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!
Hello everyone, it’s been a while. It’s not that I’ve not been painting whenever possible, but I’ve not been taking photos of what I do paint. This has now been remedied and so you’ll get a burst of posts over the next week or so. I hope that you enjoy them!
First up are the ‘goodies’ from Blackstone Fortress. Beautiful minis, a pleasure to paint, albeit difficult, and with mixed results. Some of these I am very happy and others not so much.
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.
Just a quick update before I get to some juicy stuff later… Brother Russkikh is a lovely old Rogue Trader Chaplain which has some fantastic details on it but a horrible helmet. I did the best I could with the face but it doesn’t look very skull-like. I have to say that it looks better in the metal, as it were. The picture here is not very flattering at all! Oh well, its hardly spoiling my chances of getting called up for an invitational 😀
The Eldar of Craftworld Lugganath are considered savage and uncivilised by other Eldar. There are far more of them devoted to reaving and piracy than from other Eldar societies, and they are warlike and cynical, hasty and bloodthirsty. As the 41st millenium (by human reckoning) breathes its last, Arthmael’s Corsairs are struggling to find their way back to the spires of their home. Eldar Corsairs are often young Eldar who have been blooded as Guardians in war, but who have not yet devoted themselves to the path of the warrior. They travel in search of new webway routes and entrances, reaving and stealing as they go, hopping from real-space into the webway and back again, acting as scouts and pathfinders for Lugganath society. Arthmael led a corsair gang operating on the far Eastern edge of the Segmentum Obscurus, and was mid-way through a standard exploration expedition when the Great Rift opened. This explosion of chaos damaged the webday, destroying some paths, pouring daemons into others. Whilst Arthmael’s unit were not in the webway at the time, they have struggled since then to find a way back. Shortly after the opening Arthmael, a skilled and cunning Warlock, was killed by a ricochet during an attempt to gain entrance to a webway portal occupied by the Death Guard. Since Arthmael’s death, the rest of the corsair squad has been whittled down by attrition in any number of battles with chaos and Imperial forces. They lack basic equipment and have been reduced to plundering human weapons and even food. They are squabbling amongst themselves, and becoming nihilistic in outlook…
I have never painted Eldar before, so this was a fun diversion. I used mostly contrast paints, which I am starting to get used to. The Eldar themselves are a mix of Rogue Trader Guardians and Third Ed. Dark Eldar. Bits of this work and bits don’t, but I’m fairly happy with it. I chose Lugganath because I wanted a nice bright colour-scheme, which it certainly it. One thing I never noticed before is that all the RT Guardians have cloths hanging from their belts. Could this be a reference to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Handkerchief_code? Considering that Orks called Eldar pansies I suspect it might be.
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 