Stompa update - Orktober

Here is a small update from the Orktober Stomba build. I am glad I have gotten this far. The head is not glued on yet, as I want to fit the arms first, but I think the head will be in the position it is on these pictures, looking the same way as the belly gun.

As you can see there is an open turret in the head, and there will be an Ork sitting in the hatch pointing the way he want to go, holding a gun in the other hand. I think that will be fun to have an Ork verison of the commanders that sit in the Super Heavy tanks of the Imperial Guard with a raised sword. I was a little late to think about putting a sword or an axe in his hand instead of the gun, but I think I will get the same effect no matter.

The bellygun is not glued in a certain position, so it can move up and down, but it will not stand by itself unless it is in the highest or lowest position. As you can see there are quite a lot of Greenstuff involved to keep the "sheild" of the gun in place. I didn't manage to get it 100% straight, but I figure that is ok because it is done by Orks and they put practical use in front of beauty any day.

Another Ork engineering thing is that they have used sharpened beams to hold the "shield" in place at the bottom. This was first done to give me a solid stand to glue the shield on to, and I figure the Ork Meks have done the same.

There is a Goblin sitting in the belly of the Stompa in the original casting. He can be covered up with a glyph if one doesn't like him there, but I thought it would be cool to have him there to work as a lookout and see how the shooters hit their targets. So I had to cut away a little part of the gunshield to make this happen, but again I figure that is just what the Ork Meks would do.

Here is a picture to show how much Greenstuff I actually had to use as the curve on the gun shield is a lot more curved than the curving of the Stompa. I plan to paint this so it looks like there are some rust there, and I might also add som glyphs or some other Orky stuff to cover it, but that will be done when the main parts are built so that I see what parts I have available.

The next step now is to build the arms, and that will mean quite a lot of convertion-work. I plan to replace the big chainsword in the right arm with a big flamer-type of weapon and I plan to build that from the weapon from the Imperial Knight kits. The other arm is a big gun in the original set, and I have thought a lot what to do with this arm. Do I want to keep the gun, do I want to make something completely different? So far I think I've landed on a solution where I keep the big gun, but change most of what is on the top of it. I have a big rokkit (Imperial Guard Deathstrike Missile) and I would love to add that to the top of the gun, and use the gun as sort of a slide to fire off the rokkit. Then I am sure I will add some smaller dakka around it.

Tomorrow is October

Tomorrow is the first day of October, or Orktober as many Warhammer fans know it.

I have not ben able to do much with my armies these last weeks as my real life has been very busy. I have been playing with 3 big bands both practices an concerts and that has taken a lot of the time I normally would have spent with my minis.

But I have done something at least. I have built a unit of Warriros of Chaos with big axes and shields. They will go in to the growing army eventually and I alreadyknow exactly howI want to paint them up. The next thing I will do for this army is to add arms and heads on the ones I have painted metal, and then I will probably prime and paint them again as I think contrast paints will do them a lot more justice than the old washes I used on them. 

I will keep painting the Tyranid, but since it is October I think I need to so something Orky. The first thing is to finish my Ork driven Cargo 8 Ridge hauler from Necromunda. I need to paint the container and do some small details on the rest of the model before I can call it done. It has been standing on the edge of my desk for too long, so this needs to be finished.

Then I will do a BIG project and see what I can get out of it. I have a Stompa that I have decided will get a big bellygun in form an Imperial Eathshaker cannon. My plan is to cut away what I need of the panels to get the gun mounted and then I will install the gun shield on the outside of the armored panels on the Stompa to cover up the cuts. I have not decided how I will paint it yet, but tht wil come at a later time, the first thing is to get it built. 
I also want to do something with the weapons so it doesn't look exactly like my first Stompa, but I am not sure exactly what to do there. I know I want to replace the big chainsword on one stompa with a Ork-made flamer of some sort, and I think this could be the model to do it on, as it will have a limited use of a big sword because of the big, long gun sticking out of the belly.  I am sure I will figure out a way to do it as the build comes along. I have thought of using knight parts to make the flamer and then I will need to ad barrels and other things to make it both look functioning and orky.

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...

Painting faces and COS # 7

 We'll start with the Cities of Sigmar update...

Since the last update I have done some more painting and priming. All the built minis are now primed, including all the shields that will be glued on to the knights and men-at-arms later and the poles that are dug into the ground as barricades.
I have done some more painting on the general on foot, his standard bearer, the commander of the first Greatsword unit, my first wizard and three of the knights. I think I know how all their color schemes will be now.

I have also done a cool discovery with the Steam Tank, and this will affect my army and lead to some more converting. I have discoverd that the hole in the turret is wide enough for a Duardin Engineer (Cogsmith) to fit in the hole. I might have to add a plate in the turret as he probably is shorter than the original figure, but that should not be a problem as I have plenty of armorplates from my Imperial Guard vehicles. I had planned from the beginning to group the tanks together in threes, just like the artillery. They will probably be separate units, but I will paint and detail them so that they look like units of three anyway if I can find a way to add some unit colors. At least one of the three tanks will have a commander in the turret. I will see when I build the second tank how it looks with the turret closed, and if it looks good then two of the three tanks in the unit will have closed turrets. This will give me two tank commanders with the amount of steam tanks I have now, so I will have one human and one duardin commander. The remainder of the commanders will be used other places in the army.

And now for the face-paint...
Today I attended a class at the Warhammer store in Oslo to teach me to paint faces. I would have thought it was a class with 3 or 4 people attending, but it was only me.
I have painted lots of faces before, but they don't look like they have any character. That will change now hopefully. Mattias took the time to teach me how to paint with thin layers and watered down paints, and showed me how to do layering in a way that added shades and highlights in the right places. I hve seen it done in videos on Youtube before, but it was something else to try it with someone giving me good feedback and help while doing it.
Mattias also showed me a few other detailing tricks to use to add some character to the faces, and I look forward to trying different tricks on different faces.

I will try to use what I learned on the Cities of Sigmar army, but I think the army where it will really come to shine is the Imperial Guard and my Valpurgian 3rd, as they have several models without helmets so you see the entire head, while the Cities of Sigmar army mostly have faces only as they have helmets on. But I will try to apply what I have learned for all heads and faces going forward and I might even go back and redo some of the faces on minis I have completed earlier. I look forward to showing off painted miniatures in the future.

Something for the Orks

I got my new conversion-piece a few days ago.

I plan to convert a Seraphon Stegadon dinosaur in to a walking fortress for my Orks. Forgeworld have some very beautiful models of Squiggoth and a giant Squiggoth, and I was hoping for my Stegadon to be about the size of a Squiggoth, but it seems after I took a look in the box that it is a lot smaller.

Time will tell how many Orks I can field on the Stegadon, but the idea is that it will have a heavy weapon of some sort (probably autocannon or a big shoota) up front, and some troop carrying capacity. I might need more than one to transport a unit though.  

The Orks will be shielded with armor from the Ogryn/Bullgryn box as I have a lot of the big shields in my bits boxes and the whole idea with this conversion was to use some of those to free up some space in the box.

I will post pictures once I have done the build.

Astra Militarum recovery vehicle

I finally got around to build my recovery vehicle for my Walpurgian 3rd Army. I am not sure if I can use it in a game, but if so it must be with Forgeworld rules for the Trojan that they produce. 

After all I've made my own because I can't afford buying from Forgeworld and because I am not too happy working with resin.

I originally wanted to use the big crane from the Galvanic Servohauler set, but it looked too big no matter how I tried to fit it. I thought of cutting it down, but I would have to cut it so much it wouldn't be functional so I gave it up and decided to use that crane on another build in the future instead. There was an article in last month White Dwarf on how to use it as part of the industrial scenery so I might do that instead.

At the front, the vehicle has a big dozerblade that will help it to get to the stranded vehicles that needs service or recovery. It doesn't have lots of weapons as it needs to be light and carry a lot of equipment. But they do carry a heavy bolter mounted in the front and a heavy stubber by the hatch that can be operated by the driver when the vehicle is standing still.

This is what it looks like from the sides. It is mostly identical on both sides except one side has a pick and a tarpaulin that is folded up, while the other side has a shovel and a missile.
On both sides there are heavy chains so that vehicles can be rescued.

Here is the view from behind. I wish I could have found a better back gate for the vehicle, but I think I found an ok solution to it. Because of the grappling arm you can't see that there also is a towing hitch on the back. 

Here is a view from the top of the vehicle, details are sort of hard to see at the moment, but when it's painted up then hopefully everything will be visible. In the back there is a big toolbox on the floor and on the wall hangs a hook for when they need to tow a vehicle and a lasrifle for personal protection.

On the other side there are an oil barrel and fuel cans for refueling vehicles to get them back to base or just refill missing hydraulic or motor oil after damage. There is also a smaller lasweapon (the one that comes with the Basilisk sets) for personal protection for the other man in the back.

On the back wall I added an industrial sawblade that I believe is part of an ork set originally, and a fire extinguisher that came in the Galvanic Servohauler set. The middle section that the crane is connected to is the middle section for the Manticore missile rack that you don't use if you build the Deathstrike missile.

Here are the two men working in the back of the recovery vehicle. The man on the left is still missing rank and name, but he will get it before everything is painted up. I suspect he is a sergeant.

The fellow on the right is Captain Thomas Egenton Hogg, and he is a Squadron leader in the army all though he doesn't have much of a squadron to lead yet. But I might add some other vehicles at a later time, maybe a tanker of some sort, and he is probably also in charge of the crewmen working on repairs at the base.

New Grot tank

I needed to buy a set of Galvanic Servohaulers as I need a solid crane to put on a recovery vehicle I am working on for my Astra Militarum army Since I just needed the crane itself for this, I had two servohaulers in spare. Last time I was working on Grot tanks one of the employees at Games Workshop Oslo suggested I could use these, and now I had the chance to do so.
A While ago Games Workshop had an event where we could come nd raid their huge bitbox ss they wanted to clear it out and start again with sets that are in the current range so I do not know where everything comes from, as last time the box was emptied was in 2001. 

We could bring things we wanted to work on and use the bits we wanted, so one of the tings I brought was this. 

I know banner on the front was a lance from the Bretonians or Empire knights. The back turret is raided from a chaos vehicle sprue, and I believe the front turret is from something T'au.  The front turret is armed with a heavy bolter taken from a Leman Russ tank. I also found a pair of heavy bolter tips that I glued to the front of the vehicle, and I believe they originally came from an old chimera turret.

I plan to glue some Ork glyphs on the big drivewheel to cover up the mechanicus symbol on there. 

The twin storm bolters in the back are mounted in a turret that can be manned by a Grot gunner when needed. I do not know where the bottom of the turret came from, but I decided it would work well as a place to sit as it adds some height for the gunner.

It looks rather menacing from the front with the three heavy bolters and the two smoke launchers.

On the back there is a weird Ork energy thing that I have seen on some of the vehicles and cannons, but I am not 100% sure what effect it has, but being from the Ork range I felt it fitted nicely. On the other side there is a mine attached, that the grots can place on an enemy vehicle or fortification they meet on their way.

I plan to paint this vehicle yellow and use a sponge to add some dirt and rust to it. To make it go a little faster the Grots might add some red stripes to it if they find a place where it can be done.

I plan to convert the other Servohauler too, but I am not sure how I will do it yet. But here at home I have lots of parts from Leman Russ tanks, so I might add a cannon from one if I find a way to make a turret. Or maybe I could use some spare side turrets from my Super heavy tanks. That is some of the fun with converting, seeing what part you have available and how you can use it.

Ork Loota (Leman Russ Conversion)

I saw a short glimpse of this kind of tank in a video from Games Workshop and decided I had to try to make one. This is the chassis from a Leman Russ with the big tower from an Ork Battlewagon.
I have later found out that this will be one of three types of looted vehicles to use for the Orks, and a guide on how to build exactly this conversion will be part of the Chapter Approved book that comes out in about a month or so.
The base of the tower is a lot bigger than the little hole on the Leman Russ chassis, so I started by measuring how big the hole needed to be and then set to work with my clippers and knife to give the hole the right size and make it smooth around the edges.
I then took a spare armor plate from a Chimera box (the one part that is never used on the sprues), cut it in to the right size and glued it on under the turret base after I had assembled the turret and put it through my new hole. This makes it possible to rotate the tower 360 degrees, and it will not fall off. I read that the conversion model in the book have done something where they glued the bottom peg of the Leman Russ tower on to the Ork tower so they did not have to cut in the Leman Russ chassis.
The main gun is a big cannon that came with the Deff -Rolla upgrade sprue, but it looks a lot like a Battle cannon on a regular Leman Russ in size.

When you see it from the front it sort of look a lot like a Leman Russ Battletank still, and I am sure this will fool many Imperial soldiers and officers to belive that it is their tank that is comming and hold fire just a little too long to stop it.

Seeing it from the back, I think it sort of has a little World War II feel to it. I like how the turret has that round tower in the back.

The pictures are a little dark, but the orks have added their glyphs to the tank, one on each side, so that other orks shall see that it is on their side. Also this makes the tank better and stronger according to the orks.

This was a fun little conversion to do, and I might make another one at a later time, as I plan to convert one more Battlewagon so I will get another spare tower. It won't be in the near future though, so maybe I will see how Games Workshop have done theirs and copy that solution when the time comes.

Armies on Parade! Results are in!

Today was parade day!

I managed to finish everything yesterday evening, but while doing so I discovered a lot of small holes in the expandable foam where the paint hadn't covered the foam. I covered all that I found yesterday, but while setting up the board today I saw several more. So I hoped people wouldn't notice it too much. Apart from that I was quite happy with everything.

I had not tried to put everything up on the board, but I had thought out how I would like to do it. Here it is all set up and ready for the parade.

There are a few different scenes on the board. One of them is this where the Big Mek (Mek Gyvva) meets with the team of Grot Mechs who build the crazy weapons he thinks up.

Here is a close up of the Grot Engineseers or Mechs, The one in front on the right is the leder and he has lifted his arm in salute for the Big Mek.

Here is a better picture of Big Mek Gyvva. I might give him a new name in the future if I find an ork that is quite a lot bigger, as I would like my biggest Mek to be big both in size and stature. But I am very pleased with the look of this one, and I am very happy to use him as Mek Gyvva even though I have another Mek who is just as big.

A Grot tank is out in the terrain, while the Rokkit trucks are driving up to the field where they will test fire their Grot missiles.

On the top, the Rokkit trucks are lining up to fire as a single grot tank armed with a  lascannon is standing guard looking for enemy aircraft. On this side you can still see the reegular mechanicum scull on the tower. I am sure the grots will change this too eventually (but I only had one skull to use).

The orks that ride in the Morkanaut are out in the field while the grots are working on fixing some minor electrical issues and reloading the weapons.

The Mech Grots have started to adapt the area to their liking, and have stated by making their own version of the mechanicus holy cog symbol by tearing down the human looking skull on the wall and replacing it with one more fitting for orks and grots.

On the hill the stompa Da Punisha is standing guard in case the Tyranids or the Dark Eldar from the neighbouring tables feel like trying something...

Here is a better picture ofthe skull symbol on the front. What the picture isn't showing so well is the weathering that I did with Doombull Brown and Ryza Rust on the spikes at the bottom of the skull. But when I take my table home from the Games Workshop store in a while I will line up the different units and take some pictures to present on this blog. I will then take better pictures of this.

There are several Grots outside on the stompa, worrking on small repairs. One of them is either being a daredevil, or he has slipped while working and is now hanging on for dear life. It's a good thing he is wearing a helmet...

I wanted to add a little color to the board, as it looked very brown, so I found a broken pipe from the Promethium relay pipe set, and glued it on. Then I used a bright green to paint the river of sludge and then pored on a solid amount of Nurgle Rot on top of it.

The people that came in to the store and voted liked what I had done this year, and I got my first Armies on Parade award, earning myself a third place. Here is the bronze medal on the table.

Here is a better picture of the bronze medal. I am very happy with winning third place, as this is the first time on three tries that I actually win something in Armies on Parade.

I was also awarded a diploma for "Best monster or machine" for my Stompa, and that was also very fun. But in all fairness I think it was because they had enough diplomas to go around, as the Tyranids on the table beside me were better. They were the best painted 'nids I've seen at Games Workshop, but he won "Best themed army" and also won the gold medal.

That sums up the Armies on Parade for 2018, and the #AoP tag can get a little rest until it is time to do some serious thinking about the 2019 entry. I already have a few things in mind that I will explore. If I do as I have so far, then next year should be a Age of Sigmar entry, and then I am toying with an idea of an entry with the Kharadron Overlords. If I go with Warhammer 40K then it might be a two level board with Imperial Guard and some urban warfare. But I am leaning towards the Kharadron as I would love to paint those models.