had run out and was already re-purposing stuff that was already spoken for. It meant I was entirely focused on making it work, and not on where the mould join ended up. I'm sure any rookie mould-maker would tell you not to put the mould join across the model's face, but there you go - I made that mistake. I could re-do the moulds and heads, but I am too excited to get these guys done and so I will soldier on. I'll go back and remake the moulds before making any more copies. I might also try using Magic Sculp instead of green stuff to see how it comes out. The green stuff is easier to work with and potentially better for these highly detailed areas, but cleaning off the flash etc is much harder to do cleanly. These ogres may have some cruel battle scarring. Such is the danger of war.

I ended up using bits of sprue for the sword pommels. I cut those round lumpy sections off, bored a hole in for the nail coming through the hand, and then used my drill to give it a very rudimentary dent as decoration - just to make it less plain. It's a simple solution, but I haven't thought of a better one yet.

Another shot of the first 3 Ogre Swordsmen

This model required a lot of green stuff around his midriff to close the join between the walking legs and the torso. Obviously I didn't get that join right when making the components. I also cleaned up his codpiece whilst I was at it.

The same model from the rear.

This model uses the same head as the previous one, but different right arm and legs. These legs fit together with the torso far better, which saved me the trouble of cleaning up the join.

This head suffered the worst from my hasty mould-making. It will be interesting to see how it looks once it's painted. I guess if it's too dire I'll end up replacing the whole head.

The same model from the rear.

And the final model, with the other head. It suffered in the moulds as well, but at least the join is not right across his eye...

And the same model from the rear.