Ork Looted Cargo-8 Ridgehauler is completed

The looted Cargo-8 Ridgehauler is done for now. I could not fit a gunner in the front compartment, so I am thinking of trying to add something on the roof, but that will come as a future improvement. 

I am very happy with the driver. He was made from spare bitz from my boxes. I think his head and torso is from one of the ork flyers, and I belive his right arm is from a biker and I have no idea where the left is from. I'm thinking someone carrying a two handed weapon. The arms doesn't really fit as well as I was hoping, but the most important thing was to get them on as they won't be very visible once the roof is on.

I think the Driver should have some sort of assistant and I found this Grot body in my Ogor bitz and a head among my Orky bitz so I decided that he could get the job. Not sure why he is pointing the way he does (well as a matter of fact I do as he originally stands on  lookout-platform on top of a banner pole) or even if he will be standing in that seat or on the other side. If I get him on the other side he points out the direction the wagon is going so tht might be nice, so I will see what I can do. I will paint both him and the driver compartment before I glue him in anyway.

Here are the details of the left and right side showing how I glued the front pice of the battle wagon on to this. The plates are spares from some Imperial Guard vehicle, I think it is the Chimera. I had three plates that I glued together and then cut them in half to get one for each side. With a little modification on the connection of that battle wagon front it fit rght in. 

Before I fitted everything I also wanted to make an Ork gunner to stand in the gunners position, but it turned out the driver Ork was so broad shouldered that he couldn't fit after all. Still this must be the tallest, slimmest ork of the lot. I took him apart again after so I can use the torso for something else, and maybe I can glue the back on to the legs again and build the gunner like he was supposed to be built so I can use him for another project in the future.

My plan now is to paint the model up. It has 8 wheels so that means it must be fast, so becaiuse of that I will paint it red  as that is the right color for a fast vehicle. I will paint some of the sides, the cabin and the "plow" red with some rust and bare metal showing to make it look like some of the paint has been worn off. The chassis under the cargo container or flatbed will be painted in darker metal, also with some rust, an I plan to use either grey or dark green on the fenders on the back. They will also be rusted up.

Looted Cargo-8 Ridgehauler almost compltely built

I have done some more bulding today, and the Cargo-8 Ridgehauler that has been looted by the Orks is almost done. I am missing the crew, and I plan to go look for that in my storage unit tomorrow. I will need to cut up some Orks no matter what I find, as their legs are to wide to fit inside the cockpit. I tried today to place one of the gunners from the Battle wagon on the side of the gunner for this set, and his left leg ended up in the middle of the driver's seat. So either I must have a Grot crew driving and defending this wagon, or I must reposition the legs of some Boyz. Maybe I take an Ork gunner and driver and a Grot co-pilot. I will see what I find. 

I got the idea to take a Deffkopta pilot to drive the Cargo-8 as I had a box handy, but the pilots were attached to the Deffkopta so it would have to be a lot of cutting and also it would leve a unit one pilot short so I decided against it. 

This is what a standard Cargo-8 Ridgehauler looks like without a crew. The spikes can be left off if one chooses, but I think in hostile terrain having sort of a battering ram would come in handy. And since the special Battle wagon front fits outside it I decided to put it on. I also glued on the lights as they fit with the front as well.

Here I have placed the front, but it is not glued on. It stands on the ground in this picture, but it will be raised a little higher so that the top of the plow will stick to the bottom of the headlights. 

This is another challenge that needs to be solved. It turns out the front is just a little thinner than the Battle wagon, so the plow doesn't attach against the sides of the Cargo-8, but I plan to fix that by cutting up some spare vehilcle parts from my bitz boxes and glue it on to the sides to block it out, I figure that would be something the Ork Meks would do, not caring that much about estethics but more about function. I think I know what parts to use as well, so that will be done tomorrow. Then I will add the ladder parts above to hide the holes on the driver side of the vehicle where the ladder is supposed to be.

The Cargo-8 comes in two configurations. One with a flatbed and one with a container. I was thinking to use the container for this vehicle, but now I'm not so sure. This is what it looks like with the container standing on top of the flatbed, but I am thinking I might have both unglued so I can swap beween them.

Here is the container seen from the top. As one can see there are hatches on top of the container, and it is designed so that you can add gun turrets on top of those hatchs and get more firepower. I think the Orks would like that, but then I think I will need the turret parts from a Battle wagon or a plane to get the right size for an Ork or Grot gunner to work the turret mounted weapons. 

This is what the vehicle looks like with the flatbed. It is quite a bit of room, so if I choose to keep this modular and not glue it in place, I can add some sort of gun on this platform. Forgeworld has something called an Ork Supa Cannon that I think would look geat on this, but I might also be able to use a Mek gun (I have several that is still in ther boxes on sprues in storage either at my storage unit or at my cabin) or I might even design my own sort of scrap cannon. Maybe if I find an altrnative gun-arm for a Stompa, I could use the huge gunbarrel that works as an arm on the regular Stompa as the barrel of a self made gun. I am alredy thinking on trying to find an alternative arm for the one that will get the long bellygun, so I will see what I come up with, and I do love to make veird conversions so this could be an interesting challenge...

Some Orky goodness in progress...

A while back while being in my local Games Workshop store I started to talk with one of the staff members about making one of my Cargo-8 Ridgehaulers in to something else. We talked about entering them into the Astra Militatum as suppport vehicles and I might do that but I think it can be done without any real conversion work, It can probably be done with a paintjob and by changing the drivers and the gunners to troopers by using Astra Militrum body parts. Since I have three Cargo-8 Ridgehaulers one could serve with the Astra Militarum, one could be a regular "civilian" wagon train on regular duty, and the third would be converted to the Orks. We talked about how the front that is used for the Gun Wagon and Battle Wagon might look cool as a front on a looted Cargo-8. So this is what I will do with this one. I just tried to see if the pieces for the front would fit, and it looks like it will fit quite well and maybe just with some minor modifications, so I am exited to see what I can make of it. This is where I am so far...   

The next step will be to start buiding the driver cabin, and I will have to see how much I can buld before I have to put some Orks inside. I will see what I have avilable in my bitz boxes or in other sets that won't be needed there. If I don't find anyone I will have to try and find what set that has figures I can use an buy that when I can afford it. 

Right now I am thinking I might need a figure from one of the planes or from one of the wagons. If I have to use one from the planes it would have to be the pilot and that mean that I would have a plane without a pilot so that would mean that I would have to try and build a big double plane that has one cockpit to control it and maybe one cockpit tht serve other purposes. If I use a figure from one of the wagons I could take one of the figures ment to sit in one of the towers as yo uprobably would not see the legs anyway. Or I could just take a regular Ork boy and cut him up maybe. That would certainly be the cheapest optian and might also be the best if I could find a way to do it. I think I will take a trip to my storage unit tomorrow and see what I have there. 

I will post more pictures of the process of the conversion as wok goes forward, and I will also post pictures of my second Ork conversion project that I plan to start shortly. I have a Stompa that I plan to convert with a belly gun and maybe some other conversions too as I plan to do something with the arms to make them different from the arms I have on my finished Stompa (Da Punisha). I wil make the chainsword arm into an arm firing a big flamer of some sort, and I have to figure something out for the big gun that works as a left arm on the Stompa set. I have a Forgeworld arm (grabba arm I think it's called), but I plan to use that for my third Stompa. So I will see what I can figure out.

New figures to paint

I have assembled a few figures lately. The first two are stand alone figures from the new Astra Militarum range, and will serve with the Valpurgian 3rd. The first one is a Commissar. He is standing with his trusty chainsword by his side, and it looks like he is about ro raise or lower his boltgun. 

The second figure is the new Cadian Castellan. I am very happy that Games Workshop has given us four different heads and several weapon options for this figure so there is no need to make any Castellan in the army the same. I am not 100% sure what the exact combat role of a Castellan is, so I do not know how many I will need in my army but that is one thing I will read up on in the rulebook and decide on.

I have given this Castellan a plasma pistol and a chainsword. I like chainswords a lot, as they look scary and at the same time they are easier to paint up to look good compared to a powersword that I usually only get to look like a regular sword. 

This figure has a scenic base that is made in such a way that the figure can't stand  on his own feet unless he is glued to the base. But the base is made in such a way that I can modify it a bit to make it look slightly different for the different Castellans.

The next two figures came in one box, and are for Age of Sigmar, for my Cities of Sigmar army. They are the Witch hunters Galen and Doralia ven Denst, a father and daugher duo. 

They will not be painted up in uniform, but will instead have leather coats and Doralia will have a leather hat or maybe it will be black to add some more color. They will probbly work as a separate unit.