The Ork Waaagh!

 Today I want to rant a little bit about my Ork army.

As I was looking through the current Ork codex, I was a little baffled by all the pictures of the good looking armies in there. What baffled me was not that the armies looked good, everything Games Workshop puts in their books are painted with a high quality and the pics usually look quite well. No, what baffled me a bit was the unison look of the armies. They all looked like they were one big group of Orks come together for some sort of action group photo.

And that got me thinking, what would my Waaagh! look like on the table? 

Being an avid collector, my Waaagh! has several different generations of figures and vehicles and is just as ramshackle as I think an Ork Waaagh! should be. But still these pictures has gotten me to start thinking of being more color coordinated. 

I have decided to be more conscious about what colors I use to make it all fit nicely together. 

I have four basic colors for my vehicles at the moment, and I will try to keep it on that level. My Speedfreaks have red vehicles, and they need to have that as red goes faster. I am using two different reds but will try to use mostly Khorne Red for basic colors and then I can do some details in Mephiston Red if I feel the need on a few vehicles for diversity. My biggest vehicle is painted Mephiston red, and I will not repaint that. That is the Battle fortress of my Ork "General" and is made of Battlewagons and Baneblade tanks by the staff at Games Workshop in Oslo many years ago. It will not be used much in games though as it is so massive (I think it would be an army of its own) but it is cool to field when showing off the army and hopefully I could use it in an Apocalypse-type of game.

My biggest Mek in my army, Big-Mek MekGyvver, likes black and I already have one Stompa and one Morkanaught that is painted black. I will keep painting some things black with either Khorne red or Averland Sunset (yellow) details for his benefit. And I think that for the future all my Meks will have black vehicles as this will add some consistency to a multi-colored army. If you see a black vehicle on the battlefield you know it belongs to a Mek. It might not be driven by a Mek, but it is "owned" by one...

I also have some wehicles painted up in yellow in Averland Sunset, and I think that is a nice color to paint so naturally I will also have that color in the army. It is also a nice contrast color to use on red vehicles. What needs to go fast will be red, and what doesn't need speed can be yellow. It will not apply 100% to my planes, as I would like to have some yellow bombers, but the fighter planes will be red though, so maybe it still applies after all...

The final vehicle color I have at the moment is metallic. I have one Megatrakk Scrapjet that I am really happy with that is painted metallic and heavily washed with Nuln Oil, and I would like to use that color for some other vehicles as well (the Scrapjet have red fins though as they add speed). One of the vehicles that will get some of this treatment is the Rukkatrukk Squigbuggy, but on the areas where there has been a lot of squigs I will add some heavy rust effects. 

I will try to keep with these colors for all future vehicles, but I will need to add brown fur for my furry animals and I need to find a good color that is not too screaming for my Stegadon walker(s).

The Orks themselves I should also try to keep in a few colors, and lot of them will have black clothing, sort of the traditional Ork color. Then some armor will be red or yellow and there will be some metallic colors and rust as well as needed. Some of my orks already have some deep purple, but I will try to keep it at that and not add lots of other colors. The only exception to this rule will be my Flash Gitz that might get a few more bright colors to liven them up, but they are supposed to stand out so I think that is just fitting.

I also have some Grots that stand out from the rest, and the are my Tech-Grots that work for MekGyvver, as they have taken to wearing red clothing as they see that this is the custom for their enemies like the Astra Militarum, Space Marines and Adeptus Mechanicus. These Tech-Grots are rather few though, and except for those manning the Stompa called Da Punisha they stay where the Meks have their workspaces.

As for skin-color, I have used different greens from I started and up to today, but for the Orks and Grots that will be painted in the future, I have decided on what colors to use for their skin so from now on they will get the same skin colors. Waaagh! Flesh for the Orks and a light green for the Grots.

Presenting the Armored Stegadon Walker

I promised some pictures of the armored Stegadon when it was built, and now the Mek-Grots of BigMek Gyvva have done the job and are ready to present it...

The Idea was to make my own Squiggoth, as this model cost about 1000 Norwegian kroner (pluss postage and fees) from Forgeworld. So for a half the cost (actually a little less than half) and the use of my bitz boxes I managed to put together the little brother of the Squggoths, the Stegadon. I did not expect it to be so small though, but I made the best of what I had to work with.

 Here it is from the side and from the front.

 

I built the Stegadon after the instructions provided by Games Workshop, but stopped once I had built the animal and the basic platforms on its back. Then I went into my bitz boxes for the Astra Militarum (Imperial Guard) and collected shields from the Ogryn/Bullgryn sets and an autocannon from my  heavy weapons sets. I tried arming this little beast with two heavy bolters but they would not fit properly because of how the front platform is constructed in the set, and I also thought about using mortars, but there was not enough room for that with the current configuration (but I have not totally dropped this idea yet). 

I had two thoughts when making this little beast. First I wanted to have something to walk alongside my organic bikes (Gore-Gruntas from Age of Sigmar) that I plan to build shortly (just need to build some Boyz so I get some spare hands with shootas as the Orks in the AoS start collecting box all have choppas as they are made for another time and place). 

Secondly I've been wanting to use some of those Ogryn/Bullgryn spare shields for a long time as they take up so much space in my bitz box. I have thought about making defense lines with them, but decided it would be much cooler to let the Orks have some of them as spoils of war. I have so many left that I have enough to make at least one more of these walkers if I feel like it at a later time, and I can also equip a unit of Orks with these shields if I like (but I fear the shields might look too big for them as the Ogryns/Bullgryns are quite a lot bulkier than your average Ork). 

I am very happy with how the front armor and the back part of the side armor turned out on this build. The back could only be one single shield because of the space I had available so it is as it is, and the platform is designed so the front part stands out further than the back so I had to add a single shield on each side of the front platform. That is why I'm thinking of using steel girders if I make another one as I could have the same width for the entire platform. Also it would be nice to fit a little more armament on such a beast.

The crew for this one will be a Grot gunner and a Grot tech (had one Grot with a wrench left after building my first stompa some time ago). I am considering putting an Ork on the back of the platform to have command of the walker, but I might sacrifice him for some more dakka and a few more Grots. This is something I don't have to decide on right away as the weapons will be added after some of the paintjob is done so I can reach the details that needs painting.

For my next AoS to 40K project, I am playing with the idea of making something with a set from the Ogor Mawtribes range, the set that can either build an Ironblaster or a Gnoblar Scraplauncher. Not sure what kind of weapon it would be yet, but the Gnoblars in this set is just amazing, and they would probably make for some nice Grots for other builds in the future if I decide to not use all of them in one build. From looking at the original sets, I either see this as some sort of walking artillery piece with a cannon of some sorts, or maybe as some sort of catapult lobbing some type of small bombs.

Right now I am building a Wazbom Blastajet for the Orks and this will leave me some spare rokkits and bombs and "big shootas" that I can use for my next Stompa but also maybe for a Scraplauncher or a future Stegadon build.

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.

Sons of Behemats update

Just a quick little update on the Sons of Behemat army.

I have gotten the last two Gargants home. News came that the Games Workshop store had to close down for two weeks due to covid-19 restrictions in Oslo, so I took a quick trip to the store on Monday (they closed from Tuesday morning) and collected my mail order with the Mancrusher box, a dinosaur from the Seraphon range that I plan to convert to a Warhammer 40K Ork "vehicle" and the new Uriel Ventris Space Marine figure. 

I found how to make the magical item in the hand of the weird Gargant, or at least I found the piece.
I was gifted a burning globe that belongs to Magnus the Red (Primarch in Warhammer 40.000), but the builder of the fig liked him much better without it, so he gave it to me and I am now trying to decide if I should cut it to get the flames on one side stand straight up or if I should just use it as it is. Booth look rather good, so I will try to figure it out by trying to hold it at different angles and see what I like the most. If it had been smoke I think it would have to stand straight up from the hand, but since it is flames they might just as well go more sideways than upwards. I don't need to decide before an our or so before priming, and it look like the weather will be good for priming all week.

Hopefully the last two Mancrushers will also be built when I go out to prime, but if not they will follow shortly. I still haven't decided how to paint their pants, but that is no stress anyway as I can decide while painting the other four. I also need to decide what heads to give them, but usually I decide on that when I build anyway. 

I hope people will find that the army has enough diversity once it's done, even though it is based only on two models (Mega-Gargant and Manchrusher Gargant). At least I've enjoyed thinking out how to build them and make them look different and making my modifications.

I will make a post just showing all the Gargants when I have built the final two, and also post pictures as the army is painted up.

Sons of Behemat - first models finished

Here are the first two models I can call finished for my Sons of Behemat army. This is not a gargantuan army, but it is an army of Gargants. The finished army will consist of 2 Mega-Gargants and 9 Mancrusher Gargants and this will give me 2420 points. This army can also be played at 1940 points with only 6 Mancrushers.

The big gargant in the pic is the General of the army, Beechmast Candlesnuff, and on his left is Drumstick Truffleclub.

Let us start with our Mancrusher. Drumstick is primed with Grey Seer (all models in this army will get a light primer color), and his skin is painted Kislev Flesh and then washed with Reikland Flesh shade and then drybrushed with Kislev Flesh again. 

I plan to use different colors on the pants of the Mancrushers, and that will be colors that they would meet while wandering in the world. This one has black pants, as my gargants often fight alongside the Gloomspite Gitz so he has probably gotten fabric from them.

He has a club with swords and axes driven through it, and in his other hand he is holding a soldier he has picked up from the battlefield. 

Here you can see why his name is Drumstick, as he has a peg leg. I saw this conversion in a White Dwarf magazine and decided I wanted to do it. But I think they did it on the other leg, because I followed the instructions, but his leg got too short. Not a big problem though, as I had some rocks I had cut away from my tower walls, so I glued them on the base and made a little pile of rocks for him to rest his leg on. 

The soldier he holds in his left hand I painted with a Khorne red jacket and Averland Sunset pants, and I have decided to do that for all humans that appear as part of this army, and I might also do this for my Cities of Sigmar army that I will build eventually if I don't find a more fitting paint scheme before I start with that army.  

Every figure in this army has a bird on them. Either on the Gargant itself, or somehere on the base. The bird is painted black and drybrushed with Russ Gray.  

The Mega Gargant is a huge model, but still I wanted to make my general stand out more as I will have two Mega-Gargants in the army (you never know if the army will be tree or more some time in the future though). As he is a Gate Crasher I decided it would look good to have him walking over walls. This meant I had to make quite a tall base, as I wanted him to step on the top of one wall, so the base was filled with cork and it was quite a lot to cover with basing material. I used almost two bottles of Stirland Battlemire. I built this Gargant straight out of the box.

As one can see he has a bird sitting on the armor he has made and wrapped around his lower arm. To show how much bigger these Gargants are than the normal Gargants he is holding two soldiers in his hand instead of one. 

The base got the stone wall in front but I also placed one in the back that he could rest his back foot on.

This is what he looks like from behind. Here you can also see a little bit of the base an how it as built up with cork and covered with Stirland Battlemire. I painted the base like I do on my Sylvaneth Army with a green rim and three different greens drybruhsed over the brown of the Stirland Battlemire. 

That is all I have finished at the moment, but on my table now I have another Mega Gargant and two Mancrushers primed, and four Mancrushers that has gotten their bodies built but are still missing the bird and some other details like a club, some food or drink in the belt and some other details that I might want to add. One of them has some magical capabilities, so I would like to make something magical in one of his hands, and I am currently trying to think of a way to do this with what I have available on sprues or in bits boxes.

If you counted up the Gargants I have spoken of here, you will see that I am missing two Mancrusher Gargants. They are at Games Workshop in Oslo along with the Necron Rulebook, the new Uriel Ventris model and a few other things  I ordered. I had planned to go and get them this coming Wednesday, but today it was announced that all stores in Oslo will have to close down for at lest two weeks, so it might take a while before I can get them. But I have plenty of models to both paint and build, so I will not run out of projects in the mean time... 

I learned a bit painting up these two models, and I will bring that with me when painting up the rest of the army. 

Funny what you find when you are not looking for it...

I was at my monthly trip to my cabin yesterday to see that everything was ok, that there wasn't mice in the house and that the water and power was working as it should. 

After this was checked I decided to look through my cardboard boxes filled with Warhammer stuff to see if I could find the missing cupola for Skullvane Manse. I seemed to remember that I had started to paint it, and I had long since decided that I would not have it on Skullvane Manse but on a tower instead. And not only did I find what I was looking for, but I found so much more...

First I found the cupola, and it was sitting on top of two Deathknell watch towers stacked on top of each other. That means that somewhere I might have one more base without a tower that I can use as a Chaos Shrine. I found that the tower sits very sturdy on the base without being glued on, so I have decided to paint the tower base as a Chaos shrine (after all it is rocks on the outside with a big pool of skulls and blood inside) so I can use the base separately or it can hold up my tower (and then no one will see the shrine anyway). There are nothing with seeing inside the tower, so I intend to glue the rest of the parts together (two tower elements and the cupola) and that will be a good astronomers tower I think. 

But while I looked for that, I also found some pretty nice Warhammer 40.000 scenery that I had built and primed before (and I have lots that isn't primed as well and also quite a lot that is still on sprues) so I think that when I have finished with most of my old Fantasy and also some of the newer Age of Sigmar scenery I will start to bring home some 40K scenery to finish. It is a little bit easier maybe to do the 40K as I would like that to be in a few different colors. I paint the bunkers gray, but I would like to have my buildings in several colors. I think I will try to use some of the spray cans I have with different colors on some of the buildings, and then also paint several of them in a dark green like Dark Angels Green. Then everything will be washed with Agrax Earthshade and Nuln Oil.

And that's not all...

I knew I had a box of River Trolls (now known as Fellwater Troggoths) in a box where I have my greenskin stuff (along with some old human boxes like Empire generals and Bretonnian knights and archers and even a few boxes of zombies it turned out). In that box I found something I didn't even knew I had and that is regular Goblins. I think they were meant to live above ground in small villages while the Night Goblins lived in caves or under ground. I found two boxes called Goblin Regiment, each box containing 20 Goblins and I took one box with me home to see how they assemble. Being an old set I knew the instructions would be poor, but they were totally missing. Luckily it is not that hard to figure out how to assemble them.

I do not know how I would like to arm the Wolf Riders yet, but I think I will make two units of 20 with spears and shields. I was originally thinking of making one unit with spears and one with bows and arrows, but the Night goblins have units with bows and arrows too, so I think two units with spears would stand out a bit more on the battlefield. But I will make the final decision when I have built the first unit. 

I also brought with me the units I had with Spider Riders, and I look forward to building and painting those as well. They all come with square bases, so I need to see what size "round" bases that is most similar and see if I have enough of them or if I need to buy more. I will even check if it is ok to use square bases before I glue them to the bases, as the old Spider Rider bases has some nice details to them that I will loose if I switch.

 

2021 is upon us

The calendar says January 2021, the year of the Beleaguered Badger (according to Discworld). 

I have built and started to paint some of my old scenery from Warhammer Fantasy (that will be used for Age of Sigmar now) and it comes along slow but steady.
I am trying to find the best way to make the stone walls look natural and not just one color of gray, and I think I have worked out something that might work, but I will need to get more paint from the GW store in Oslo before I can complete some of the builidings. In the meantime I am trying to paint the parts that are not going to have these stone colors like the wood and natural rocks that are not cut to bricks. For Skullvane Manse I can do quite a lot without painting the stone walls. There are a lot of wood, other rocks and also some stone walls that are covered in something I could call plaster for lack of the real word for it (sort of like the concrete of the middle ages). I plan to paint that in more of an off-white color, and I got a good idea how I want it to look in the end.

I am also working on my New army for 2021, the Sons of Behemat. So far I have built and primed about half the army, and that is one Mega-Gargant and three Mancrusher Gargants. I had planned to have this army at about 2000 points, and this is 970 points. Because the Mancrusher Gargants come in packs of two I will get four more so I will get another 970 points with the Mega-gargant I have already bought but not built and three of the Mancrusher Gargants as they have a maximum unit size of three. Then I will get 180 points for one single Mancrusher gargant. I might make the last one a single Aleguzzler gargant that has only just woken up in a cave with a bad hangover. They both look the same, so I can use him as I wish. I am not sure of the rules, but this will give me either 1940 points if I don't use the last regular Gargant, or 2120 if I add him.

But it is not just only gargants I have been working on, I have also built and primed 15 Squig hoppers (and primed 15 Boingrot Bounderz), built and primed 6 Rockgut Troggoths and one Dankhold Troggboss. I know how I want to paint the Rockgut Troggoths but haven't found the colors yet I have two of the three, but need to find the darkest blue. I also have a regular Dankhold Troggoth to paint and I have planned to make him a darker blue as well, and a Mollog that will be more purple. These will all join my Gloomspite Gitz army.