Luis Lux (Van_louis), for the DCI team, is happy to present the fearsome Boldogs
BOLDOGS
Just as greater Maiar took the physical forms of Balrogs, Dragons, spiders and other beasts, some less powerful of the fallen Maiar in Morgoth's service took upon themselves the guise of Orcs, only much more powerful and perilous ones.
Thus it was that the histories from the First Age speak of Great Orcs or Orc-captains who were not slain, and who reappeared in battle through years far longer than the span of the lives of Men.
Now in the Second Age the new Dark Lord Sauron has summoned all evil that inhabits Middle-earth and some of these former, terrifying, generals and agents of Morgoth have heeded his call. Their armour is enhanced in the smithies of Barad-dûr itself and they carry arms that are enchanted for cruel purposes.
They are put in command where the need for them is great, and the Dark Lord has great expectations on the North: to see Arnor fall, and the Elven nations eradicated.
To this end, he send his Boldog commanders to strengthen the wars of the Orcs of the Misty Mountains and the Hill-men of the North, and they gladly let loose their hate and destructive will upon the Free Peoples...
(Click on images for full size)
COMMANDERS
BODYGUARD
SAURON
Sauron's of Mordor terrible form is that of a man of more than human stature, but not gigantic, yet he is more feared than any dragon or other remaining demon. Not because of his prowess as a warrior, a wise lord uses others as his weapon, but because of his cunning and his dreadful powers as a sorcerer, and the world trembles in fear of the seemingly endless amount of hosts commanded by his dark theocracy.
When he is forced to personally take part in battle however, he don a cruel black armour and brings his personal guard of Boldogs, deadly and forceful.
Louis Lux on the making of the Boldogs: I conceptualized the Boldogs with the help of Ngugi and Araval and I sought to reach new levels of quality and variety with this unit. The bodyguard and generals have combined over 40 brand new individually modeled and textured pieces of equipment plus 2 pieces made by Briarius for Myth Total War (skull and withered corpse). The original body and head was modeled by Lu Bu edited and textured by me.
Visually the Boldogs are mostly based on the extensive concept art work done by Weta for Azog.
Amazing work. Absolutely fantastic. Ive been waiting to see what you guys had in store for these units ever since you teased them back in one of the misty mountain previews. :)
Orcs/Maiar with beards.. completely savage looking.. love it..
Will make Louis Lux happy to hear you enjoy the designs and craftmanship, and we're all glad you appriciate the choises we've taken for the Boldogs of Middle-earth :)
OMG these look awesome!!!!! Damnnnn.... speachless!
Now this, ladies and gentlemen, is how you spiff up a Mordor roster! Well done Louis Lux and the rest of the DCI team.
These look amazing!!
These are the best looking Orc models I have ever seen, and I think I've played every Middle Earth related game out there. Amazing work. I've been playing Third Age and later D&C since the start and I've never played an Orc faction. But, now I think I might start with Mordor or MM.
Might be the greatest kind of praise possible - the Orcs approves of this message ^^
It will be a nightmare to kill these guys
Unit maker here, thanks everyone.
Well earned, mate; dare guess we all awaited to see dread brought back to the ranks of the Orcs! :)
The quality of the Boldogs are astonishing, great job!
The craftsmenship is truly tremendous, but whoever came up with the mightily foolish idea of giving them beards may have to explain themselves.
It may be justified to allow the fallen Maiar to proclaim their appearance as they may choose, for they are powerful enough indeed, but what is it with their bodyguard? Do they themselves are part of these "Boldogs"? I hope that you won't intend to give regular orcs the honour to spot beards for neither they deserve them nor due to their heritage as former elves (ignoring singular entities such as the only two named bearded elves Cirdan and Mathan).
Don't know if we have to explain ourselves, hehe, as they are all Boldogs, bodyguard included. ;)
And thus took the form that pleased them, beards and all. We like this 'anti-istari' touch. ^^
As for the Orcs, while their origin is very ambigious, due to JRR's several versions of it, and I argue from them Orcs to a greater extent derived from Men than Elves by the end of the First Age, we have no intentions to give our goblin kin beards.
To quote Túrin, when Andróg called the captured Mîm "an Orc" (in UT and The Children of Hurin):
"Nay," said Túrin, "it is bearded. It is only a Dwarf, I guess."
Yes the bodyguard is comprised of boldogs as well. Regular orcs remain beardless. Our conceptualization is that these are ancient Maia who took Orc-shape. Orcish in appearance but powerful, intelligent and being able to dabble in Magic. The beards and body decorations show their more ancient, cultured and ritualistic nature. Additionally, they offer a parallel to the other Maia the Istari who are notoriously bearded.
Then they are great in number indeed. A great number ready to be diminished by axe and sword.
I must say, that I surely got worried greatly as I first laid my very eyes upon these creations of yours. Worried and full of anger and hate, for I saw what inspired you. I won't appreciate that you listen to these lies, that have been spread by the abominations known as "the Hobbit" movies and If you intend to join in these by insulting my kin as beardless and supporting their treacherous lies then I shall swear an oath to struck you down myself for I won't forget easily and every wronging against my proud folk must be avanged, when the time has come.
But enough of that. You haven't done so yet and so I feel myself unable to grudge against you. Still I can't encourage your decisions in terms of designing, because the Istari are bearded due to their human appearance and their funktion as wise old men. And men are bearded if they get past a certain age and won't shave them off. Boldogs on the other hand seem to be of orcish disguise and orcs are of elvish decent. Twisted and changed over countless generations but still elvish and beards are highly uncommon among these.
I won't expect you to change your work due to the many hours and vast amount of planning and skill, which has been used to create it. That shall be honoured and respected, as it should be with all kinds of great crafts. This is how I think of this matter.
We know that each design choice we do will rub someone the wrong way, and that's ok.
Art is subjective and lore in this matter a topic for debate, so as I use to conclude: to each his own :)
@ThorinIIThrainul, I suppose it's a shame for then you that Louis Lux went out of his way to create high quality models for a free mod, but oh no, he decided to make his own design choices!
It's honestly not that hard to remove the beards yourself once DCI releases. All you need to do is have Milkshape, use the Modder Toolbox by Zarathos to convert the mesh to .ms3d, and simply delete the groups defined as beards. Save, re-convert, and that's it. It took you longer to type that message than it would have to modify the mesh.
Yes that's correct. Some models with beards cannot be removed easily but my unit allows that with a few of
clicks.
ThorinIIThrainul There is no definitive answer on the origin of orcs but like Ngugi said it's likely that they were a corruption of both elves and men. Also the hobbit movie (which I dislike immensely) did not influence this unit that much except for a couple of weapons and armour designs.
This is a really cool idea, these Boldogs look both terrifying and awesome