More on Giak Army organisation - theorising more units

One of the things I keep coming back to in my fantasy gaming is my Orc and Goblin army, for Warhammer, and later Kings of War (see the 'Raising the Standard' tag to go back over me building parts of it), and now, possibly for Oathmark (for which, I will perhaps resurrect the 'Raising the Standard' tag); and one of the things that feeds into how I think about Orcs and Goblins is the Giak Army List in the Second Citadel Journal. I never had any of the Giak minis (I did have a dream recently that I was searching for some in a second-hand shop, that's how much they've infested my consciousness, even 35 or more years later), nor indeed any of the Lone Wolf gamebooks from which the Giaks come, but I really liked the idea of a huge Goblin army organised into regiments along the lines of the Giak Army List, and it's helped pattern the way I've thought about Goblins, Orcs, and indeed Orks, ever since.

The idea I was pushing towards some years ago (link) - to use build an analogue of the army using Warhammer Goblins to stand for Giaks - will not currently work. Goblins have mostly been withdrawn by GW: in the current 'Age of Sigmar' iteration of Warhammer, there are no Goblin (as opposed to Night Goblin, 'Gitz', or Orc, 'Orruk') infantry units. The only 'Goblins' are what used to be known as 'Forest Goblin Spider Riders', and some Wolf Riders (and there only seem to be 3 of these). There is a limited number of Gnoblars (grey Swamp Goblins that hang around with Ogres) from GW but there is little flexibility in what are basically single-piece sculpts (different heads is your lot here); if I do anything with Gnoblars it will probably be just bulking out other units. 

Perhaps I find a way to build the army from the current sets of Night Goblins and Orcs that GW is now selling. The Night Goblins I'm considering - there are several options in the Infantry box that might be useful. As to the 'Orruks' - nothing I've seen in the new ranges strikes me as good for the units I'm after. Maybe I can pick up enough old GW Goblins from ebay to build an army, or maybe this will forever remain in the realm of speculation. But, as I'm unlikely to often venture back into a Games Workshop premises to play, maybe the presence of non-GW models might not be a problem and I can do this using Goblins from another manufacturer. Mantic in their Kings of War range (link) and North Star in their Oathmark range (link) both have Goblin Infantry that have weapon options including bows, spears, slashing weapons and some crushing weapons, though it seems the prevalence of the latter is much less than other sorts. North Star also do some Wolf Riders that might serve, as Giaks also ride wolves (they organise their wolf riders into units of 20). These Wolf Riders seem to be compatible with the Goblin Infantry which may increase choices when it comes to weapon swaps etc. And, as I mentioned at the top of the post, I'm building units for Oathmark. A colleague mentioned it had a good campaign system at work one day (there's a very long backstory involving running a quick D&D campaign in our lunchbreaks) and I've picked it up on his recommendation, but not yet fought any battles. It could be a good reason to re-activate the building of a Goblin army anyway.

Mantic also do Wolf Riders, and is also expanding its range of Orcs, which may feed back into this if I go for a mix of 'Orc' and 'Goblin' units. The Riftforged Orcs especially seem suitable (link), as they have a range of crushing weapons and good armour. This makes them something like the militaristic Giaks - but they seem much larger, they're something like WH 'Black Orcs', even larger than the standard Mantic Orc Infantry. Depending on how I sort this, that might not be a problem.

The Giak army list entries are these:

Unit Name:                   Colour:    Symbol:                     Notes:
Gorakim                          Red           Fanged Jawbone        Gourgaz leader
('The Animals')

Konkorim                        Yellow      Bow crossed by           All armed with
('The Hunters')                                 3 arrows                        short bows

Kaggazheg                      Orange       Flaming                        Leader wears
('Fire-Dogs')                                      Dog's Head                   a Doomwolf Pelt

Moggador                      Dark           Crossed                          No Edged Weapons
('The Hammerers')      Blue            Warhammers

Nadul-Nak                     Black          Black Flag                     Dressed in Black
('Nightfighters')

Lajakann                        Grey           Grey Heart &                Gourgaz leader     
('The Stonehearts')                           Scimitar

Ogshashez                      Purple        Serrated Dagger          No Blunt Weapons
('The Throat-Slitters')                                                              No Pole-arms

Nanenrakim                   Light           Black Arrows              All armed with
('The Life-stealers')       Blue                                                   short bows

Orgadak-Taagim            Dull            Human Head              All armed with
('The Humankillers')     Red             on a pole                     Pole-arms

Anyway - the Giak Army List is cool and inspiring. This is about taking that inspiration and going elsewhere with it.

I think there are similarities between the Giak Army List and the 'Clerical Quick Reference Chart' in the back of Deities & Demigods. In D&D, there is a standard progression of evil humanoids, known as 'KGOHGBO', which stands for Kobold-Goblin-Orc-Hobgoblin-Gnoll-Bugbear-Ogre, and represents humanoid tribal monsters of increasing resilience. Taking the idea of the KGOHGBO progression as being, basically, 'O&G', finding out what gods were worshipped by the various races, and basing units on that, I came up with the following notes towards a new regiments list (formatted as the Giak Army List, listed in KGOHGBO order):

Unit Name:                Colour:    Symbol:                  Notes:

Stak-Danakim              Orange     Skull                        Kobolds: Spears                                
('Orange Spears')                                                          Follow Kurtulmak

Gudjagim                     Grey-       Bloody Axe              Goblins: Axes
('Mighty Ones')            Green                                        Follow Maglubiyet

Naogjatim                    Dark        Unwinking                Orcs: Black Spears
('The Unsleeping')       Red          Eye                            Follow Gruumsh

(Hobgoblins would go here but they worship Maglubiyet along with Goblins)

Staz-Ekug                      Dirty        Triple-                     Gnolls: (no edged weapons?)
('Yellow Punishment')   Yellow      Flail                         Follow Yeenoghu

Hugzakim                    Black       Morningstar              Bugbears: No Edged Weapons
('Smashers')                                                                   Follow Hruggek

Ruzzakim                      Blood       Taloned Hand          Ogres: (edged weapons?)
('The Destroyers')         Red                                           Follow Vaprak

Italics represent my attempts at using the Project Aeon word-lists (English to Giak, Giak to English) to create unit names. In the case of Ruzzakim, I'm translating directly from Vaprak's title, 'The Destroyer'. For the rest, I'm picking some aspect of the deity and running with it. For the 'Stak-Danakim' I'd have preferred some name relating to Kurtulmak's cunning, but cannot find a Giak word that equates to cunning, cleverness or trickery (traits particularly prized by the Kobolds and reflected in their God's nature).

Some classic tropes connected with 'Orc' units in Warhammer (axes and skulls for instance) are in this list connected with Maglubiyet (Goblin/Hobgoblin god) and Kurtulmak (Kobold god) respectively. On the other hand, Gruumsh, the Orcs' one-eyed spear-wielder seems (in Warhammer terms) to be more likely to be a Goblin (particularly Night Goblin) deity, given the prevalence of eye-imagery, and the use of spears, by Night Goblins.

Vaprak and Hruggek are relatively unproblematic - Hruggek smashes things and Vaprak tears them apart. I know Warhammer understands 'Ogres' differently to D&D, but to me, from a D&D perspective, they're still just the biggest sort of Orc (when they're not what Tolkien calls by the name of 'Trolls'). Anyroadup, big Goblins and their smashy god, big Orcs and their vicious rippy god called 'The Destroyer'.

Yeenoghu, the demon-prince who is the Gnolls' deity, is a problem for two reasons. Are Gnolls really bigger Orcs? Maybe. Maybe as much as Kobolds are smaller ones. For a long time I've mentally broken KGOHGBO into two parallel groups - KOGO and GHB. Gnolls are just bigger Orcs. But there aren't really any whip/flail weapons for WH Orcs, nor Goblins neither. Not enough to make units out of anyway, maybe the odd one. Perhaps just having non-edged weapons is enough, if such a thing is possible, given the general lack of crushing weapons for Goblins? Perhaps this could be a Night Goblin unit with some of the weird weapons like nets and the ball-and-chain weapons of Night Goblin fanatics? 

There are no archer-regiments in this list. That's because no KGOHGBO god has a bow as a weapon. 6 regiments mean that I can add two bow-armed units to this list (no more than 25% of Giak units can be bow-armed, at an 'Army' level of organisation at any rate, and they have to be short-bows, so no Orcs with longbows or x-bows in this list).

Giaks group their units (the basic unit, the 36-model regiment/warband, is called a 'dorgar') into divisions called 'zegorim' (which looks like a plural, and elsewhere that just seems to be another word for 'Giaks') which consist of 3 regiments. The way the 25% bows is supposed to work rather fails in the overall list at a sub-army level, however, because no matter how you slice it (9 units, 3 divisions, 1 army) you can't have a 3-unit division with a bow-armed unit in it that is not more than 25% of the total. So the 25% must only apply at army level not division level. No reason I suppose that you can't have the two archer-units in the same division, in that case. But it's not elegant, I think.

Anyway, the DDG list has got me 2/3 of the way to a 'new' 9-unit Giak army list, and two archer-regiments has got 8/9 of the way there, at least in outline. The way I think I shall divide it up is something like...

Orgar Shug-Tanzar or Army-Green-Storm - a favourite army name of mine, named after the 'Green Storm Commandos' in the Philip Reeve books... my 40K Ork army has a unit called the Grub-Dakka Orkyzag, or 'Cunning Attack Green Lightning', as that's the closest I can get in Orkish to 'Green Storm Commando'. I think it's a good name for an orcish/orkish unit. But there's no word in Giak for 'cunning' that I can find as I mentioned in discussing the 'Orange Spears' - and anyway, Giaks are supposed to be grey so maybe 'grey storm' would be more accurate. Unfortunately, there's no word for 'grey' (or gray for that matter) in the English-Giak word-list either... 'Army Green Storm' will have to do.

I'm going to apply certain rules here. The first is that I think that I should assign an independent 1-in-6 chance of a Gourgaz leader to each unit (for using these as 'real' Giaks - in the original list, some Giak units are led by Gourgaz, which are axe-wielding troglodytes); the 2/9 of the original list seem to be around that kind of chance. I found a pic of a Gourgaz, but I no longer know where.

This is an artist's impression of a Gourgaz - by the looks, it is intended as a standee

I rolled 5, 4, 1, 6, 6, 1 for the units I have, then 4, 3, 1 for the as-yet-unknown units; so the units with Gourgaz leaders will be 3 (Naogjatim,'The Unsleeping') and 6 (Ruzzakim 'The Destroyers'), then the final unknown unit, which on balance should probably be another unit with edged weapons (they're certainly easier to come by then bludgeoning/crushing weapons). 

The following assumes I'm using the current Warhammer range of figures...

Unit Name:                Colour:    Symbol:                  Notes:

Stak-Danakim              Orange     Skull                        Orange Spears                              
('Orange Spears')                                                          (Night Goblins with spears?)

Gudjagim                     Grey-       Bloody Axe              Axes
('Mighty Ones')            Green                                        (Orcs with axes?)

Naogjatim                   Dark         Unwinking               Black Spears: Gourgaz leader
('The Unsleeping')      Red           Eye                           (Night Goblins with spears?)

Staz-Ekug                    Dirty        Triple-                       No Edged Weapons
('Yellow Punishment') Yellow      Flail                          (Orcs with smashing weapons?)

Hugzakim                    Black       Morningstar              No Edged Weapons
('Smashers')                                                                   (Orcs with smashing weapons?)

Ruzzakim                     Blood       Taloned Hand           Edged weapons: Gourgaz leader
('The Destroyers')        Red                                           (Orcs with axes/swords?)

(Unknown archer unit)                                                  Shortbows

                                                                                       (Night Goblins with shortbows?)

(Unknown archer unit)                                                  Shortbows
                                                                                       (Night Goblins with shortbows?)

(Unknown unit)                                                             Edged weapons?: Gourgaz leader
                                                                                       (Orcs with swords?)

Additional considerations: as two units list 'dark red' and 'blood red' (which I guess is more vibrant) as their regimental colours, they should probably be in different divisions, as should the units using orange and 'dirty yellow', just to avoid the confusion of colours; just because it makes sense, the two spear-units should be in different divisions, and the two archer-units should also be in different divisions. That is the plan... but as I only have the sketchiest ideas yet for three of the units, maybe I can organise the six units I do have a plan for into two divisions and leave the third for now, with the two regiments of archers in that. I have in effect two spear units, two smashing units and two slashing units, and can put one of each into both divisions.

From here I think I can break the units thusly:

First Division -

Stak-Danakim - Goblins with spears (orange)

Ruzzakim - Orcs with swords (blood red)

Hugzakim - Orcs with smashing weapons (black)

Second Division -

Gudjagim - Orcs with axes (grey-green)

Naogjatim - Goblins with spears (dark red)

Staz-Ekug - Orcs with smashing weapons (yellow)

Problems then come because the number of smashing weapons in the various boxes is very small. Building 2 units of 'smashers' will be tricky from any individual range. I am aiming I think for 40 Goblins per 'dorgar'; if I substitute any with Orc models, maybe 30 per regiment would do. The original Giak list has 36-model regiments (it doesn't explain what to do if the unit is led by a Gourgaz however, that's something I will have to think about later). If I'm fielding the army as a 'counts as' rather than just 'inspired by', they really should all be Goblins.

Then, of course, the problem is that any Night Goblins who are not archers will have 'Bad Moon' shields. These come integrally cast with the arms. It is of course possible to shave off the shield designs and paint them appropriately but that seems a real faff, and perhaps suggests I should look elsewhere for my models. Or, I could use the shield designs as-is, and just paint them in the requisite colours. In that case I could just do all of the units, for both armies, with the exception of the units with smashing weapons, as Night Goblins, and paint all of the shields in the required colours - so I have yellow moons, blue moons, purple moons, several colours of green moons etc. It's not an ideal solution though.

Whether any of this will ever exist in the flesh (or at least in miniature form) is unknowable. But I think the Oathmark Goblin Infantry and Wolf Riders are the front-runners for models I might actually obtain in the near future, and I can begin to grind through unit-building. I've sort of talked myself into buying a few boxes of each I think and seeing how I get on with them. Of course, I'm also trying to get this army ready for playing Oathmark anyway. That has certain limits on units - no more than 4 units of one type, as a hard maximum, so whatever army organisation I go for, I can't have more than 4 Goblin Infantry, 4 Goblin Spearmen etc, which will start to impose some further restrictions on what I can and can't field. Whether I get any of the Mantic Goblins (or Orcs), or anything from GW, I'm less sure about. Watch this space, perhaps not too intently; the Army Green Storm is rumbling its way over the horizon... maybe...