A VERY Generous Gift: RT ORKS!!!

When I was home a few weeks back, Jason, one of my best mates GAVE me his Games Workshop 40K collection. Jason and I played against eachother for HOURS as kids. (OK highschool). I always used my RT Space marines or Nids and Jason always used his guard or Orks or Eldar (or all together). It was heaps of fun. Rogue Trader 40K (1st Edition) was almost unplayble by today's standards and yet... We loved it!

I brought the orks with me back to Australia and I am pondering evil things. Anyway here are the models...
Now you have to keep in mind that we didn't have anyone to help us learn how to paint. The Internet didn't exist in any reality. White Dwarf didn't have painting articles... It was pure trial and error. We were kids... That being said.
DAMN! I remember the orks looking really good and looking at them now... some 20 years later... Some of the free hand my mate painted on those orks is beyond my skill now. Further proof that you should just give it a go and sometimes you will be surprised at what comes out on the other end.
For example:

This free hand was painted by what I would consider a HUGE brush now.

The basic painting was base coats and controlled dry brushing but the free hand is nice...

And size wise I am shocked at how the orks' size holds up to todays models...

and of course some things didn't hold up size wise...

Here is the Army: My favourite models of the era... Madboyz!

Nobs..

More Nobs and some command models:

The Weirdboy:

The Green Ogryn that is the Warboss... Still WIP...

Assorted Boyz:


I know the models are goofy and not super serious and that there is some serious biker leather envy going on on lots of these models but I don't care. Orks will always look like this is my mind's eye (at least a little). Don't get me wrong I love the "mean" orks of today but these are the orks of my youth. I have nothing but fond memories of these guys.

I am very excited that I get to give these boyz a good home and a 2nd lease on life on 40K battlefields.

If you are reading this... Thanks Jason I will be using these for no good sooner rather than later.

B

Back in the Saddle... Ork ideas...

Soooo I have been checking out the ork and goblin WWII stuff for sale by Micro Arts Studios for a while and mid 37 hour flight to my parent's house in Boston (it was a bastard of a flight). I had an epiphany. Orkingrad!

I have an army of painted orks in furry cloaks... What if I mixed in WWII armour and some of these models...

Meet my Nobz:


I picked up a pack of these guys and matching heads from Hobby Bunker in Malden MA. What a cool shop. Not the best GW selection BUT they had everything I needed for my crazy ork army.

I also picked up a pack of these dudes to be my Runtherds...


Additionally I was able to pick up a pile of really nice plastic WWII tanks.

I got 3 Panzer IV's and two "Buffalo's" to be my battlewagons... Everything fits perfectly.

My Armoured Kompany is well on it's way... All I need to do is figure out how to scratch build 10 Mega Armoured Orks...

Army list and model pictures soon... And a proper explanation of the theme... (Eastcon here I come!)

B

How to Write Ork

Ever wondered how to speak ork... Well go cockney and you are almost there. Write ork? Slightly harder. Here are a few pages of ork glyphs that I shameless lifted from Google. I could not get the source webpage to work so I cannot credit the creators of this work. It is ACE though and I thought I would share it with you warbosses out there. (it is a remake of the text from old GW books and it is cool looking)... Enjoy!






Also... The Space Wolves FINALLY arrived this morning at 7:30 AM... Review to follow shortly... And it won't be pretty.

Progress Report

I thought I would write a quick progress report on my feral ork/orc horde.

I green stuffed a few more cloaks on my basic boyz but a small hobby knife accident ended that endeavor (hope it will be healed by next week). I figured that green stuff water was not something I wanted in a wound. Call me crazy.

In the meantime I started to work on the front ranks of my regiments and added heads to 40 more orcs/orks. All the front rankers (including hopefully the nobs) will be in kilts. I had the crazy idea of using these front rank models as the commandos in the 40K version of this army. I plan to use bagpipers as four musicians and modeling them in such a way that they are also burners. Thats right kids burning bagpipes (I have sketched them out but have not done the green stuffing yet).

I have an old Gorkamorka metal nob that I will be converting to make a feral version of Snikrot. I am really looking forward to getting on that model BUT I am saving it as a reward for getting through green stuffing the boys.

I also pulled out my old half finished black orcs and I plan to remount them on rounds because they are terrible to rank up on square bases. Anyway..

I have heard from China saying my wolves are on the way. So that is good.

I am off to Brisbane with my lovely wife for the weekend to watch Aussie rules football and to misbehave at amusement parks.

MY CAMERA HAS FINALLY RETURNED!!!

Well, now that our camera has returned from its visit to the manufacturer (Thank god for warrantees) you can see what I have been working on. My "Alien"nids are more than half finished, my Storm Raven is almost done (coming soon), and my orc/ork tournament army has really grown. Today I will be focusing on the green skins since I have to get them done ASAP (and I think they look really cool.)

As stated before, the idea behind the fantasy side of this army is that they are black orcs, orcs, and hobgoblins escaping from their Chaos Dwarf oppressors. See my prior post for the theme on this. The 40K side of things focuses on feral orks in a winter climate (ever notice that Space Wolves are the only army that hangs out in snowy environments?).

I have five 5X5 round base to square movement trays from Gale Force Nine. Laser etched wood, gotta love it! What can I say I like what these guys do. Anyway. The first rank will be regular orc models in kilts with furs hanging heavily from their backs. The 2nd through 5th ranks are made up of my heavy cloaked "shrouded" orcs (think Batman when he is doing his lurk thing).

All of these shrouded boys are based on two stacked smaller sized dice. I attached the ork heads to the top of one flat side of the dice. Once that glue has dried I cover the orc in green or grey stuff and sculpt furs using the flat back of my hobby knife.

Ranked up they look like this at the moment.




Here are two pictures of the same regiment. I have another full tray done (command is at the same stage though) using green stuffed orcs instead of grey stuff. I find the green stuff easier on my hands but I do not like the furs nearly as much. Too bad I have a crud load of the stuff. I think the next couple packs of putty I buy for this will be grey.

Anyway here is a shot of what they look like before the heads and furs.



I am planning to differentiate units by putting shields with different iconography on their backs. I had experimented with weapons sticking out from the fur but didn't like the results. Gonna monkey with that some more before I give up though.

In other news I packed up the High Elves last night and I head off to Geelong in 36 hours to muck around and play some serious Warhammers at Rumble In The Bronx. I have slightly changed my list because I was a few points over by dropping a spearman and adding dragon armour to both my nobles. I am looking forward to a good weekend with Drew and the boyz. Tournament write up will be forth coming.

Wish me luck.