Ramming speed!

With the captain of the looted wagon "ready for action" I turned my attention to the second crew member, the wagons "first mate". I decided to use the nobz sprue again and one of the heads from the maximini sets I had ordered.

And here he is. Once thing I have noticed is that the white resin Maxi Mini used is annoyingly hard to photograph! Still he should look pretty awesome finished.

So Crew finished it was time to turn my attention to the final major section of the wagon that needed working on. The engines! I did try and see if I could fit the engine from the Ork Trukk on anywhere but it didn't look right and would have seemed too "obivously" stuck on for want of a better term.

I suddenly realised there was a much more obivous solution as the raider already came with "rocket" style engines anyway. So all I needed was to add some more rockets to give it that Orky feel, of the crew simply pointing the wagon at the enemy, lighting the rockets and then hoping for the best.

For the extra rockets I used too packs from the stormboyz sprue which fitted into the gaps between the raider hull and the Ork Trukk chasis surprisingly easy. Now I know that the raider isn't quite "straight" but no looted wagon is ever going to come out of the Meks workshop perfect and I'm sure the Mekyboz simply told his customers that the wagon came with " sporty handling"


So here is the wagon in it's almost finished glory, complete with Kaptain and first mate. In case anyone is wondering the blobs of green stuff will be "lights". The one main thing I have left to do is drill out the heavy stubber barrels and added a couple more bits of wiring to represent the Mekyboyz "Kustomz improvementz".

Then all I'll have to do it paint it!

Try, try and try again

Okay so my first attempt at converting a Ork in Mega Armour wasn't exactly a rousing success. but I wasn't going to give up that easy. I knew that I wasn't going to be able to match the detail of the metal models so I decided to go for the overall look instead and hope it impressed enough that people wouldn't notice the lack of pistons, hydralics etc on the legs.

Now my first attempt had looked like he had simply stepped into a box and then pulled it up like a child. So this time I decided to use smaller bits of plasti card and created a "multi" piece armour look that while not near, fitted the " made from scrap" Ork image.
To convey the idea of hydralics I decided to fall back on the good ole tanks from the Ork Loota sprue turned side ways and mounted on the Orks back. I used simple wire in connections from the tank to the Combi and power weapons. To finish bulking the armour out I used Space marine shoulder pads for somewhat unsurprisingly the shoulders. ( just don't ask what happened to the should pads original owners).

The back armour, heads and jaw plates came from the Ork Nobz sprue and didn't need any additional converting. The combi weapons were relatively simple. I used a bit of plastic card for the arm "mount" and green stuff for the straps. I made sure to add ammo feeds and targeting sights and no ork Nobz in Mega armour would settle for a gun that was second best.

So here is the full strength squad ready to lead the boyz into battle and guard the Bosses back, or maybe stick a knife in it depending on their mood :-)

I'm really happy with how they came out and think their the best converted squad I've done thus far.

Plus I still have a ton of stuff from their sprue left over to go into the bitz box. Bonus!

It's a little dusty but it's still good

Deep in the dark mists of time, when I still working in a rather geeky job and didn't have to go to work dressed up as a grown up or worry about the real world good ole GW released Apocolypse.

Finally a way to use all of your collection on the tabletop in one go. You could play massed battles like you had only dreamed of and most people did.... and then got bored and went back to regular games.

In the midst of these heady days I decided to add a couple of apocolypse units to my Ork Army. Well a stompa was pretty much a given but what else?

After much umming and arring I settle on going for a battle fortress using the new Shadowsword kit.

So after a bit of work in the Meks workshop we get....
I was initially stuck on how to create the main gun for the fortress as there were lots of gun pieces in the shadowsword kit. I finally decided to go for the easy option. I used all of them in one go! Of course such a big gun would have need a lot of bracing as I'm sure you can see from the picture.

The exhausts at the back were a mix of plasti rod and the exhausts vents from the adeptus mechanicum city fight building.

The two "inside" track guards at the front of the fortress are the wheel coverings from the Ork warbuggy. The Turret well that's obivously from the Ork battlewagon sprue. To attach it to the top of the tank I used the mounting from the Ork battle wagon sprue as well although it did require a little bit of filing to get the perfect fit.

I used the two side pieces from the Ork Battlewagon sprue to mount the two gunnars and to finish the crew off I added a Mekboy to keep an eye to make sure the engine was running perfectly and some grots pulling ammo crates back and forth.

It didn't turn out too badly if I do say so myself. I just need to play an apocolype game at some point so I can actually use it in a fight!

Shiver me Timbers

Well the shipment from maxi-mini had arrived in the mail which meant I had my grubby little paws ( or grubby bit paws but I digress) on my pirate heads which meant it was time to fire up the welding gear and cutting equipment ( and by that I mean the plastic glue and my craft knife) and get back to work on the looted wagon.
So on went the sail and I raided my trusty bitz box yet again to find two heavy stubbers from the Ork Dreadnought sprue which were mounted on the proz right next to the ram! Of course you can't have a "Pirate Ship" with out a plank!

And what better then the boarding plank from the Ork trukk sprue!

With the Wagon coming along nicely it was time for some crew. I decided to fallback on my trusted choice of the Ork Nobz sprue because lets face it no self respecting Ork Nobz is going to ride around in a trukk when there's a looted wagon going. After umming and ahhing about what to arm him with I decided to go with twin pistols. For his head I went with the Ork head with beard pipe and of course Pirate Hat.

I'm not going to glue him in postion until he's painted but he you can see where he'll be ending up.

So now I just have to work on the driver and the engines.

WeirdBoy, weird boy watcha gonna do

Well I was debating adding one more HQ choice to my army and after some pondering I decided to try converting a Weirdboy.

Gw only do one model of a weirdboy and he's made of metal so he was unfortunatly out!

I wanted to go for a savage "look" for my weirdboy and so decided to look at the Warhammer range of Orcs for inspiration.

After some deliberation I decided to go with the Orc Warboss set as I liked the look of the chainmail torse and the long cloak with wolf head.

A little search in the old bitz box and I ended up with.
One plastic weirdboy. The head is from the Ork Boyz sprue as well as the two Ork skulls and the staff is from the Ork Grotz sprue. I did try and create a staff with wiring wrapped round to give the impression of the staff contained a psyhic conduit for powers but I couldn't get it quite right, so I decded to go for the less is more approach and keep it simple.

I feel he's okay but I'm not as happy with him as I could be, I just have a feeling that there's something missing. But he'll do until I get the inspiration to come up with a replacement.

In for a Penny in for a Pound

Once someone mentioned about the Pirate heads from Maxi Mini I knew that I just had to have them to go on my looted wagon. The image of Orks in Pirate hats was just too good to resist. Plus I don't have to worry about being targeted for heresy.

So one quick purchase and one week late I arrived home from work to find a rather tightly sealed packaged waiting for me and inside was ( drum roll please).................

My Pirate heads!!! Yaah! I can finally get on with the looted wagon.

I hate to sound childish but this is going to look so cool :-)

Becoming a heretic

I've been model making for a long time. Perhaps too long depending on who you ask, but that's a discussion for another time and place. And quite possibly behind my back but I digress.

My focus has been Games Workshop for nearly all of that time, with a slight foray into Historical minatures. For obivous reasons for those of you who have been paying attention I've kept my attention on Games Workshop despite being aware of the growing numbers of wargames manufacturers out there and hopefully the wraith of the inquistion won't fall on my head for saying so, the viable alternatives to Warhammer 40,000.

However since I now live in the real world I can start to explore these other games without worrying about the Battle sisters coming to my door, which is also a good thing as with the loss of my discount and the steadly increasing prices I'm starting to find it hard to indulge my hobby cravings as much as I used to even with more money coming in.

Visting my local wargames shop I decided to let my eyes make the decision and I went for the first thing which caught my eye.
Behold one of hte new plastic warjacks from Privateer press and their game Warmachine. Now I literally know nothing about this game but there was something about this model which just made me want to pick it up and try putting it together.

According to the guys in the shop Privateer press are starting to release a steadily increasing number of plastic minatures. Now I say " plastic" but it's a different plastic then I'm used to with Games Workshop. It's a lot harder but it allows quite frankly a stunning amount of detail. Just see all of the details on the bits above.

The other issue is you need superglue to put these models together which is little bit more time consuming then using plastic glue and does mean you have to pay a lot more attention to what your doing as gluing your hand to the table is a bad thing to do. Not to mention a silly thing to do. Not that I've done that before at all.........

Right where was I? Right good things about the model, firstly the amazing level of detail. Secondly the lack of significant models lines and thirdly the ease with which it went together.

Bad things, well having to use super glue, secondly the addition work needed to get rid of mould lines due to the hardness of the plastic and last the warped gun arm. To be fair with the last one that could have happened in the box but not having used the plastic before I didn't know how much "oommph" I could use to try and straight it again without breaking it. I was able to get it fairly into line but it's still a bit scewed.

So here he is fully aseembled and undercoated. My first ever warjack! I'm going to a bit of experimenting to try and match the colour scheme using GW paints as I don't want to have to go out and buy a whole new set.

I'll be posting some more pics soon so be sure to keep an eye out.

Avast Me Hearties

I remember back in the deep dark mists of time when I first became a modeller ( not model unfortunatly but thems the breaks in life) although I was deeply hooked on the Space Marines (blood Angels especially) I noticed the Ork Freebootzers ( if I've spelt that right) as who could fail to notice a bunch of Orks wearing Pirate hats.



As the years have rolled by the Orks have been toned down quite a bit and become less of a comedy force and much more of a real threat. Now I was planning on including a unit of flash gitz in my new army but I was going to go old school on them as it were.



Until the time I reading through the latest issue of White dwarf about the new Dark Eldar and my eyes set upon the new Dark Eldar raider. Although I wasn't interested in collecting a Dark Eldar force I was interesting in possibly getting a model or two to paint.

I especially like the "galley" feel to the raider, with the curved hull and sail. Now it was about this time I had been thinking about possibly heavy support choices and in one of those random moments when your brain suddenly thinks of something, the new image of the new Raider, the looted wagon choice and the thought of Orks in pirate hats all came together.

Hmmm, could it really work?

Oh yes and surprising well as it turned out. With the minimum of alterations the raider hull sits perfectly on top of the chasis from the Ork Trukk. Well it is a looted wagon and sooner or later the Orks would burn out the grav engines, and if the Mek of the army has some spare wheels lying around then why not?

As you can see it's still in it's early stages. I'm going to have to make some decisions about weapons, crew and engines but I know two things. One the sail is staying and two, how cool is it going to look with a Ork with pirate hat standing at the front?

I'll post some more pictures as the work progresses.

The Doks boyz

No matter how tough a Ork you are (just) occasionally you might run into someone who is bigger then you ( usually a space marine) and having a limb or limbs removed is going to put a dampener on any aspiring Orks quest for glory.

It is these situations a Ork may be desperate enough ( or just unconcious so he can't protest) to go and see a Painboy for help to get back on his feet. If he's lucky it might be a relatively easy fix.

However in some cases he might need the help of some of the Painboys "modifications" to get back into fighting form. In the other cases he might just find himself the proud owner of a modification after the painboy decided to do some experimenting.

So now I had a painboy for my army I decided I needed a unit of Nobz who were the proud owners of the Docs Upgrades.

And here they are.
As you can see thir all equipped with Sluggas and power klaws ( having trouble opening Space marine power armour? I did too until I took one of the doks pwoer klaws into battle). The nobz on the left uses the Nobz head with the " vent" out of one side. The nobz in the middle uses the nobz head with half of a face flate, and I've added two "bionik" eyes by using the Ork boyz gunsight with a small blob of green stuff for the lense. The final Ork on the right uses the head with "cylon" visor, and has a peg leg as the Dok obivously ran out of bitz whilst upgrading him. Or maybe was just trying to save teeth. Who knows?

These are the three Dok Boyz from the back. As you can see each of them is carrying a tank ( from the Ork Lootas sprue, I love that sprue!) obivously full of the Doks secret recipe for keeping his upgrades goings.

For the tubing I just used standard wiring I bought from macro. Each of the wire either try to run directly into the Bioniks or the power klaws, or at the very least they run to the limb that has the bionik.

I'll post some more pics when their finished.

Mad Dok

Okay, so I had my warboss, my Big Mek and his chief underling all sorted out. Or to put it another way I had someone to lead and someone to make and maintain all the gunz. But what about the boyz? Who looks after them?

Well considering the usual standard of care provided by Ork Painboyz I'm sure a Regular Ork would be more then happy for the Painboy to go and look after somebody else!

If you've read the rest of the post you will know that the regular painboy model is out as it's metal. However I probably wouldn't have chosen it anyway as I'm not a fan. Although impressively detailed it's a bit too small to match with the plastic nobz without a noticable difference.

So I decided to turn to the plastic Ork Nobz sprue to form the basis for my " Dok" . This sprue is really, really useful when doing any sort of Ork conversions.

I used the buzzsaw arm as lets face it, he's going to need a saw at somepoint and I used some plasticard and a couple of needles to form the basis of his urty syringe. For his head I used the Nobz head which has the exhaust coming out of one side.


And here is the Dok is all his glory. For his two bionik eyes I used a simple technique I have discovered using the gun sights from the Ork sprue. Carefully cut the mount off the sight and then carefully push through a small blob of green stub from the other side. The green stuff should naturally form a curve without having to resort to a lot of sculpting.

The skull on the top of his banner pole? Why that's from the last customer who argued over the Dok's bill!

Rather then trying to build a complicated bionik leg I decided to give him a simple peg leg. Obivously from early in his career. Or at least that's what he tells his customs. So I cut the right leg off at the knee, I used a blob of green stuff to hold the leg in place and to cover the join. The leg itself was a simple piece of round tube, with a small section at the bottom which was the next size of tube "up" to form the foot.

The tank on his bank ( filled of his special secret brew patent pending) comes from the Ork Loota's sprue and I have to admit that I'm finding the tanks incredibly useful in all sorts of conversions.

Well as I now have the Dok I need a unit for him to go with. As I'm already converting a unit of nobz in Mega armour I've decided to build him a unit of cyborks. Yes Orks, who either through massive ill judgement or were simply unconcious at the time have found themselves with some of the Dok's "upgrades"

They'll be ready soon.

When the metal runs out

Well with my Big Mek well on the way to be finished I was suddenly struck by a burst of inspiration.

The big mek like all good bosses would have a underling to deal with all of those little jobs that he wouldn't want to deal with, or those little scraps that he doesn't want to turn up for.

So I needed another Mek. Just painting astandard mek from the Lootas sprue was too unorginal, the metal mek was out and I didn't want a Mek who would be on foot. So that left me with the option of mounting him on a bike.

But just mounting him a regular warbike seemed unimaginative, as afterall I'm building this army to try and show off my conversion skills. So I started pondering what options the second best mek in the army would have. All the best materials would be going towards project for the Boss and whatever was left over, well the Big Mek would have first dibs on that.

So what a mek too do? Well if you happen to have some metal, a lot of wiring a boar and a Paintboy who owes you a favour you could do this.

Yes, I found inspiration in a very old Ork codex and decided to mount the mek on a boar! I used the boar from the Ork Fantasy sprue and with a lot of green stuff and some wires you can see the result. I had to use the leg from the fantasy sprue which I'm not totally happy about as they don't quite look the part but the rest of him has come out quite well.

As you mayhave guessed he's still a work in progress. In gaming terms he will "count as" a warbike, although he doesn't conform to wysiwig I'm just going to hope that whoever I would be playing againist would just let it go and enjoy playing againist a pretty darn good orky army.

Of course now I've done one I do have all of the other boars in my bitz box.

Hmm, I feel a converted bike unit coming on

Prototype

This is the standard Ork Nobz ( no sniggering please that's Orkish for Noble) in Mega armour. A pretty good model if hard to convert. However for the purposes of my new armour it has a big problem. It is entirely metal!

So I decided to fallback on the plastic Ork Nobz ( again no sniggering please) sprue which I have rapidly started to find to be the most useful for converting in terms of the bits you get for the price you have had to pay.

But I knew that I wouldn't be able to match the detail of the pistons on the metal model in plastic so I decided to think about how the Orks would " Really" construct the armour. A back story for the army is already coming together in the deep recesses of that crazy place that is commonly referred to as my mind. The Army has been trapped on a planet fighting a decade long urban war. So naturally they would now be at a point where they would be scavaging for anything useful they could possibly use. It might not have a lot of pistons but in urban warfight the protection would outweight the need for sophistication.

This is my first prototype and to be perfectly honest I really don't like how he turned out. But not every conversion can turn out to be winner. Still I learned some valuable lessons, the main one is that I need to break the plasticard up so the armour looks more moulded to his body. In this case it looks more like he's wearing a box.

I will field him still though but only as part of a large squad. He might not look as hip or as cool as the Ork mega armour equpped nobz ( no sniggering at the back) but I'm sure no one would tell him that to his face.

WIP

Well folks I thought I would share some WIP (Work in progress) shots of my Boss and Big Mek. Although the Warboss is coming on, there are two things I'm not terribly happy with. The first is his gun arm and second is his pose. He's not very dynamic, there's a sense of movement and life that's missing from him. But asides from that he's come out quite well and if all else fails I still have one Killa Kan left over so I could always have another go at some point.

I'm a lot happier with how the big Mek has turned out. There's a lot more dynamism to him as he seems to be striding of about his business, whether that's fixing the bosses battlewagon, or squashing some hummies!

I'm hoping to have them both finished shortly so I can move onto my next project.

Stop, it's boss time

Okay with the Big mek ready to go I needed a Boss, because lets face it no waagh is complete with a boss to lead from the front, to show the boyz where to go, to get into the toughest scraps and generally get the biggest share of the loot.





Now if I wanted to go the easy route there was already a plastic Ork Warboss available in the Assault on Black reach box set. However as you may have guessed I'm not overly keen on the easy route. It tends to be boring :-)


I wanted a warboss in Mega armour, however the only decent model is Thraka which was out for two reasons. Firstly he's all metal and secondly he's the model everyone and I mean everyone seems to use for conversions. So It's hardly what you can call imaginative.

Still I already had a head for him as I had one of the banner heads from the Black Orc Fantasy sprue and I had been wanting to use it for ages.

After the success of the Big Mek I already knew what I could do for my warboss.


and here he is. Tooled up to the max with a triple, that's right triple blade buzzsaw arm, perfect for when those regular power klaws are just not enough for cracking open space marine power armour.



He also had a multi barrelled twin linked shoota, with added sights, gizmos and whatcha macallits.

And not forgetting no Warboss would be complete with out his banner poles to tell everyone who he is. ( not that their likely too of course).

All finished, he'll be going into the painting queue right alongside the Big Mek.

Now I just need to think of names for them.

Big Mek action

Okay a Ork Waagh is nothing without as many guns, gadgets and gizmos as the Orks can lay their hands on and for that you need a Big Mek. So before a Warlord my Waagh needed their Big Mek.



Now this nasty looking fellow is the standard GW Big Mek. Of course with my no metal challenge he was out and the plastic mek which comes with the lootas is just too small, uninspring and too hard to convert.

I was tempted to turn to my ork fallback and use components from the Ork Nobz sprue but that lacked imagination to me as I had seen far too many conversions that had gone along that route. Plus sticking him on a bike seemed a bit too basic and boring as well.

However on one of the rare evenings where I had control of the TV I happened to be watching the last matrix film ( which is only good during the invasion of Zion) when inspiration suddenly struck me.



As I watched the Zion APCs stomp around. Why did a Big Mek have to be on foot? He's going to want to be able to keep all of those Kans and Dreadz inline whilst carying the maximum amount of tools so he can make repairs and also go on a bit of looting if the urge takes him.

I had some spare Kan bitz and after a further rummage I found a Ork Trukk driver. With a little bit of careful cutting and some handy plasticard I found that he slotted right into the body.

I was tempted to ry and construct a central control column but I decided againist it, instead running wire from the handles in the drivers hands into the body of the Kan. To make him look suitably mek like I used the head from the Plastic Ork mek and some shoulder pads from the boyz sprue.



Asides from the chair mounting I made very little alteration to the kan. The main difficult I found was trying to fit him on a 40mm base. So I'll admit I cheated a little to get the spare I needed by using a floor piece from the CityFight terrain.

I beefed the engine up at the back of the Kan as I thought the mek would want to make sure he has all the power he needs. I'll freely admit at this point the child in my took over and I started pushing him round the table making whiring engine sounds.



I decided to use the drill from the Kanz sprue on one arm ( he's going to be needed a drill at some point whether it's to help make the boss a new battlewagong or persuding the flash gitz who hasn't paid off his debt to do so a little quicker) whilst using a kustom mega blasta from the dreadnought sprue and mounted it on the other, whilst adding a lot of lenses and other gizmos to make it more specialised and generally like the mek spends what little spare time he has adding more and more gadgets to his ride.

In gaming terms I'll use him as either having Mega Armor or a cybork body as lets face it he's going to be tougher then you average mek.

Building over, he's due a lick of paint

Every Waagh has a beginning.

I much prefer working in plastic when modelling. Metals okay, but it's awkward to use, takes ages to dry when glueing, doesn't give you as many modeling options as is a pain to fix when you go wrong.

I already had a sizable Ork Army when the new plastic Dreadnought and Killa Kans were released. Despite telling myself that I didn't need them really, and that I could save my money it was no time at all before I found myself in the local games shop spending some of my hard earned cash.
Up until this point my army had been "brown" based. Meaning all the bases were sand, painted brown with a touch of static grass. However with the improvement in my painting and modeling skills I decided to try something different. I decided to try urban bases instead.

Of course painting them in DeathSkullz colours was a still given. Rather then just using Sand I had a hunt around for some other based materials and quickly found some interesting pots of rubble.

I used a similiar technique for the urban bases as I did for the browns. I painted the bases Adeptus battlegrey, before drybrushing them working my way up through the greys with each layer, codex grey, fortress grey, spacewolf grey and then finally a little drybrush of skull white.

I was very happy with how the models turned out. So happy in fact that I decided to start a new Ork army with a Urban theme.

I decided to set myself another challenge whilst I was at it. My new army would be all plastic! No out of the box complete metal models allowed

Sounds simply right?

Not as simple as you would think

Please stand clear doors are opening.

Welcome to the very first post in Saxon's Workshop.

And what is the point of the workshop I hear you ask? Why am I not just posting this on my regular blog?

Well there's a tale behind the idea for the workshop.

For seven years I worked in what must be one of the worlds most geeky jobs. Painting every lunchtime I had an appreciative audience on hand for all of my latest model making efforts.

But all good things come to a end and a just under a year ago I left the job a victim of redunancy.

Since then I have been seriously missing a appreciative audience for my efforts. So I decided to start this blog to show my recent efforts to the world at large.

I will appreciate all constructive feedback. If you don't like my efforts that fine, your welcome to and indeed have a right to your opinion just as I have the right to ignore anyone who is nasty.

In all honesty most of my projects will come from the Games Workshop range but other models will crop in from time to time. I will also be giving my two pence about the latest gaming based novels and releases.

Unlike my other blog I simply won't have the time to commit to updating the Workshop every single day but I will be updating at least twice a week so be sure to check back on a regular basis.

Talk to you soon folks.