Varag Ghoul-Chewer

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!

Kruel and Unusual – Part 4

Time to start some warm-up exercises ahead of Orktober, and my now annual Ork War vs fellow blogger The Imperial Rebel Ork (who’s already been hard at work assembling his own Ork invasion which you can see here). As all great athletes will tell you it pays to train so over the last few weeks I’ve been hammering scrap metal to my body as makeshift armour, yelling “Waaagh!” at passing strangers and mounting a spiked deff-rolla on the family car. This week I even found time to paint a few of the green lads. You won’t catch me retiring on day one having exacerbated an old ork-painting injury, oh no!

This year I’m planning to focus on my 40k Ork army but I do have plenty of fantasy Orcs kicking around as well, including various Kruelboyz, so I grabbed three of them out of the pile for a quick warm up.

I really like how this one’s shield matches his own face down to the eye-patch.

Ugly gits aren’t they!

Plenty more green lads are just a couple of weeks away but, assuming life can find it in itself to be a tiny bit less manic for a few days, I’ve got a bunch of other models I’d like to knock through first. Watch this space!

Dat Der Dokk Iz Bak!

Cast your mind back to the heady days of June 2020 and you may recall that I painted a Bonesplitterz Wardokk (or a Savage Orc shaman if you speak English). If you need a reminder he looked a little bit like this…

Secretly I was never entirely happy with him. His skin, painted exactly the same way as all my other Orcs and Orks, looked too dark and drab. Perhaps it was the way it contrasted against all the bones he’s wearing but it didn’t look right to me (although I’m perfectly happy with how it looks on all my other greenskins). Plus he needed some tattoos and warpaint to really look the part of a crazed barbarian shaman. In fact it was this dissatisfaction that lead me to try a different shade of skin for my Savage Orcs when I put together a warband of them last Orctober. Here’s an example of the new style. 

Since then I’ve been meaning to go back to the old Wardokk and repaint his skin to bring him into line with the rest of the crew, and now I’ve finally got around to it. 

And here he is hanging out with a couple of his new buddies as he finally finds his place in the tribe.

Needless to say I’m much happier with him now and he can take his place at last alongside the rest of the ladz. 

Rock Bottom

Why yes, I did paint a stone troll and name him Rock Bottom. Don’t judge me, you’d have done the same thing if you’d thought of it! 

Once again this is a model which has lurked in the pile of shame for some time, and now comes stomping forth at long last as I continue my efforts to work my way through the backlog. Somewhere I have a couple more of these trolls, expect to see them… someday. 

The Mean Green Geezerettes – Part 2

Right, let’s get this Fembruary party started with another Orc cheerleader for my Blood Bowl team. She joins her sister that I painted back in Orctober.

Go team! Go team! 

As with last year I’ve got loads of models from the backlog and I’m going to try to batter through as many of them as possible. Last year I managed 21. This year I suspect it will be rather less, the first couple of weeks of the month look set to be pretty busy, but we’ll see how it goes.

Back To The Primitive – Part 5

I meant to paint this guy back in Orctober alongside the rest of my savage orc warband, but somehow I never managed to get him finished. Then I decided to paint some more lads at the same time as him, but right now I haven’t even got around to assembling them. Then I thought “stuff it, let’s just get him painted”. 

Of course now I’ve actually finished him I’m feeling the bug of orcy enthusiasm again so I might just dig out some unbuilt models and start sticking the rest of the clan together at last.

The Git-Killaz – Part 5

Right you horrible lot! Did you over-indulge at Christmas? Good!

As it happens I’ve been a busy boy. With the end of the year looming I decided to finish off my Black Orc Blood Bowl team (minus the troll – for crying out loud will you stop going on and on about that bloody troll!). The team had reached the stage where although there were still several models to paint they were all fairy small, nothing I couldn’t handle before we reach 2022 right?

First things first we have the three remaining goblins that complete the squad of players able to take to the pitch. Let’s take a look at them.

This one seems to think he’s a bit tough. Let’s see how well that holds up when a chaos warrior is thundering down towards him…

I do like this lad’s headgear, very stylish indeed sir!

Gathered together with their mates from a couple of weeks ago, we have the goblin half of the team (joining the Orc half which I painted – appropriately – back in Orctober).

Of course we need a full-team group shot but that will have to wait because we have a few other things to look at first. Each team comes with a couple of coin-shaped counters with the team logo stamped on them.

And then we have a couple of balls. Again each team comes with balls in the style of the team. Do you want to see a goblin playing with his balls? You do? Well ok then…

A clever thing about a lot of the recent Blood Bowl teams is the way that each miniature can be built in one of two very distinct ways. Two sprues of models therefore give you two sets of pairs of models. In the first Orc team I painted you ended up with two sets of “clones”, each Orc was the same as their partner, until I set about converting with gusto of course! With this team there was no need to do that, and in my book that’s a very good thing. Much as I enjoy converting models it should be something that you do because you want to do it, not because you feel you have to just to end up with an aesthetically pleasing collection. Anyway, just for interest here’s all the pairs of models from the Black Orc team. Despite the name of this blog I can’t recall doing anything in the way of converting with these.

And there we have it, the Black Orc team is ready to roll. Want to see a group shot? Of course you do!

I’ve still got plenty more Blood Bowl to tackle in 2022 of course. There’s that half-painted elf team, my long-neglected humans and various undead monsters all clamouring for attention. And that troll of course but the less said about him the better!

The Git-Killaz – Part 4

Time to revisit the Blood Bowl pitch as I keep chipping away at the Black Orc team I started in October. Last time we saw them I’d painted all 6 of the orcs which just left the goblins waiting for attention. Since then I’ve been working away at painting up the more nimble and diminutive side of the team and managed to complete first one…

…then another…

…and finally a third. 

I also went for the easy win of getting these two markers painted up as well. 

All in all the team is coming together nicely now so I’ll aim to finish it by that ever elusive date known only as “soon”. 

Kruel and Unusual – Part 3

This Orctober one of my key goals was to paint up a Warcry warband of Savage Orcs (or Bonesplitter Orruks depending on how well you speak AoS). I’m pleased to say this is now complete, with the crazed, stamping Wurrgog Prophet added to the group earlier in the week. This also gives me four different warbands to choose from for Destruction themed Warcry games; Bonesplitters, Ironjaws, Gloomspite Gits and Ogres. However there is one more Destruction faction available for greenskin fans to use in Warcry, the new Kruelboyz. These were given rules as a free download through the Warhammer Community website (and if you’re interested you can find them here). With the Savage Orcs complete I turned my attention to the Kruelboyz. Could I paint another Warcry warband with only a few days of Orctober left to go?

No, of course I couldn’t! However I didn’t need to – by chipping away my new collection of Kruelboyz harvested from the Dominion boxset over the past couple of months I already had almost everything I needed to get started. A couple more greenskins would be sufficient to round out the warband and that was a much more achievable goal.

First things first I decided to add another Gutrippa to the group. I think my preference would be to include one of these boys armed with a close combat weapon (a hakka) rather than another spear (a stikka) just for a bit of variety. As it happens I have managed to nab myself some hakkas amongst various other useful bits, so I’m planning to convert some of my boys with stikkas from the Dominion box into boys with hakkas. For now however I don’t have time for those kind of shenanigans – plus I already had a boy with a spear sitting on the desk – so I just concentrated on getting him painted.

Here he is next to his two new mates.

Next I turned my attention to giving the tribe some ranged power. Unlike some other greenskin tribes the Kruelboyz aren’t averse to standing well back and shooting their adversaries full of arrows, and the ” Man-Skewer Boltboys” do pretty much exactly what it says on the tin.

Then it was just a case of adding the Hobgrots, the Killaboss and the sneaky little Stabgrot that I painted earlier in the year and the warband is good to go.

I do have a few other Kruelboys still kicking around and I had rather ambitiously hoped to get them painted this month as well, but alas it was not to be. Still I’m proud to say that’s another warband finished – and my total number of Orcs painted this month now stands at 33.

The Git-Killaz – Part 3

Time for one more visit to the Blood Bowl pitch for this month. As I hoped I’ve managed to get all six of the Orc players for my Black Orc team painted, let’s take a look at the final pair.

And here’s the obligatory group shot of the team so far.

This just leaves the goblin half of the team to paint, plus the various counters, tokens and balls. Oh and a troll, but I’d like to convert him to make him look different to the troll that plays for my other Orc team (and yes, I’m perfectly aware that I still haven’t painted that first troll either, no need to nag thank you!). I’m aiming to keep chipping away at the rest of the team and get them all wrapped up by the end of the year (minus the troll of course – I know he’ll need a bit more work).