Big Mek

Painting of the boys continues at a slow pace as I have had a few household chores to perform this week. Though I did manage to make a start on Kwikfit, my big mek with kustom force field and burna. Also in this picture are the ard boyz, a small unit of just 12 (no prizes for guessing why).

One month old

The ork army is about a month old today. And it's just like a newborn - very demanding, sometimes tiring, sometimes even keeps me awake at night! But always a joy when I look at it. Sniff.

Here's three of the first ten shoota boyz, I will probably save the rest to be photographed en masse when the whole mob of twenty is painted. The trophy rack on the left is a little joke for my regular Tau opponent. You can just about see the German military colours on the trousers and vest, which I thought was a bit cool (colour wise) even with the green skin, so I wanted to warm up the look and plumped for a grimey yellow. I think it works really well. But it's causing me a headache - should I stick with a Bad Moons look for the whole army, or should I go with the mixed tribes look, such as Goff bikers, Evil Sunz trukks, etc.?

Looted wagon and shootas

I started work on building a looted wagon over the weekend. Apologies for the pic, but hopefully you can see that it's a chimera chassis (on which I had practised and tested some painting). Most of the Imperial Guard bits have been removed or disguised and the orky improvements have been started. The transport carrier is just one option for the vehicle so I am making this as a separate component which will be held in place by magnets. In future, I will build a boom gun turret to use in the odd game.

The shoota boyz have had a bit of attention too, I have ten of them just about finished. I will post how they were painted in a few days, when I am reasonably confident they are really finished. This mob are probably affiliated to the Bad Moon tribe in some way, though I am not using the yellow throughout the army, just on this squad I think. There's still a bit of weathering to do here, which will dull the yellow down a little. I am still getting to grips with the MIG pigments, so each session is an experiment in what can (or cannot) be done with them.

More orky musing

It's surprising how much I learned just from that first game the other night. Being a long time fantasy player I suppose helps, in that I can learn the rules fast (they are not that different) and pick up on tactical implications. So I have a better idea of how to develop the ork army. The core of the force will be the orc warboss and mob of 20 slugga boyz from Black Reach, plus the 20 shoota boyz I have already started to paint. Against my regular opponent's Tau force these poor guys are extremely vulnerable to shooting and woefully slow, so I definitely need some speed and some covering fire. Fortunately, I happen have to a box of lootas/burnas and a truk, so they will be called into action at some stage. And I also have the deffkoptas, so I will be trying those too (after missing several times with my rokkit launchers in the game, I am tempted to convert the koptas to carry big shootas, or a couple of them at any rate). Another idea is to incorporate a big mek with kustom force field, to advance with the 2 big mobs and give them some cover even out in the open.

Of course, I am also itching to get some conversion and painting work done, so I have an idea to convert a Chimera into a looted trukk. It's an old model I picked up on ebay to practise painting, but now it can be put to even better use. I like the idea of it being armed with a skorcha and carrying the burna boyz to the frontline. That will make the Tau fire warriors wish they had never picked that name! So many ideas, so little time.

The army, then, is shaping up in my mind like this:-

Warboss (from Black Reach, cool model)
Big Mek (conversion?)
20 slugga boyz, nob with boss pole
20 shoota boyz, nob with boss pole
12 ard boyz in truk (exact equipment to be decided after a few test games)
12 burna boyz (love these models and they were one of the main reasons I started the army)
10 lootas (I need long range support and will have the bits from the burnas left over)
5 or 10 nobz (these I am least sure about how to use, maybe in a transport, a painboy would be useful and is a cool model)
looted Chimera
3-5 deffkoptas
10 ish Tankbustas (already have the metal models, these are longer term)
Orky terrain (need that cover)

I have most of the bits already for this lot, so I just have to get down to making and painting them. If I can hold off the lure of chaos warriors, I should have it all done by Christmas. I am also dropping hints about Santa bringing me some biker boyz.

First game with the orks

Played my first game of 40k last night (well, I'm discounting a 40 minute demo game in the local shop). As we are both novices to the game, we decided to keep the forces infantry-based, so we could get to grips with the basics. It was certainly different to fantasy, more fluid and decisive I thought. We did have to leaf through certain sections, but it seemed reasonably straight-forward and intuitive. Shooting (by Tau at least) can be devastating, wiping out swathes of troops in one phase. I quickly learned to advance under cover if at all possible. Similarly, combats rarely last more than one turn, at least that's what happened when the boyz got stuck in. They are brutal! Next game, we will include more troop types, so I will be fielding the koptas and possibly a truk.

Assembling fatigue

I have spent much of the weekend assembling the orks from the Black Reach set. The mob of slugga boyz, including a nob to lead them, plus the massive warboss are all cleaned, glued and re-posed in some instances. The remaining Nobz and deffkoptas are just snapped together until I can summon up the willpower to tackle them.

Along with the squad of 20 shoota boyz, that gives me a reasonable small force to start gaming with. I just need to do a bit of homework on the rules before the first game later this week.

Short break, ruins and Black Reach

After a few days break on the coast, I have arrived back to a modelling heaven. In the post I received some more terrain to build, a DVD about MIG pigments and the new Assault on Black Reach set. I don't know where to start. While I try to decide, here's the latest on the ruins. A simple wash/stipple followed by a quick dusting of pigments and already it is shaping up nicely. I am really pleased with the cobble flooring, which is the bottom of a plastic meat container. There's more to be done still, but I think I need to assemble some orks first.

Ruins

Work on the orks has come to a brief pause, while I get together some ruins to scatter on the battlefield. Most of them are quite boring old-style gothic ruins, but I did manage to cobble together a more interesting building from some of the newer style sprues that I picked up at a Gamesday terrain making session.

After assembling, it was glued on to a hardboard base, rubble and sand added, then sprayed black. The first coat of colour is from an emulsion tester pot, watered down it covers just fine and is a cheap way of covering large pieces like this one. There's still a fair bit of work to do on it, but I am intending just slapping on a few washes and pigments for a speedy result. Best of all, it's just the right size for 20 ork boyz to hide in when the enemy fire gets too much.