As with the Northlord Barbarian, The Ogre King is a larger and more deluxe assortment of figure, but he’s still meant to be scaled with the rest of the figures and hence he’s a Giant! While pitting the Northlord Barbarian against this guy may have seemed like a fair fight, I used to love having to send a whole party of adventurers against him, and he usually wound up hurling Melf or Elkhorn before one of the more substantial adventurers did him in. Good times!

As an Ogre, you would expect this guy to look mean and green. Well, he’s certainly green, but the head sculpt could use a little more mean. There’s a lot of attention to detail in the head, and he’s certainly a whole bucketload of ugly, but I think he could have done with a fiercer expression. He sort of looks like he’s smiling and possibly about to invite you to tea.

The Ogre King also features some rather peculiar armor choices. He has a gladiatorial style ensemble for his right arm, which is accompanied by various belts sculpted across his chest. He’s also got what looks like a segmented plate armor tube top that comes up just under his chest. Its capped off with a removable soft plastic belt and “skirt” that is made to look like an extension of his stomach armor. His legs have knee guards and he has armor for his calves, but his feet are left bare. Its a bit of an odd choice of coverings. I would think an Ogre King could afford better protection. You could pretty much just stomp on his toes and then stab him in the heart.

The paintwork on this figure is solid enough, but once again its a bit odd. The aqua colored armor is peculiar, but certainly makes for a distinctive looking figure. I do really like the dark green used for his skin. There is a variant, which uses a much lighter skintone, that I don’t think works as well.

The accessories for the Giants all follow the same pattern, so just like with the Northlord Barbarian, Ogre King comes with a helmet, a removable soft plastic belt, a sword, a shield, and a spare weapon, in this case a spiked mace. The belt features a loop so you can store the spare weapon, although this figure can only store his mace there as the sword blade is too big to fit. Indeed, the sword is a pretty wild shaped piece with a blade that bellows out and features a notch in the edge. The hilt is nicely sculpted and painted yellow. The shield is long with an embossed dragon motif and the yellow, black, and aqua coloring matches the rest of the figure’s motif. The helmet is a simple cap that balances procariously on his head. I help it stay in place with a dot of bluetack.

Ogre King’s articulation is identical to that of the Northlord Barbarian. The head turns, the arms are ball jointed at the shoulders, and his legs are ball jointed at the hips. Not exactly super articulated, but it gets the job done.

There’s no bones about it, The Ogre King is a strange figure. I have to confess that I really dig it, but I think a lot of that love comes mostly from nostalgia. If I hadn’t owned this figure as a kid and spent tons of time playing with it, I don’t think I would be nearly attached to it. Even now, its pretty far down on my list of AD&D figures. One thing that is pretty cool about him is that you can army build him and mix up his accessories to get a pretty convincing little band of Ogres together to fight. As with the Northlord Barbarian, he’s pretty easy to find with all his goodies and minimal paintwear for around the $25 range. if you’re looking for extras to fill in your ranks, you can probably find incomplete versions for a little less.