Sometime around the beginning of the month i realised it was Orktober and there were certain things expected of me. I cleared my table of non-Ork projects and had a rummage through my various boxes and a look in Freebooterz to see what mobz i was missing. Having made a selection I started work on the mobz, building and painting and convertin and all that. And here we are at the end of Orktober and this is what I have achieved this month… the biggest lesson here is one that I should have already known – don’t try and do too much at the same time! Ah well, Orkvember it is then too!
The Freebooter Army project continues, with Freebooter Minderz. These are big tough Orks that would make an ideal close-combat unit. I picked a more modern Nob as the boss due to its size, and used some generic Space Crusade boyz for the same reason. A couple of Stormboyz minis to try and keep a vaguely uniform theme, to tie into the more modern idea of bodyguards being in tuxes, and used lots of greys to give that impression too, sort of. For most of us the closest we ever get to bodyguards are doormen, your names not down etc, so they’re Doorboyz. Randomisation of bioniks tables adds that orky feel, whilst assault weapons play to their strengths. I love painting Orks.
I know I said I was done with Bad Moonz when I finished the Oddboyz, but I felt that just a Bigmob wasn’t really Orky. You need at least one more of the same colour in there. So here it is! Actually, the mob was kind of built to go in the battlewagon. This battlewagon came in a job lot and was pretty mullered. I rebuilt it and extended it and added a few bits. It looks alright but I was too basic with the side panels, I should have put more spikes around the edges and made the sides look like they were made up of different panels welded together. This wouldn’t have been difficult to do, but I didn’t do it because it didn’t occure to me until I was already painting and think, this could look better, and then I didn’t stop and redo it because Orkes don’t look back. I love the old battlewagon model, and I hope that this isnt the last time I get to build and paint one. Maybe when I win the lottery I will buy one for every ork mob I make!
Well, I may have been silent for a few months, but I have been painting occasionally. I just haven’t been taking photos of my completed miniatures. This has now been rectified and so over the next few days I’ll be updating a selection of badly but enthusiastically painted miniatures with my comments on same.
Things are still mostly shit here. Seven months on I am having to admit that we are now a household with two sufferers of chronic conditions, and that there is not much we can do about that. I am trying to face this stoically but its still worrying, and I’m worried and sad and angry most of the time.
So here we are then, in Orktober, the orkiest time of year. This Orktober I am renovating an old battlewagon, but I have an even bigger Orky achievement to celebrate too. I have finished the Warboss’s Retinue for Waaagh! Uzbog, which means that I have a complete and list-legal Rogue Trader Ork Army! Uzbog, his Retinue Nobz, and the Bigmob were all featured in earlier posts, so this time I will put up just pictures of the retinue.
The final additions to Waargh! Uzbog
Oddboyz Retinue: Mekboy Snagagrot (flak, bolt pistol, hand weapon; kustom weapon – kustom special – heavy bolter +1 to hit +8″ range D10 damage; power fist), Krusader robot; Painboy Dok Wortbad (flak, boltpistol, hand weapon; bionik bitz x 2 – legs: tracks, doks surprise – steel hornz),2 x dreadnoughts; Weirdboy Badskab plus minderz (flak, bolters, handweapon, force field – konverter, bionik bit – boltpistol hand); Weirdboy Gorslag plus minders (flak, bolters, handweapons, force field – deflektor, bionik bit: axe hand); Runtherd Gutgrim (flak, boltpistol, hand weapon; bionik bit – melta hand); 5x grots – handweapon); squig catapult; hop splat gun. 600 points.
Its been a funny few months hasn’t it? At the end of January we got another dog, a puppy to be a friend to our traumatised whippet. We brought a charming little lurcher puppy into our household, and we’ve had two months of stress since then as we’ve all had to learn about the new format of the family unit and how we fit together. There have been a lot of days when I’ve said to myself,if I find it this hard caring for a puppy then I am not going to manage kids…; plenty of times when I’ve wondered if we haven’t taken a household of two happy adults and one happy dog and made a household of four unhappy creatures; and times when I’ve disappointed myself at my own failings. In amongst all this there hasn’t been a lot of time for painting. I’ve barely been outside for two months! So pandemic and lockdown hasn’t made a lot of difference to my day-to-day life! Its still mostly about ensuring the needs of my doggies are met… things are much calmer now, the dogs are friends, we’re not house-trained yet (70 days and counting, but to be fair to her she spent the first four months of her life living in a barn and pissing where she liked, so its kind of engrained), and the biggest hit is that our dog socialisation has had to go our of the window and we’re worried that she’ll pick up insanity from him rather than him picking up sanity from her…
I don’t normally write about my life because its not really very interesting, but I wanted to give some context to my work. and the pictures I post over the next day or two. I hope everyone is staying safe and being sensible to protect themselves and their loved ones.
Warboss Uzbog, featured a few posts back, already had a Big Mob, and so he needs a retinue. This post will show off his retinue nobz, and their custom battlewagon. I enjoyed building and painting the battlewagon particularly, I was influenced by a piece in Fantasy Miniatures. That guy’s work is far better than mine but I hope that the spirit of Orkish kustomisation is with me too.
Uzbog’s retinue nobz
Uzbog’s nobz in their kustom battlewagon… 280 points of orks
You know how it goes, you have so many projects going on that none of them ever seem to get anywhere… so it has been with my Ork Freebooter army. In order to field a valid Freebooter army I need a warboss, retinue, and big mob to attach all the Freebooterz to. I did the big mob some time ago… https://leadmess.com/2016/07/02/waargh-dakka-dakka-its-grimsniks-ouseold-boyz/ so maybe I should get a shift on… therefore, here I present Wazgut Uzbog, Bad Moon Warboss. Wazgut is only a minor warboss at the moment, but he has some grand ideas, if only he had the boyz! So he’s spending teef like there’s no tomorrow in the hope of carving out a decent Empire for himself and winning some good scraps at the head of an army of freaks and outcasts…
The miniature is, I think, from Knightmare. The sculptor has really caught the essence of Ansellite Orkishness, and yellow contrast paint is really very good indeed. This mini was so quick to paint that I think I should go back and try and do some black and white checks or something… but i always fuck it up when I try to get too clever so maybe its done!
Like almost everyone in the old/middle/war-hammer blogosphere, I have been experimenting with Contrast paints over the last couple of months. Results are varied, not least because I’m not really a very good painter! Some colours and techniques are better than others, and I think that Contrast paints are a useful weapon in the armoury. I think that their advertised use is probably the best use for them – to speed up basic army painting so that you can get more painted models done and on the battlefield. This is important, because the New! Improved! Games Workshop keep releasing more cool minis than any of us can ever hope to paint even if we didn’t have a leadpile consisting of all the cool minis of the last 40 years and people are starting to feel helpless in the face of it all. Like, why would I bother to spend however vast amounts of money on the newest shiniest fuckiest uppest tank when I have shitloads of unpainted minis already. So they help get the minis painted quicker and make some space for a Chaos Knight or flying uber tank or something like that. I kind of want a Chaos Knight, and I was recently a victim of the flying uber tank (that has a lot of guns and helped me get swiftly tabled on my third game against a guy testing a competitive list and was very embarrassed about the whole thing) which made me think i needed one… So anyway, these Blood Axes are an excuse to try some Orky camo shading using mostly Contrast paints. I have resolved after this to return to my Freebooterz Army, lets see how that works out!
Oh yeah, I know I’m a bit late for Orktober, but these boyz are Orkses what I painted in Orktober so there.
The Freebooterz book is an amazing thing. It allows you to build almost any Ork army you want. All you need to do is pick a Warboss and his retinue, and a bigmob of at least ten Orks, then after that Freebooterz is your guide for making a fantastic army using whatever takes your fancy. The Outcast Retinue mob allows you to use a different clan to your main clan and still take whatever special rules that second clan has. Now, I haven’t got a main clan yet (though I have Goff and Bad Moonz clan Orks), so an Outcast Retinue is a pretty pointless thing to have. Still, the dice rolls were in, and an Outcast Retinue it was. I then rolled for a clan and it was Evil Sunz. But I’ve just finished a red, vehicle-based mob! An Evil Sunz Retinue offers you two Meks (and their associated odddbitz), plus cheap vehicles. But we’re not going to do that! This Retinue is missing all the things that make it an Evil Sunz Retinue! Mostly, this is because almost all my minis were already packed for my house move. One day I’ll add a load of vehicles to it, I’ve already bought one of the cool new Ork vehicles (did I say this last time, I love the new Ork vehicles, but I hate the modern Ork minis and flufff), and I will add a couple of tanks or something. The looted rhino (counts as a battlewagon) came in a lot I bought a few years ago and is a rough and ready conversion that didn’t need a lot of messing with. I cleaned up the paint job, added a few more bitz and some weathering and hoped that covered up the worst of it. The story behind this retinue is that a telly-porta accident seperated them from the rest of the clan, leaving the warboss, the boyz, the wagons, the runtz, and all the perks of kultur somewhere entirely different to the retinue. Following a period of adjustment, during which Big Mek Gorrunt ascerted his domination through a judicious use of a giant power klaw, they are now back and looking for a scrap. As any Ork knows, a wagon and a bike aren’t enough speed for Evil Sunz, they need more vehicles and they’re willing to fight for them!
Hello everyone, its Orktober again, and its nice to see so many people painting Orks in celebration of the happiest time of year. GW have done well, releasing some properly Orky vehicles and a new game that I might pick up if I find a spare ninety quid at some point in the near future. My Orktober has mostly been spent packing boxes, as I am moving house, and indeed country. I am moving to Caerdydd, where they speak a different language. What’s Welsh for “more dakka, ladz!”??
My contribution to Orktober is one that I’m not really very happy with. To use a common expression, “they’re a bugger to paint”. Four 2nd Edition warbikes, and a tiny RT warbike. He’s the yoof, on his practise bike! Actually, the RT bike was a pleasure to paint, but the plastic ones not so much. I simply don’t think that they are very good minis. The scale is better, but they feel like a cheap children’s toy rather than a finely detailed collector’s model! I also had to repair and rebuild them, all of them being scrap from the bitzbox. I think I did alright but compared to some of my previous Freebooter mobz I don’t get the warm glow of success!
Never-mind, its all a learning curve. I present to you Magog and his Bad Ork Bikeboyz, the only survivors of an Evil Sunz warband who were wiped out by Space Marines. They survived because they drove right through the Marines and off into the distance, more into going fast than shooting. By the time they calmed down, turned round, and found the battle again there was nothing left of their old warband. Now they’re Freebooterz, willing to fight in exchange for food and fuel.
Doris Plunger's Lead Mess 