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.