When you think of Giant Wolves/Wargs that Goblins would ride how do you picture them? Post up your favorite images!
Giant Wolves/Wargs?
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Hudson Adams Moderator
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Tbh that pic right there; wargs are just another name for very large and evil minded wolves as far as Tolkien's works.
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I picture them more exaggerated than the picture, like a wolf that's taken a lot of steroids and is very angry.
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This but bigger.
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Might not be what you want to hear but North Star makes pretty good plastic goblin wolf riders, why compete? Make a wolf chariot.
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A giant wolf is a giant wolf. It's ability and aggression amplified by size. They're still wolves though. They'll have a strongly bonded and well structured pack mentality and cooperate well.
Wargs in my mind range from slightly larger than a wolf to giant wolf size but they differ drastically. Warg society is twisted. They have a might makes right hierarchy and those below are always scheming to topple those above. They are malevolent and will play with their prey because they enjoy the fear. They'll take sheep to lure the shepherd because the shepherd's fear and screaming are better. Wargs know when it benefits them to work with eachother or outsiders, like goblins. The goblin make think it is a master/beast relationship but only if it's a stupid goblin. The smart(ish) goblin will know the Warg will throw it and leave it to die if it means the warg can escape.
Because of this the warg has a different appearance from a wolf. Wargs have a skulky, more hungry appearance from wolves. They'll carry themselves differently. Heads lower, ears only pricked up when they're trying hard to sense something ahead. The tail will almost always be held straight back, maybe slightly curled up as they are always aware that the next foe may be the warg at their side. Speaking of that, wargs would always attack in a single file during open battle as they wouldn't trust one of their own being behind them. In hunting or guerilla warfare, the would encircle a smaller force and attack from all directions, as much for advantage as because of the distrust mentioned above.
A wolf will look healthy. Full barrel chest, well groomed coat, a full ruff covered face. Beautiful, noble creatures.
Wargs are the products of corruption and dark magic. They come from forests that harbor old and insidious intentions. They should reflect this. Head low, tail straight and tense, a ragged and scraggly coat. A lanky, sneaky sort of build. Villainous intent in their eyes and viscous drool from their long maws framed by dirty,blood soaked, sunken faces.
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@Vane Dolenc reasons to compete!
1. I can't find the plastics on north star's own fantasy section of site.
2. The oathmark goblin riders are intended for a mass battle game, while WA's stuff is more for skirmish games.
3. There is currently little demand for goblin chariots, and a generic chariot would be better, as goblins have very different themes from setting to setting and classic fantasy isn't a specific setting.
4. Tolkien never mentioned goblin chariots, at least in the original hobbit, and the goblins are very tolkien-esque.
5. There is definetly demand for plastic warg riders, and one company covering something doesn't stop that demand. An army from one company is always more cohesive
6. they could sell wargs on their own and add a saddle to convert cavalry (see giant spiders).
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I'm an ex Space Wolf player, so aside from LOTR my image of what Wolf Cavalry look like is on the space viking side......now I'm thinking of the possibilities of Eisenkern Wolf Cavalry (legs are already separate so it should be fairly easy to convert).
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I have read numerous criticisms of the Northstar giant wolves/wargs bring “too chunky”. I picked up a sprue of Northstar Goblin wolf riders without the wolves intending to put them on Games Workshop 40K Fenrisian Wolves... which look a lot like GW LOTR Fell Wolves. Now it looks like I will use some WA Goblins as Fenrisian wolf riders as well.
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@Vane Dolenc
Goblin Chariots for the win.
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@Hudson Adams I think you should do wolves the same way or similar to the spiders (have a couple big ridable ones that can wear the goblin saddles along with a couple smaller realistic ones per sprue), maybe add some alternate heads swaps for hellscape/alien beasties but thats about it.
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Goblin Chariots sound like fun.
Tolkien's wargs always seemed to me to have been the prototype for fantasy Dire Wolves, Hellhounds, and the like - Reaper's "Bones" has lots of fantastic Dire Wolf minis to work with (but almost no normal-sized wolves, aside from some cool undead wolves for some curious reason!) Those might otherwise be my go-to choice for wolves to add the existing Classic Fantasy Goblins riders and saddles to (though I haven't checked the fit to see if they work well together!)
Thanks to Game of Thrones and the books it was based on, I've come to kind of think of wargs in general as large, savage, possessed wolves - and not necessarily wolves possessed by human spirits, and goblin wargs or demon spirits work just as well, imho.
I might go with the folklore of the British Isles and their sinister, ghostly hellhounds and black dogs - "Black Shuck", or the legend that inspired "The Hound of the Baskervilles"- for inspiration, as supernaturally wise, malevolent, and cruel creatures that seem to me like they would be closely aligned to the Unseelie Court of goblinkind, and howling,ill-omened, night-thing cousins to the Banshee:
To me, goblins "riding" these black dogs or wolves of the faerie underworld isn't necessarily literal, but a metaphor for the evil spirits that have taken the form of these hounds of hell. Saddles and goblin cavalry are fine by me and surely more of a crowd-pleaser, but the possessed black dogs themselves are literally the goblin-ridden wargs, rather than the combination of dog and goblin cavalryman.
Either way, the warg is large, lean, hungry, twisted, feral, unnatural, old, and wisened, with black fur, large glowing eyes, and a grinning, lipless mouthful of long, sharp teeth.
The warg makes its lair deep underground in the funeral barrows and halls where the dead goblin witch-kings and queens of old were buried, yet live on unquiet in their graves in the underworld of Deep Dendo, where devils dwell.
The warg is smart: there's an unholy intelligence in there, somewhere, and has made terrible pacts with unspeakably ancient beings for supernaturally long life, and demonic powers. The The warg rises up and prowls the overworld by night, carrying the curses and agents of the devil-bought from goblin lands below, to the world above to make mischief in the darkness. The warg speaks in a voice that is neither that of beast nor that of man, and will whisper terrible secrets to fitful dreamers from outside bedroom windows, or it will howl horrible prophecies in the night, fortelling doom to the family of those who hear it. The warg is a nightmare, the warg knows what scares you.
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You could just make a simular Warg to GWs small insignificant scale that was chose... but bigger, better and bolder as a cross between a wolf and a hyena so people can make it work in whatever fantasy setting they fancy.. Something a bit different but still available to the normal settings. Otherwise your just making another wolf no matter what people discribed.. Someone did say a mix of normal scaled wolves and big brutes like you did with the spiders would work nicely.
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@Jules Moles Personally I think a headswape to the wolves would cover Wargs just fine, what concerns me is when people start asking for wargs when what they want really is this monster:
Though I suppose a fantasyed up Prehistoric Bear Dog might be okay for Wargs :
That all posted I would prefer a mix of diffrent sized wolves, they seem like the more common encounter in RPG and they are mystical, magical, beastly, evilish and foresty enough (particularly if you do an alt paint job). Plus they show up in more fantasy settings than wargs.
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I did not originally like the Warg design Jackson and Weta came up with for Lord of the Rings but it has grown on me. I originally just pictured Wargs as big Wolves with malicious, human level intelligence. But I can now see the advantage of creating a specific monsterous appearance similar to but not a Wolf.
It was interesting to learn about the Hell Pig, this is the first I have heard of it.
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@Grumpy Gnome
I think I first learned about it on WGF now defunct forum, and just no, that thing is monstrous cavalry or warbeast territory.
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@Brian Van De Walker One of those illustrations is an Andrewsarchus, the largest hooved predator that ever existed. I'd love to see some andrewsarchus in plastic as well.
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If that guy on the right isn't a giant warg, maybe he ought to be promoted to wargdom. I have a feeling Wargames Atlantic's goblins are gonna fit in nicely with that guy!
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The wolves/wargs will make good gang leaders in the dog pack street gang game Wargames atlantic is developing. We have the Irish Wolfhound faction and soon will have the spanish Mastiff gang. If the space Bulldogs come with actual bulldogs then thats the 3rd faction unlocked.
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@Lucian Westerly - I'm sorry I missed your comment on my first glance through this discussion! Especially these parts:
[Wargs] are malevolent and will play with their prey because they enjoy the fear. They'll take sheep to lure the shepherd because the shepherd's fear and screaming are better...
..The warg has a different appearance from a wolf. Wargs have a skulky, more hungry appearance from wolves. They'll carry themselves differently. Heads lower, ears only pricked up when they're trying hard to sense something ahead....
A wolf will look healthy. Full barrel chest, well groomed coat, a full ruff covered face. Beautiful, noble creatures.
Wargs are the products of corruption and dark magic. They come from forests that harbor old and insidious intentions. They should reflect this. Head low, tail straight and tense, a ragged and scraggly coat. A lanky, sneaky sort of build. Villainous intent in their eyes and viscous drool from their long maws framed by dirty,blood soaked, sunken faces.
Bravo, nice calls there.
To me, a warg is to an ordinary wolf, as a goblin is to man: it's a shadow of a natural being, twisted and tormented by dark magic, cast down out of the sunlit natural world, unhealthy in body and form, in mind and spirt from generations in shadow and darkness.
Perhaps primitive and brutish in form - as in those pictures above of dire wolves and other megafauna - but, like goblins, wargs are not necessarily bigger or more muscular than the natural forms they ape. Wargs are, I think, more properly the corrupted and crooked form of wolves or dogs - pale and imperfect imitations. Fangs, tusks, and horns wouldn't be out of place on some wargs, but neither would a starved, broken, sickly, and haunted appearance.
To return to the comparison of the goblin-ridden wargs to possession, the wargs are the canine equivalent of the victims of possession in horror films, and they should look that part.
I think I'd prefer no saddle, if at all possible. (Really, I don't think of wargs at all in terms of being cavalry, so proper wargs to me would be the animal alone without the rider, or perhaps a rider clinging to the animal's back by hand-and-foot, without the saddle....)
I don't expect wargs, as I see them, to have much of a society - the typical warg is a "lone wolf", I think: it suffers its existence alone, and finds others of its kind unnatural and unsettling... a gathering of wargs is a strange and miserable thing, something like a coven of wicked witches or evil wizards: a meeting charged with mutual distrust and loathing, only barely able to work together toward a common goal by virtue of all of the conspirators being in service to a greater evil which they fear and hate even more than they fear and hate each other, and more than they fear and hate themselves....
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