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.
Hello again and welcome to 2020. Since my last post its been Christmas and New Year, and then we’ve done something silly and got ourselves a new puppy. I’ve not had a lot of painting time since then 😦 She’s lovely though.
Now, the two main points of “interest” with this warband were 1) further experimentation with contrast paints; and 2) painting a random selection of miniatures in the way that I did when I was a kid! Point 2 needs no explanation, but point 1 maybe does. I followed some intructions for painting with source lighting from above. So I sprayed these minis black all over, then gave a grey spray from above, and then a white spray from above. I was hoping that the white would help the colours to pop out, as if there was a strong sun above – this warband is wandering parched chaos wastes. I think I’ve had mixed success. Mostly the source lighting failed and I don’t really know why. Likewise where it worked I don’t know why it worked. Was it my choice of colours or paint? Why are the mutants so dull whilst the Warqueen looks great? Still, I think I’ve learned a few things and I’ve painted some lovely miniatures. I really enjoyed painting the Warqueen – one problem with the beautiful modern minis GW is churning out at the moment is that they are so very detailed that it is hard for us mediocre painters to do anything with them. This one has just the right amount of stuff on it, a challenge but not impossible. The chap with the warhammer was fun too…. his tab just says OLDHAMMER but I can’t remember getting him. The chaos toilet was great, I really enjoyed painting it but I think that I could have done a lot better. The zombie ninja was fun too and simple. I messed up the shaman lady, I should have used different colours. The chaos warriors were tricky, I am not pleased with any of them really. The not-chaosette was a nightmare to paint, lots of faint detail, hard to get any of it right. The rhino-monster I enjoyed and I felt like I got the tattoos right too. In true chaos style, even the paineous bits were a pleasure!
I don’t get a lot of painting done these days. Busy times. We have a special needs dog now, who seems to take up a lot of my time. But twenty minutes here and there, the odd hour now and again, it all adds up to slow work.
This gang were put together on a theme – that theme being Big! It gave me an apportunity to paint a load of classic miniatures and a modern masterpiece too. This is quite a flexible gang, I could use it in a game of Rogue Trader on its own, or I could use them as part of an Ork army. Blood Axes are allowed ripper gun armed Ogryns, but all others are only allowed Ogryns armed with hand-weapons. I could also integrate my other Beastman space pirate gang into this one quite easily. There are also rules for a Big Mutant squad for chaos armies in (I think) Codex Eye of Terror…
Aside: I played my first game of 40K as an adult the other week. It was fun, but my Primaris Marines fell to a Necron force. The main thing I learned is that with Necrons you should shoot everything at a single squad until it is destroyed, then repeat until you or they are all dead. You mustn’t let any Necrons survive or the squad will be back soon!
On with the Big Lads… once again, apologies for the quality of the photos, I haven’t gotten around to making a different backdrop yet, but I will!
Doris Plunger's Lead Mess 