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!
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!
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!
Doris Plunger's Lead Mess 