Over the past two months or so I have been very busy with other parts of my life and little for me to write anything down here. Apologies for that, but I have not been resting on my laurels. I have had a few games of 40K as well as find and buying up some 4th edition GW Fantasy Orcs. In my recent forays into collecting these classic GW models, I have come across a few models that are multiples of each other. That is rather normal given the ranges, however, my attempt is to avoid using the same model over and over again in your army. It does tend to get redundant as well as boring painting the same damn guy. In addition that it just is not what I want to collect in an army. Of course I have a lot less of a problem if I can find no two alike guys for each regiment at least. I can deal with a few of the same model in an army as opposed to a few of the same in each unit. I can always say that there is "that guy" in each unit. This comes to the concept of handling doppelgangers in your army. I think that we do have a few trick depending on which kind of army that we are dealing with.
Army choice is something that I think can make a difference. For instance any army that is either an undead army or fully armored army, as in Chaos Warriors, I believe that it should not that big of an issue. I would still try to avoid redundancy when possible, but a skeleton is a skeleton. They are by design uniform in appearance. Zombies can be an issue, but can be overcome through creativity. In the same idea, with uniform units like Elves, that are all kitted with the same uniform and helmet, I think that even in that situation it works. Given that I am working on Space marines right now, I have to say thank god for power armor and helmets.
Painting may help out as well, but mainly for humanoids. Basically changing the hair color is what makes the difference more or less. This is something that should be used sparingly, however. From my experience with my dwarves, even when you paint a face and beard a different color, they still seem redundant even with different bodies on them. Thus the problem with flowing hair in my mind. It makes the job harder to avoid doppelgangers, in my humble opinion.
Different manufacturers is a very good way in handling doppelgangers in my experience. The hard part is finding a suitable manufacturer that is comparable to your collection. With humans, I think that you can get away with a lot with the multitude of historical manufacturers out there, depending on what your tolerance is. I have no problem with difference in height, however if they are supposed to be the same build, I expect them to be the same build. I am not looking for freakishly shaped hands or very thin guys. Basically I am not looking for Romans to look like these guys when the norm for every other manufacturer's Romans is as tall as the Dwarf's feather:
With all of this in mind I have come to a bit of a dilemma in some fashion. The Orcs that I have been collecting have a good range, however, I seem to be having trouble finding a good variety on some units like the classic black orcs pictured here. Some of these tricks will not work. Painting is not an option, nor is their any other manufacturer's that I think will look comparable to these characters.(although I may be persuaded) They don't have enough armor to hid behind like other models, so I guess that I need to be more creative with these characters, or do something like put them into regular units and find something else for Black Orcs if I must have Black Orcs. Needless to say there is more for me to ponder with this army as I am collecting them. Of course my knowledge on the orcs is rather scant during that time, so there may be more GW figs out there than what The Stuff of Legends has in their archive. I believe that I have already found one big-un that is undocumented by these guys so hope springs eternal for the Black Orcs.
