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Tag Archives: Conversion

Armoured Orks pt.2 and the Field Commanders

01 Monday Apr 2019

Posted by Alex in OldHammer, Wolf Time

≈ 28 Comments

Tags

Conversion, Rogue Trader, Sculpting, Wolf Time

Greetings Terrans, I hope this finds you well! I have more Wolf Time goodness to share today, and it’s a fairly long post, so grab a coffee & strap in!

First up I have more PA ork guards to show you – very similar to my last post, these guys all have the armour, (and in some cases arms), sculpted over an original metal Ork. You’ll probably notice that there are only eight in this group – don’t worry, I haven’t gone mad… these guys are posted singly on the top floor of Kulo’s Castle rather than formed up in squads on the lower level:

So far so good, right? However, only having eight of these guys was bothering me… There will be life, (and games), after Wolf Time, and not having full five-Ork squads is just irritating, so I decided to tackle two more PA Orks at the same time & paint them with future squad membership in mind. Looking back over the campaign, games 1, 2 & 3 all have a named Ork leader, and all of them are in Power Armour. Long story short, I picked the two that best fit in with the PA ork guards and painted them accordingly. I reckon these guys were causing trouble at HQ, so Governor Kulo posted them to the remote stations to get them out of the way… (Governor Kulo is a paranoid Ork – insecure in his leadership and seeing plots everywhere… often with good reason!)

So first up we have Alug – he’s the Ork in charge of Station 1:

From the Book of the Astronomican: “Alug is a neurotic Ork with a mean streak as wide as a highway. He dislikes the technicians, or ‘boffins’ as he contemptuously calls them. When the attack begins, Alug is sulking in his hut. He is armed and equipped as follows:

Power armour. Heavy Bolter. Hand Flamer. 2 suspensors (to off-set weight of bolter)”

Alug is a pretty straight forward loadout – I used one of the classic PA Orks, and did some light conversion work on the weapons to make the Bolter look ‘heavy’, and to turn the weird pointy-finger gun into something that looks like it could be a flamer… It’s not just the Jokaero that can make digital weapons! A fuel tank was added around back to sell the finger-flamer idea further:

 

And here’s Alug with his bros from the Castle:

 

Next up we have Kalug – the boss for Station Three:

“Kalug was originally an engineer with the Ork fleet and still prides himself on his technical expertise. As the game begins, Commander Kalug is engaged in one of his favourite pastimes: taking “Sally” (his specially modified heavy plasma gun) apart and trying to put it back together again. Unfortunately, Kalug hasn’t quite worked out how to perform this complicated operation…

The weapon cannot be used until it has been reassembled. To reassemble the weapon successfully, Kalug must spend the whole turn in his hut. At the end of the turn, roll 1D6. If you score a 6, Kalug has managed to get Sally back together. Kalug can spend as many turns as you wish trying to reassemble his weapon, roll at the end of each turn to determine success. Kalug is armed and equipped as follows:

Power armour. Bolt gun. Bolt pistol. Chainsword.

Plus

Heavy plasma gun (‘Sally’). 4 suspensors to off-set weight. Targeter.”

So Kalug is a bit more complicated than Alug – not least because the Ork player can choose whether to keep trying for that 6 and play him with ‘Sally’, or can skip it & just get him into the fight without the big gun…

I started with another classic PA Ork and modelled him without the heavy plasma, just converting him to carry a chainsword & sculpting on a snazzy bolt pistol:

I then converted a Gretchin to carry ‘Sally’ – a fun little addition, that allows me the flexibility to play him with or without the big girl:

Interesting point – I recently had a conversation with Wudugast about plasma guns having drilled barrels or focusing lenses. This old gun certainly looked like it was intended to have a lens of some sort, so I painted it as such.

Anyhow, here’s Kalug with his castle-based cronies:

 

Having painted up Alug and Kalug, I couldn’t very well leave out the third field commander could I! So here he is – Zymot Thrallgash, the Commander of Station 2:

“Zymot is dead keen on “technoll’ji” and spends hours looking over the shoulders of the technicians. He likes to surround himself with all manner of gadgets, flashing lights and the latest in Ork know-what. When the attack begins, Zymot is in the generator room getting in the way of the technicians and asking helpful questions like “What happens if it blows up then?” Zymot arms and equipment are as follows:

Power armour. Conversion field. Plasma gun with targeter. Hand flamer. Power glove. Jump-pack.”

Zymot has quite a tricky loadout, and was probably the most involved conversion of the three field commanders. I again started with a classic PA Ork, and added a resin jump pack from Spellcrow (ironically, a Space Wolves item that they chucked in for free with another order). I changed his main gun for a plasma piece & cabled that to his eye (targeter), and also added to the detail sculpted on the back of the power glove to make it look more flamer-like:

 

Completing Alug, Zymot and Kalug is a cool milestone in the project, as I can now field all the Ork forces from games 1, 2 & 3! I’ve been looking forward to being able to say that for quite a while, so I thought I’d mark the occasion with some team photos:

Game 1 – Alug & co.

 

Game 2 – Zymot & co.

 

Game 3 – Kalug & co.

 

Phew, that’s it for this week, that just leaves me with the named characters from Kulo’s Castle to paint, and the Orks are done! I’ll hopefully make some good progress this week, and of course, it’s Salute on the weekend… Exciting times! Catch you all soon dudes, be excellent to each other :-)

Armoured Orks pt.1

25 Monday Mar 2019

Posted by Alex in OldHammer, Scuplting, Wolf Time

≈ 41 Comments

Tags

Conversion, Rogue Trader, Sculpting, Wolf Time

Greetings Terrans, how goes it? All good I hope :-) I’m really excited to be sharing this post with you today – I am finally on the home stretch with the Wolf Time Ork project, and we’re getting to the really really interesting bit… the mythical ‘Guards with power armour & chainswords’! Now, some of you might be wondering what the big deal is – maybe you’re only dipping in to this project recently, or maybe (like me) your memory is more suited to remembering how much damage a Heavy Bolter does in RT* than what you had for breakfast… Either way, I’ll offer a quick recap.

One of the guiding principles of this whole project has been WYSIWYG** – I cut myself some slack with the difference between flak or mesh armour, but I wanted every knife, bolt pistol, grenade, hand flamer etc. correctly represented on every miniature***  I also wanted to use period models as much as humanly possible & avoid the later ‘Ere we Go’ minis with plastic arms… (a couple of these slightly later minis did find their way in for some of the characters, but not too many.)

The problem is that many of the loadouts specified in the campaign pack never existed in miniature form, or were only represented in a couple of models. The Skumbos (bolt pistol & sword) are a good example of the latter condition – there were a couple of minis that suited, but not enough to do a full 25 without chronic duplication. The ‘power armour/bolter/chainsword’ combo is an example of the former… there simply wasn’t a period mini that represented that load out at all. In both cases, my approach has been to attempt to sculpt what I needed – proper Old School :-)

I’ve been showing you the skumbos over the last couple of months – they have loads of sculpted details like pistols, scraps of armour, swords & scabbards etc. All in all, quite a lot of effort… However, the Guards were a whole different level of work – we’re talking 18 full ‘over-sculpts’ of power armour, 3rd party chainswords, bionics, the odd gun-arm… basically this involved hours and hours of sculpting in and around other bits and pieces – hence the excitement in getting some paint on them! Here are the first two squads – Red and Orange:

 

And here are some closer views in pairs:

That last pair was the squad leaders – they get a hand flamer each as well as the bolter. The orange guy is the only ‘as is’ power armoured mini in the whole group but he still needed his hand flamer sculpted on. Note his chainsword is actually part of his gun-arm.

 

I also thought it might be fun to compare a Skumbo, a Boy and a Guard as well – I’ve accidentally managed to get quite a pleasing range of sizes:

 

And one final shot of all 10 Guards together:

 

So there we are – 10 down, 8 to go. Are they perfect? No, of course not – they are lumpen and misshapen, rough and ready. Some have worked better than others, and some are frankly ridiculous. Was it easy? Hell no – sculpting is bloody difficult and time consuming, but I learned so much through doing this… I think it’s fair to say that while my sculpting is still pretty meh, it did improve a lot through this process, and I’m certainly a lot more confident pushing putty now than I was before.

But the most important question is do they work? Well, I’m hardly in a position to be objective about this, but I really think they do. They look big & heavy, they look well ‘ard, and they look like they warrant a 4+ save… They look like the classic end-of-level uber-henchie, and they look ready to crump some Marines…

In that sense, I think I’m calling these a complete success :-)

 

*D4 Damage(r) – if you knew this, and if you can’t say D4 Damage without adding the ‘r’ and immediately following with ‘power to the people’ or ‘with the ill behaviour’ then I may actually be in love with you.

**What You See Is What You Get – your model is a true representation of the army list.

***One sneaky Boy is passing his Heavy Bolter off as a regular one… I’m allowing this because the Heavy B is tiny, and because I can’t handle perfection. Sorry Paul.

The Handmaidens of Seros

27 Wednesday Feb 2019

Posted by Alex in AoS, Daughters of Khaine, Fembruary Challenge

≈ 36 Comments

Tags

Conversion, Painting

Greetings Terrans, and sorry it has been a while since I posted! We’ve had our half term break here in the south of England, so I had a nice week off with the kids, visiting family & having guests in return. My hobby time has been a bit fragmented as a result, but I have been chipping away at a few bits and pieces. My Power Armoured Orks are almost built, and I have some cool terrain on the go as well, but most importantly for today, I have finished my Daughters of Khaine AoS warband quota for February… By extension, this means that I have hit my goal for Fembruary as well:

B50096EC-9B54-4011-B528-647EF5A4FC90

 

These three ladies are pretty much the stock Witch Aelves & Slaughter Queen from the Cauldron of Blood set – the only slight modification is using the heads from the Melusai Blood Sisters to give them a more sinister silhouette & tie them in a bit more with Seros herself. I’ll play them all as Witch Aelves in the first instance, though the Slaughter Queen might get a weapon swap & a promotion later in the project. I’ve followed the colour scheme that I established with Seros – the red skin is intended to give them a more demonic look, and I hope also serves to de-sexualise them a bit, (still something that bothers me with the DoK range).

Here’s the accompanying fluff:

Following her exile from Hagg Nar, Seros kept herself to the shadows – a broken thing, she slowly nursed her change-ravaged body back to health, just as she fed her hatred and anger. Little did she realise that others within Khainite society had been inspired by her defiance of Morathi, and that small groups were quietly seeking her out. The auspicious form of her cursed body and her high reputation as a former Priestess led some to believe that Seros was a prophetess, and that she was destined for greatness. The first such followers to find her were three warrior sisters, who tracked her to a deep mine on the borders of the realm of metal. They called to Seros, declaring their loyalty, and begging to be allowed the honour of serving her. Seros allowed them to approach through the darkness, but their torch-revealed beauty caused her such anguish that she lashed out at the sisters, her crown of snakes striking each in turn. Thus poisoned, the sisters lay in agonised paralysis as their flesh darkened to a crimson hue, and their faces contorted into rictus-like masks. Seros retreated deeper into the shadows, intuitively understanding that if the sisters survived their ordeal, then they had been judged worthy to join her by a higher power than Seros herself. Quietly, she watched from the darkness, as one by one, the sisters slid into deep, dreamless coma.

Many days later, the three sisters awoke, and were soon recovered enough to resume calling out for Seros, beseeching her to allow them to serve her. Their venom-induced transformation had left them with skin the colour of blood and hideously transformed faces, but this seemed to have only strengthen their devotion. Finally convinced of their worthiness and no longer taunted by their Aelven beauty, Seros allowed the sisters to join her. Known as the Handmaidens of Seros, they became her first acolytes, and wearing snake-crowned masks in her honour, they continue to fight at her side. Meanwhile, Seros continues to subject new members of her warband to her venomous ‘kiss’ in order to determine their worthiness and loyalty… The survivors of this ritual are left similarly marked by the experience, and follow the Handmaiden’s example by donning hideous masks to honour their prophetess.

85679E06-E7F8-4214-A290-2FAAB3534015

 

So that’s it for now – I hope you like the handmaidens, and that you enjoyed the read! I’ll be doing a Fembruary round-up in the next few days, and will be continuing to work on various projects in the background as well… Jobs for March include continuing to add to this warband (another 25 renown), finish building my Wolf Time Power Armoured Orks and start getting some paint on them! I am also committed to finishing up some of Mark’s Heresyofus Mag Bellum terrain pieces that I have on the go – more news to follow!

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