Greetings,
Tonight I wanted to speak on the Mantic Riftforged orc line, and why I think it is ripe for conversions.
The riftforged orcs are mantic's fusion of orc warrior and evil paladins. Based on the lore present for the army, the orcs got juiced up with electrified power by one of the evil gods in the Abyss. They were then summarily unleashed upon the world.
The models have quite a bit of detail. The plastic warriors (or legionaries, as mantic calls them) are clad in extremely heavy armor adorned with symbols and demonic faces. The legionary arms have lightning bolt scars that are begging for object-source-lighting paint jobs.
Personally, while I love the range and its themes, I hate the heads. Mantic has them flat on the frame, meaning a mold line runs all the way around them and crosses the face.
So, I put my rift forged to the side and decided that they would wait until I found a good replacement. To date, I've found two.
The first was the einjerhar heads from Wargames Atlantic.
Using the standard Riftforged arms created some heavily armored and musclebound brutes suitable as chaos warriors or marauders.
I've since done plenty of experimentation, but only one other head combo I've found has looked passable. Harvesters, the crab-like aliens wargames atlantic produces, have a head join that while imperfect, works well with that of the riftforged.
I was building another quartet of these last night, and decided to throw on the melee arms from some Mantic Abyssal Dwarf warrior plastics. I had just completed a set built out with blunderbuss', so I had the melee arms spare.
While the arms are slightly short for the body, they still work and look good.
They also look suitably daemonic, which will add to the variety of my chaotic legions.
Finally, if you were wondering, the blunderbuss arms also work well. This body has them blu-tack'd on.
I think this would look excellent with the einherjar heads shown earlier. I don't know what they would count as, but they certainly look intimidating as a heavily armored chaotic force.
I look forward to future experimentation with the rift-forged plastics and will share any additional discoveries. If you would like to pick up your own riftforged, there is a link below to the range. If you decide to pick up the two player starter set a storm in the shires, you will receive a free Clash of kings 2024 ($35 value) until my trade rep tells me to end the promotion.
And if you want to spice up the halfling side of that starter set, heads from the Wargames Atlantic Les Grognard range work beautifully.