Three posts already this year, not bad going. I don’t feel like I’m getting more leisure time than I was, I still feel overwhelmed and unable to cope, but I’ve clearly been able to do a bit of painting and modelling so that’s something. There are so many things I want to do, so many projects and protests and archives and DIY and learning and books to read and hobby ideas but no time to do any of it.
So Waaagh! Nikkaz. Nikkaz obviously has ambition, ten grots is hardly a waagh! These goblin pirate miniatures are lovely, proper oldhammer-esque. I’ve thrown in a few properly oldhammer grots too and another Makari as I seem to have Makaris out the wazzoo! No Ghazghulls, mind, just Makaris. A nice fun little project, and now I’ve only got four more squads left until I’ve painted every squad in Freebooterz.
My final orktober offering is an oldhammer-newhammer combi. When the Speed Freeks game came out a few years ago I fell in love with the ork vehicles inside but I couldn’t afford the whole box. Later I picked up this Boomdakka Snazzwagon, which is a lovely kit, feels very old school, full of orky goodness. It could easily pass for a battlewagon in my opinion, especially against the tiny metal vehicles of old. Orks can buy heavy weapons to mount on battlewagons, so the weapon roll out here is whatever i roll on those lovely charts (heavy bolter, heavy plasma gun, missile launcher). Speed Freekz also get access to cheap vehicles, so I added a warbuggy and wartrak (skorcha). Poor tiny vehicles! The skorcha really needs a (full size) modern kit, by the way GW, hint hint.
Now this is the squad that took all the time! Five mekboyz, three orky convershuns, a load of robot-proxies, and some hangers-on. This was a lot of fun but I really over-stretched myself. Once I totted up the points, this single squad costs an incredible 1240 points! To put that into context, the next most points heavy squad I have made from the Freebooterz book was the Outcast Oddboyz, who cost 440 points.
Because there is so much here I am going to break it down a bit what we’re looking at. The basic Renegade Mekboyz mob is a kaptin and four meks. I went a bit OTT with the tables and gave them three rolls on the ranged weapons chart, two rolls on the stikkbomz chart, a forcefield for the kaptin, three bionik bitz, and two kustom weapons! As an aside, these two kustom weapons at 25 points each are absolutely blinking superb. Check these out, I promise that these are all original rolls, no cheating or just making it up. 1x kombi – lascannon-heavy webber-boltgun; 1x kustom special – plasma gun +3st, +4″r, 3″ radius, normal rate of fire, d4 damage.
Yes, that’s right, one gun that is a lascannon heavy webber boltgun! And a plasma gun that you can fire every turn that is extra strong and has a three inch radius effect! I rolled a 6 and a 5 for number of effects, and all 5 effects were good’uns.
Each mek also allows you to purchase an oddbit or tinboyz mob, so I bought three looted wagons, a tinboyz mob, and a blitzcannon. Of course, I didn’t actually have any miniatures of those models, so I had to get creative. Imperial Whirlwind – I used a Warlord Games Katyusha. Imperial Sentinal – well, that’s chunks of a chaos dreadnought with Eldar dreadnought legs, I’ve decided that this is one of the Meks with mad bionik legs. Imperial Landspeeder – well, that’s actually a landspeeder so I did have one of the models. Tinboyz mob – these are Bob Olley steampowered scrunts that I bought on a whim and they are going to prozy for Imperial robots. Blitzcannon – this is a middlehammer lizardman dinosaur that I had knocking around. Stick a giant cannon on top and bobs yer uncle. The howdah is the thing I am least happy with, I should have put armour plates on the side and dags and stuff. More is less with Orkses!
There was a few dodgy bionik conversions too. A sword arm, an extra arm, and a squig attack arm. These meks are certainly prone to accidents. The squig attack arm was very tricky to make and looks quite frankly a bit crap, but as any oldhammer ork fan knows, its the doing that counts! I hope that you enjoy these Renegade Mekboyz! Sorry about the quality of the pics, my usual set up was unavailable so these are a bit darker than I would like.
So yeah, its’s been a busy few months. Since going all out for Orks I have been sidetracked by my partner’s long covid flaring up again, an increase in my workload, and a decrease in my own mental health. Not as much time for painting as I’d like, but an hour here and there is better than nothing. So that messy pile of bitz from five months ago has turned into three more Freebooterz mobz. Up first is the simplest: Ugnob da Dribbla, Possessed Warphead!
As readers may have noticed along the way, I love random tables. I really enjoy rolling up combos of items and materiel and bionik bitz and mutations and then modelling it. I’m not a great modeller, but every conversion teaches me something, even if that something is how not to do it next time. Sometimes they turn out great and sometimes not so great. Occasionally the tables throw out some disappointments, and that’s what happened here.
So a Possessed Warphead is, as the name suggests, and Ork possessed by a daemon (or daemons). Orks don’t possess well, so this is a bit of a bad move by the daemon. You get a weirdboy that is way powerful and has some cool chaos attributions. At least you do if you manage not to roll badly. Ugnob here has been possessed by nurglings! He also rolled up nothing on his chaos attributes chart. I also rolled on the bionik bitz chart, got a dok’s surprise and then rolled fungus breff! So let’s say that he’s only just been possessed by nurglings, which has given him a tendancy to have ten-way conversations with himself, a weird sense of humour, terrible breath and incredible amounts of snot.
Possessed Warpheadz even give Madboyz the creepz, so he’s a lone figure on the battlefield, but I decided to make him some snot and grot sidekicks. This became a big base of sidekicks, but actually I regret this because it’s too big and unwieldy, it makes no sense. I should have made a scenic base that you can put Ugnob in, or put the sidekicks onto individual bases and scattered them around him.
This isn’t a very oldhammer beginning to Orktober, but fear not, there’s plenty to come!
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
Doris Plunger's Lead Mess 