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.
Oh my how busy I have been recently! Caring duties, union activities, an ongoing rat invasion that we just cannot seem to shift, buying and selling transformers on the internet to try and bring in some money, and of course firework season (in our house we call it canine nervous breakdown season). Eveything is fithy, many things are broken. The outside is moving inside via giant lurcher paws. What an Autumn! Instead of my usual three painting projects I am down to a single project, plus I am slowly working on the coaching inn from WD 143, and working through my giant tub of sprues to turn them into miniatures ready for painting or selling.
This is a land train that I picked up on Kickstarter a while back. It looked great on the internet but up close I wasn’t that impressed. The 3d printing grain was far too large, leading to smudged designs and a generally cheap look. The plastic didn’t stick properly with superglue, pva glue, plastic cement, or carpenter’s glue. Bits are always threatening to break off. In general I would not recommend it. But when I saw it I remembered a piece of art and some flash fiction from way back, about some raiders who attack a caravan and get a nasty chaos genestealer flavoured surprise. So I had to have it! Since this was made there is now an official Warhammer equivalent, the Cargo-8 Ridge Crawler. Though a Ridge Crawler and two carriages would be over 120 quid!
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.
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!
With these two squads I have now painted the whole Chaos Army! I will get a photo of the whole lot soon, but for now enjoy some gobbos and chaos warriors.
I have to say that I think both lots look better in the plastic, so to speak.
I’m struggling getting the best use out of contrast yellow. Sometimes it looks great, but here I think it looks dark and unsaturated (is that the right word?)
I don’t have an epic ork army, I just painted this one because it was there. I am not that happy with the outcome. Maybe it’s time to sell up the epic stuff!
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 had a heathlord trike and nothing to go on the back! I had this alien knocking about, which I think is from Colony 87. It works! Also, the alien looks like a bloke I used to live with.
Doris Plunger's Lead Mess 