I think I promised that this month was going to be all about Orks with a “K” but needless to say an Orc has rudely barged in anyway. The infamous Blood Bowl star player Varag Ghoul-Chewer has been on the edge of my painting desk since last Orctober and I finally faced the fact that he’s not going to paint himself – impressive though that might be – so I’d better get on with it myself. Anyway, he’s done now – rival sportsmen beware!
Incidently, those of you who’re viewing this through the WordPress reader may find that some of the pictures are strangely outsized and distorted. I presume this is yet another case of WordPress deciding to make work for themselves and irritate their users by finding something that ain’t broke and attempting to fix it anyway, bless ‘em. If the problem doesn’t resolve itself soon I’ll look into seeing if there’s anything I can do at my end – in the meantime the website doesn’t appear to be affected so if it bothers you (and it should!) please go to convertordie.wordpress.com and look at the posts there.
Anyway, time to get back to the 41st Millennium!
Convert or Die 
October 19th, 2022 at 9:21 am
Ooohhhh he’s nasty looking mate. Great work.
October 19th, 2022 at 3:18 pm
Cheers dude – he’s a right brutal bastard isn’t he!
October 19th, 2022 at 11:50 am
Crikey, he is definitely a nasty looking individual! 🙂 Nicely done!
October 19th, 2022 at 4:14 pm
Thanks John – you wouldn’t want to get on his bad side would you!
October 19th, 2022 at 12:40 pm
I’m surprised he can get a ghoul close enough to chew on, what with those tusks on his iron gob!
Certainly looks like someone I wouldn’t want to see across the line of scrimmage, tho!
October 19th, 2022 at 8:59 pm
Oh don’t mention those tusks to me – I love the way they look but I don’t love the number of times I had to glue them back on. Fingers remaining tightly crossed, I *think* they’re secure now and no more impromptu dentistry will be required. Looking at him I’m not actually sure how he’s supposed to get to his half-time snack impaled on this shoulder – probably explains why he’s so angry!
October 19th, 2022 at 10:58 pm
Honestly, at first glance I thought they were Magnus the Red-style nipple horns. Dude must have a hell of a neck workout!
October 19th, 2022 at 2:06 pm
Now that’s one mean looking Orc! I guess it’s a bit odd that they stuck with “Orc” in Blood Bowl and have used “Ork” everywhere else. Yea, yea, I know, BB isn’t really in the same universe (and that makes it even cooler to me!). Anyways, glad you got another Orc done and due to his size, I’d say he’s worth 2 points! Lol!
October 19th, 2022 at 9:20 pm
Cheers! I agree, he’s worth at least 2 points! Justice for Varag I say! Address your letters of complaint and angry online petitions to “Oi! IRO! @ Let Wudugast have more points! .com”
Well now, putting on my Warhammer nerd hat, pipe and slippers, they’re Orks in 40k and Orcs in Warhammer Fantasy and Blood Bowl (and Orruks in AoS but we don’t talk about that because saying Orruks makes you sound like you have the hiccups). I know Blood Bowl is kind of an alternative universe version of WHFB (all the place names etc are the same) but I always think of it as being set in the same universe. When I was a nipper we didn’t really know that they were supposed to be different versions of the same world and we only had so many miniatures so Blood Bowl players would pop up in people’s WHFB armies and vice versa. To this day I still picture it that way, a world in which the very serious grim-darkness is interspersed by Blood Bowl stadiums and everyone gets together for a post-battle kick-about (and of course, the whole thing is happening on an isolated planet in a far flung corner of the Imperium or somewhere in the Eye of Terror anyway, and sooner or later the space marines are going to turn up and “have words”). Of course even if you prefer to think of the Blood Bowl version and the WHFB version as two different universes the Blood Bowl one is the only real one now – having outlived it’s competitor which was blown to smithereens in the End Times.
October 19th, 2022 at 10:10 pm
Ah, didn’t realize that they were strictly “Orcs” in 40k. I guess that makes sense, as they wanted something different and didn’t want to just say Space Orcs, Space Dwarves, Space Elves. So they probably started coming up with different names. At least that’s my theory, though I’ve also heard most of the renames were due to them wanting to trademark their own creations, and you can’t really do that when things like “Elves, etc.” are in the public domain. Which still seems silly to me “Haha, we have space Elves, but now we own them!”. But if I start trying to make sense of GW’s business practices, my brain will end up swallowing itself!
October 21st, 2022 at 6:33 pm
Aye, never spend too much time trying to understand GW’s business practices, you’ll only make your head hurt. Way, way back in the day the Orks were indeed “Space Orcs” and I believe I read in an interview with Jes Goodwin that the Eldar were “Space Elves” at one point, although they changed that before they were released. All the crazy names are really a fairly recent phenomenon though, starting in 40k with Imperial Guard becoming Astra Militarum, Eldar becoming Aeldari and so on, and then with the switch from WHFB to AoS Orcs were out and Orruks were in, Dwarves became Duardin, Elves became Aelfs and so on. Honestly still think that was bloody stupid, GW are by a long way the biggest show in town when it comes to miniatures and if I like Elves or Dwarves I’m more likely to buy them from GW than I am from one of their competitors simply because of market saturation. Calling them Duardin won’t change that, in fact it might throw people off because they won’t recognise the name, and things like Orruks and Ogors just sound a bit stupid (don’t get me started on changing Lizardmen to “Seraphon” that’s just mad, they’re not angels they’re angry dinosaurs). See, now I’m doing it – trying to understand GW (and it is indeed making my head hurt so I’m going to stop!).
October 19th, 2022 at 5:16 pm
Noice!! Now that’s a proper star player 👍👍👍
October 21st, 2022 at 6:21 pm
Cheers mate! Aye, one look at him and the other team will know they’re up against the big leagues now!*
*hopefully… 😀
October 19th, 2022 at 11:00 pm
Very nice.
Cheers,
Pete.
October 21st, 2022 at 6:33 pm
Cheers muchly!
October 20th, 2022 at 6:03 am
Well he may only be worth one pount but I reckon he would create havoc ripping through New Ork Leans!
October 21st, 2022 at 6:35 pm
Ooh, you’re not wrong there – that’s what New Orkleans needs – some kind of sports stadium! Better tell IRO to get building!
October 20th, 2022 at 8:39 pm
Great work on Varag 2.0 here! Even if this new sculpt is a litle on the nose with that shoulder decoration!
You did get me to start work on the Orks I’ve got on the desk here with your last post, and now the cracked earth on all of their bases has been added and painted. At this rate, I’ll only get a couple painted by …frick? next weekend? Well, I worked on then during Orktober, anyway! 😡
October 21st, 2022 at 6:37 pm
Cheers! Aye, there must have been a design meeting where someone asked “How do we make it clear that he likes to chew ghouls?”. Good luck with the Orks, remember it’s about getting things painted – not which month you happened to paint them in in the end. 🙂
October 23rd, 2022 at 12:57 am
Yeah, it went from an interesting epithat to a literal illustration. As for painting – for sure, though I do like to try and use themed months to help with motivation when I can…
October 25th, 2022 at 7:39 pm
And also, if I can be pedantic for a moment, that’s not a ghoul – it’s very clearly a zombie. I know that in a lot of settings the two could be synonymous but Warhammer has very much differentiated the two so it irritates me a little (more than it should but we’re all allowed our foibles!). I still like the model though, and it certainly beats the hell out of the Forge World version. 🙂
October 20th, 2022 at 11:13 pm
This is a great sculpt, mate. His headpiece is really something special. You did a great job painting him up of course too! That is annoying that WordPress is acting up again. The pictures look good to me even if two are definitely a little bit differently sized.
October 21st, 2022 at 6:39 pm
Thanks man! Yeah, wordpress does like to muck about with things when they don’t need to. Luckily everything looks ok on the main site so far, it’s only the reader that looks funny (which surely doesn’t help to encourage people to use wordpress’ reader).
October 21st, 2022 at 6:15 am
[…] out all about here. As a vehicle the Killa Kan is worth 2 points, whilst each of the orks (plus Varag Ghoul-Chewer who got his own post earlier in the week) is worth 1 point each, making this week worth a total of […]
October 31st, 2022 at 10:04 am
[…] And although this month was mostly about my Warhammer 40k Orks I did manage to sneak in another addition to the Blood Bowl collection with the star player Varag Ghoul-Chewer. […]
October 31st, 2022 at 10:41 am
[…] And although this month was mostly about my Warhammer 40k Orks I did manage to sneak in another addition to the Blood Bowl collection with the star player Varag Ghoul-Chewer. […]
November 1st, 2022 at 5:31 pm
Looks really good to me. Love Blood Bowl theme and I’m back into it big time
November 6th, 2022 at 10:10 am
Thanks mate! I do love the Blood Bowl aesthetic – I need to find time to play some more games of it but just painting the models is a joy, they’re very fun and silly. 🙂