Friday, 26 November 2010

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 :-)

Thursday, 18 November 2010

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.

Sunday, 14 November 2010

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.

Sunday, 7 November 2010

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