The Barbarian Horde

They came from the frozen north...

So a couple of years ago one of our local hobby shops decided they were going to get out of the Rackham business, and put all their stuff at half off. Mind you, this was Rackham, so half off was still more expensive than even GW figs. About a week later, that discount went to 60% off, and the selection was picked through pretty well. It was at this time I swooped in a bought a lot of Dwarf stuff, the good Dwarves, not the funky, evil ones. Well, eventually the sale capped off at a whopping 75% off, and I bought all the Barbarian stuff left.

I didn't know what I'd be doing with them all, I love Dwarves, so I figure one day I do something with the stunties, but I had no idea what I'd do with these Barbarians. Then we looked at Song of Blade and Heroes, and the rest was history.


x2 separate 300 point bands, or one 600 point band

Ogre Warchief (72pts)
Orc Shaman (38pts)
x2 Ogre Warriors (100pts)
x3 Centaur Warriors (186pts)
x4 Savage Orc Warriors (108pts)
x2 Bugbear Guard (94pts)
Sabertooth Tiger (36pts)
Dwarf Warrior (34pts)
Total: 600/600 points

I 'built' up two separate lists first, each one adhering to the 300 point limit. Reasonably, if both lists are legal at the 300 point level, I could combine the two lists together for a large 600 point band. Actually, I have a little wiggle room in the 600 point list to add a third hero/mage/leader model type if I wanted to. As you can tell I didn't go with the human rosters at all, I wanted true savages, so the Orc and Goblin list provided everything I needed. I had to fill some gaps, and match up my models with certain other stats (it only made sense to make my centaur models, well, centaurs after all). Here's what I've got...


On the left will be my Barbarian leader, appropriately enough, statted out as an Ogre Warchief. He's a big model, and he's got "big" as an ability, so I'll be adding a medium size base to this guy. On the right is what I'll be using as my Orc Elementalist, err, Shaman.


These two guys are just going to be generic "Savage Orc Warriors", both armed with two-handed weapons (which the models have after all). The figure on the right could pull double-duty as a third 'hero' type in the 600 point incarnation of the list. Then again, the druid on the left could moonlight as a, well, druid too if need be.


There's not much to say about these guys, they're a trio o' Centaurs. Here's where I went with the actual Centaur roster stats straight from the book. Sure, company paint jobs are always off the hook, but I gotta tell you, the sculpts alone on these are amazing.


These guys both ooze cool factor. They'll be pulling duty as more generic Savage Orc Warriors with two-handed weapons, but they come packed with a surprise; apparently they're also shapechangers. Like werewolves, or closer to Tharn Ravagers.


The two cloaked guys came packaged with the above ugly forms, armed with identical axes as their human counterparts. These brute will be on medium bases, and serve the role as Bugbear Guards, which I think that they physically fit the bill beautifully.


In their previous lives, these guys were just called 'Giant Barbarians', and in their new role they're going to fill the role of Ogre Guards. They easily stand head-and-shoulders above the rest of the figs, well, the standard human figs of the bunch. If you're seeing a trend with the medium bases, you guessed it, these guys will also go on 'em.


I couldn't resist throwing in a Dwarf, haha. This savage, little guy is going to fit in great visually with the rest of the bunch, he's just a lot shorter. At his side will be his trusty (and only non-Rackham) pet Sabertooth Tiger, who happens to be just about the same size as the Dwarf himself. He'll add a lot of extra character to an already flavorful army, and I think pairing him up with the Sabertooth is a little extra icing on the cake.

I've mentioned bases quite a bit, mainly because there's no way I'm going to use these weeny little bases they came with. Regular figs will get standard 30mm rounders, and the models that have special rules like 'big' and what-not will get the 40mm rounders. I don't think I have anything with the 'huge' descriptor, but there's bases for that too. I'll be using the Privateer Press style slottabases, and my first inclination is that I want to do snowy bases. I've always wanted to do snow bases, but never really had the chance.

So this one gets files under projects for sure. I don't have a time frame for them, and assembly alone will be tedious, there's a lot of little, fiddly bits in here. Also, I'll need to acquire some of them dang fancy bases too (I don't think I have enough). From there, it's painting, yada yada yada. Mind you, it'll be a neat warband when it's all said and done, and the best part was that it was laying in storage the whole time, I didn't buy a thing! The thing about the SBH rules too is that even if we never play it again, I've still got a cool fantasy warband painted up, using the SBH rules as a core though just helps me get organized and going.