Green Iz Best – Part 7

For a long time I’ve harboured an ambition to own a hoard of one hundred unique ork boyz. The last time I mentioned it here a few months ago it struck me that with seventy-five already painted at that point it would be fairly straightforward to get the remaining at twenty-five finished by the end of the year.

Ever-productive blogger Azazel even went so far as to declare that if I can get twenty-five orks painted over the coming month then so shall he. Of course, given the rate at which he paints that shouldn’t take him more than an hour (I jest – but seriously, he’s a painting machine and produces distressingly high quality results to boot! If you don’t already follow his blog then do yourself a favour and head over there now).

With that in mind here’s another five warlike greenskinned lads, cutting the number still to paint down to an increasingly manageable twenty.

With the year end deadline still comfortably distant I’m not in a huge rush with this project but it would be nice to get it done at last so expect to see me continuing to chip away over the coming months.

Green Iz Best – Part 6

For a long time I’ve harboured an ambition to own at least one hundred ork boys. I remember seeing the datasheet for the “Green Tide” in Apocalypse years ago and it’s description of “wave upon wave” of ork boys had me captivated. At the time I couldn’t imagine ever owning so many greenskins but the idea of commanding such a mighty horde snuck into my heart and never left. Over the last decade I’ve added more boys to the army in dribs and drabs, sometimes allowing these most violent of space fungi to sit idle for years at a time, sometimes getting caught up in a full scale Waaagh! of enthusiastic energy. Recently it struck me that, although the long-dreamed of horde might not have reached full strength quite yet, triumph might not be quite as unachievably distant as I’d once thought. The boys now take up a sizeable chunk of shelf-space and, having already completed more than a hundred clanrats, completing such a mighty force no longer seemed quite so intimidating.

As it’s Army April I decided to take the opportunity to do a quick inventory the collection. Although the number of boys has been slowly growing even I was no longer sure exactly how many I’d painted so I dug them all out and arranged them into squads. First of all and, nicely straightforward, I separated out the fifteen shoota boyz.

That done I counted out the first squad of 30 slugga boyz.

That left me with twenty-five boyz left over, five short of another full squad. Time to do some recruiting!

Just as important as the numbers is making sure each ork has its own personality. I’ve often suggested that I want to give each ork a unique head but really this is a crude way to describe my aspiration. Really I want each of the boys to be an individual, with its own distinct character, not just another rank filler.

To do this I’ve been raiding all kinds of bits from other ork, orc and orruk kits, including the savage orcs and the old boar boys (sadly now discontinued – a shame as it was one of those kits I always aspired to but never quite found the time or money to get until it became too late).

The barbaric, low-tech aesthetic of the orks means that these bits from the fantasy ranges fit in nicely here.

And given the ork’s love of destruction it really was about time I gave one of the boys a rocket launcher, for those moments when an even bigger, louder explosion is called for!

So there we have it, five new recruits ready to join the rest of the lads!

Which means, of course, that the second squad of slugga boys is now complete.

Time to find out what seventy-five rampaging orks looks like…

Of course this does mean I’m only twenty-five boys short of that long-aspired to milestone. Could this year be the one I finally complete it? I commit to nothing, but let’s see how I get on…

Green Iz Best – Part 5

I just realised that it almost the end of the month and I haven’t painted anything for Januwaaaghry. I’m not even sure if Januwaaaghry is still a thing that people do or if it’s entirely been replaced by Orktober. Certainly when I first got into orks about 10 years ago it was popular but as you know I’m not up with the kids! Anyway having left it a little late I didn’t have a lot of time to paint anything but it seemed remiss of me to let the occasion pass entirely, especially as I can always use the push to get a few more boys done.

As an aside writing this got me thinking about the pronunciation of the world Waaagh! Listening to other people in the broader hobby community it seems to be generally pronounced with a soft “ah”. I on the other hand always believed it was pronounced as in war, which after all is exactly what the Orks are shouting about. “Waaagh! Wot is it good for? Krumpin’ lotas humies! Say it say it say it again!” To me the latter makes more sense as well as being a better approximation of the guttural cry of an Ork. The former sounds more high pitched, the sort of thing a goblin would shout, but it does seem to be more popular and certainly ties in more closely with the pronunciation of January. Anyway, I now feel I’ve written the word “Waaagh!” more times than a grown man can really get away with so if you have any thoughts on this, perhaps the greatest issue of our age, the floor is yours.

Green Iz Best – Part 4

Just sneaking in another model in-between all the terrain (even though sneaking isn’t something an ork nob usually approves of!). According to the new ork codex an ork nob with a Waaagh! banner (a model with which regular readers will know I have something of a love/hate relationship) is no longer part of a squad but instead is a lone individual. Not that I pay too close attention to the rules but any excuse to paint another ork ought to be seized upon right? Surely I wasn’t expected to tolerate my poor nobs squad being a man down?

There we go; the nobs are back to being ten strong and balance has been restored! Of course now I’ll have to start work on a second squad…

Green Iz Best – Part 3

Orktober is rolling to a close and its almost time to hang up the greenskins for another year but before it’s gone completely there’s still time for one last update. First off here’s another new nob, bringing the squad up to ten.

I also finished rebasing the older models in the squad. As mentioned last time this is for aesthetic reasons and not to exploit some clever gameplay shenanigans, although since last time we discussed this GW themselves have announced that Nobs, and indeed Boys, will now be released on 32mm bases. Now for the Nobs I think this is great news but the sword of ” aesthetic reasons only” cuts both ways, I certainly won’t be rebasing all those boys any time soon!

That does leave the one with the Waaagh! banner needing to be rebased but as he breaks every time I look at him I’ll leave him alone for now in the interests of efficiency and sort it out next time I’m repairing him anyway.

Of course any ork army could always use more boys so I’ve not been idle on that front either. Here’s the latest additions to the mob.

I’ve no idea how many ork boys will make a unit in the new codex but, with 70 of them now painted, there is undoubtedly room for another boss nob. For some reason I always find painting boss nobs a bit of a chore. Aesthetically I’ve no idea why this might be but somehow I always find myself a little less enthusiastic about them than I would a normal ork boy. That said I’m still pleased with the end result. Do you have any models in your own collections which you like the look of but find yourself struggling to muster the enthusiasm to paint?

Here he is posing with his colleagues, the other two boss nobs in the army.

And given the new recruits a proper bossin’…

With it looking unlikely that I’ll get the chance to finish any more orks by the end of the month (but fear not I’ll have plenty of other models to show you over the next couple of days) here’s a roundup of all the models I painted for Orktober. Not masses I’ll admit but solid progress nonetheless and considerably bolstered by that Deff Dread.

As I mentioned in a previous post, the orks were the first of the 40k factions to really grab me. I’ve been adding units to it for over a decade so, in celebration of our new buggies and codex (not to mention to round out Orktober in style) here’s the whole army gathered together.

For those who count points I’ve no idea how many that comes to, although I’ll probably tot it up at some point just for fun once I’ve seen the new Codex. In the meantime however I need to put the finishing touches on a few other, smaller, greenskins and hopefully by tomorrow I should have a post finished showcasing progress on my goblins. Just don’t tell the Orks about my affiliation to their smaller kin, they might start thinking I’m a weedy git…

Stomp ‘Em Flat

For a year or two there October became synonymous with Dreadtober. Conjured up by Greggles at FeedYourNerd in 2015 it was a fairly straightforward painting event, calling for participants to paint a Dreadnaught (or similarly sized model) during the month of October. Perhaps simply because it was the first time I’d participated in anything of this nature I found myself captivated by the whole event and painted up a berserk Khornate helbrute (which I returned to and repaired back in May of this year).

However running an event like this takes considerable effort. It stands or falls on the sense of community involvement, of many people around the world participating together. The baton passed to Broken Paintbrush in 2016 when again it proved to be a great success but since then things have been pretty quiet and, like many others, I found myself struggling to maintain my enthusiasm. In the end I didn’t even finish the model I’d attempted in 2017 – a Death Guard Bloat Drone – until this May when a different community challenge – Azazel’s first Neglected Model Month – saw it resurrected alongside the aforementioned helbrute.

Anyway, I must confess I’d quite forgotten about Dreadtober until I spotted Thomas from HighTimesOnTheEasternFringe was working on one of my all time favourite miniatures – the Tyranid Carnifex – and discovered that Dreadtober has risen again in 2018.

I almost finished this Deffdred for Azazel’s Jewel of July challenge but somehow it fell through the cracks, and then just kept falling. Back then it didn’t need much to be finished but somehow the months have passed and it hasn’t seen a single brush stroke. I’d already been wondering about trying to get it finished as part of Orktober (for anyone struggling to keep up with all these challenges that’s the annual celebration of all things greenskinned which has this year been co-opted by GW alongside their Ork releases) but the rediscovery of Dreadtober and the enthusiasm of the early years gave me the shove I needed to actually pick it up, overcome the inertia and get it done at last.

“A Deff Dread’s pilot will take any opportunity to show the destructive power of his new metal body, if only to make himself feel better about the fact that he has to eat all his meals through a straw”.

Codex Orks (5th Edition)

And on that note all that remains to say is “best of luck” to everyone taking part in this year’s Dreadtober and of course a huge thanks to those who’ve stepped forward to keep the event alive in 2018.

Green Iz Best – Part 2

I’m still riding along on a wave of enthusiasm for all things Orky (as indeed all true greenskins do when a big Waaagh is in the offing). Next to come roaming across my painting desk, clad in their finest patch-work of looted armour and ready for a big scrap, are a couple of Ork Nobs – the first that I’ve painted in a number of years.

Here’s the first…

…and here’s the second.

Naturally as an Ork nob is a large model, roughly the size of a primaris space marine, I stuck him onto a 32mm base. At this point little did I realise that I might be flirting with controversy. It wasn’t until I was looking at some of my older models that I realised they are supposed to sit on the smaller 25mm bases. Most humans will be shrugging their shoulders at this point and thinking “so what” but trust me, for some people out there this kind of heresy makes the sort of shenanigans that Horus got up to seem like no more than a storm in a teacup. The size and type of base that a model is placed on is the sort of thing that gets a small sector of the population very worked up indeed. Personally I couldn’t give a monkey’s. I’m only raising this to clarify my position in advance, just in case anyone reading this thinks I might be trying to exploit some loophole or other. Naturally if you are one of those people who is distressed by this kind of carry on then please direct your hate mail to me via the usual channels.

Regardless I reckon this makes the models look an awful lot better than the silly little bases they were perched awkwardly on before so I went ahead and started rebasing all my old Nobs. Of course some of them could probably use being repainted whilst I’m about it but if I allow myself to get drawn into that I’ll probably never get anything done.

Personally I think this improves the look of the models hugely, and of course it makes them a little less top-heavy into the bargain. I’ll try to sort out the rest soon – watch this space.

Green Iz Best – Part 1

You’d be if you’d be excused for thinking that I’d be a little tired of painting greenskins at this point given the number of goblins that have been across a painting desk lately. You’d be wrong…

This is Orktober which means it’s time to sort out some reinforcements for the boys. The Orks were very much my first love amongst the 40k factions yet in recent times I’ve not given them much in the way of attention at all. What better time to do something about that than right now? There are a bunch of Ork boys, plus various other orky models, waiting for attention  (although how many I actually manage this month with their smaller greenskinned brethren also demanding my time waits to be seen). The first two are done however which brings my long-term goal of one hundred of the green gitz just a tiny fraction closer.

In an army such as this one which I’ve had for a very long time there will inevitably be some paint jobs which no longer look their best, or which hark back to a time when my painting skills were less than they are now so whilst I was about it I ended up grabbing a few of the older boys off the display shelf. All of them were models which, for one reason or another, I was no longer as happy with as I had been when I first finished them. Time to give them a little more attention – with their funny, sloppy paintjobs the newer boys must have been laughing at them. I didn’t go too mad on them, just enough that I no longer cringe when I see them.

Now I can’t deny that they still look pretty terrible next to the newer boys, but alas doing anything significant about that would probably entail a full repaint and I don’t have the energy or enthusiasm for that right now. Hopefully I will however be able to tap into the rising tide of orkyness being promoted by GW at the moment to get a few more green hooligans painted over the next little while.

Boyz Will Be Boyz – Part 8

Time to tackle something nice and straightforward that doesn’t require too much brainpower, something to scratch the itch to paint without actually demanding any real effort – and with that remit nothing fits the bill quite so well as a couple of orks!

Use The Force

If you guessed that all those Orks I posted last week were leading up to something you were right. Whilst I powered through the newest recruits to the Ork Boys squads I was also chipping away at what may be my favourite Ork model from the last few years, the hulking Big Mek with Kustom Force Field.

As conversions go he’s pretty straightforward, built almost entirely as Games Workshop intended with a simple head-swap for one of the excellent Max-Mini Orc Tech Freak heads.

The face was a joy to paint, full of grumpy character.

Of course, one Big Mek is never enough, especially when the Teleport Blasta looks so damn good as well. However it seems that GW aren’t keen on anyone making both Big Meks from a single box of models as, although there are bodies a plenty (well, three to be precise) and the bits to build both pieces of ‘teknology’ the components needed to attach either the Teleport Blasta or the Kustum Force Field appear only once. Not to worry, a bit of rickety looking Orky scrap metal covers the gap and leaves me with enough bits to start cobbling together his new colleague.

As regular readers will know any feedback is appreciated so feel free to let me know what you think in the comments.