It’s Green Week, your Orcs & Goblins

We thought we'd caught him. We thought he couldn't cause any more damage. But The Black Goblin has escaped his dungeon lair (well, the box under the desk) and begun to cause havoc in the website once again. As I write, the rest of the web team are busy trying to herd him into a cupboard, but he's got wickedly sharp teeth and Mark's already pale from blood loss. Of course, the return of this green-skinned herald of mayhem can only mean one thing: that the new Orcs & Goblins are nearly here.

While we set about catching our resident nuisance, we decided that this week would be Green Week™ (can we trademark that? Who knows...) on What's New Today. Now, the Orcs often get a lot of press coverage, and so do the Night Goblins (it's the cheeky pointy hats and the Fanatics that do it I reckon), but we decided to take a look at the lesser-known greenskins - the Forest Goblins. To kick off Green Week, here are some of the coolest looking Forest Goblins that have been sent in to our inbox. The first pictures were sent in by Dimitris Kiourtsoglou, who's been building a full Forest Goblin army. Here's Dimitris to tell you more:

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  Dimitris: The story behind my army is that these Goblins were abandoned in Lustria by an Orc Waaagh! The Orcs returned across the sea leaving them behind. However, the Slann had foreseen this and understood that these Goblins would play an important role in the future, when Chaos would once again invade Lustria. So the Lizardmen taught them the way of the jungle and they now worship the Slann as a god.

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  I chose to do a Goblin army because they are fun to play with and you can have some really relaxing games. You never know how they will behave either, which is all part of the fun. I've also converted a lot of my models, mostly from the old Battle for Skull Pass set, the Spider Riders box, Ogre Gnoblars and Gretchin. This unit of Spider Riders is lead by one of my heroes who rides a Gigantic Spider.

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  I use the rules for Night Goblins, so I could convert netters and Fanatics for my units. The netters were converted using Green Stuff to create a web, which would act like a net in games. In my background, the Forest Goblin Fanatics have found that licking poisonous frogs gives much the same effect as eating Mad Cap Mushrooms. I've also built a unit filler for this regiment - a palanquin with a Slann-shaped stone. It's to protect them in battle and scare their foes.

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  I made my Squig Hoppers from Green Stuff too, creating giant frogs for them to ride into battle. The riders are made from the Wolf Rider kit and the Ogre Gnoblars. I've included plenty of vibrant colours in my army, and each Forest Goblin has a different coloured feather to represent which regiment they are in - yellow, orange or blue.

I'm also very excited by the new releases. I've already pre-ordered the giant Arachnarok Spider and I can't wait to get it. I will then have five different sized spiders in my army, ranging from tiny little ones all the way through to the massive Arachnarok. So yes, it looks great, it's massive, it fits with my army theme and (with a Shaman on it) it boosts my magic. What else could I ask for?

Dan: Thanks, Dimitris, your army looks completely crazy and very colourful - it's the epitome of a Goblin army. It's great to see what can be achieved with a little bit of imagination and a lot of Green Stuff. I'm a particular fan of your Spider regiment and I love the effect you've achieved on the spiders (which was done by sticking static grass to the model before it was undercoated). Sticking with today's spidery theme, Lukasz Grzyb has sent us this picture of the Arachnarok Spider that he painted for his local independent retailer in Poland.

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  Lukasz: I used a limited colour palette to paint the body of the Arachnarok Spider. I primed the model with Chaos Black first, then re-sprayed it with Skull White, leaving the black in the recesses. I then airbrushed on a layer of Blood Red over the whole model to get a really bright, solid coat. To shade the model I used a mix of Blood Red and Scorched Brown. To shade it even further, I added Liche Purple and a drop of Chaos Black to that mix and painted it into the deepest areas of the model.

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  After the shading was dry, I washed the whole spider with Baal Red to help blend the layers together. To highlight I used Blazing Orange on the edges of the armour plates, followed by a mix of Blazing Orange and Bleached Bone and finally, pure Bleached Bone. I absolutely love this model for the amount of detail on it; there are hidden skulls, nets, mini spiders and corpses all over it. I just need my own one now!