Tag Archives: Space Orks

Somewhere over the Skumbo

22 Tuesday Jan 2019

Posted by in OldHammer, Scuplting, Wolf Time

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Greetings Terrans, how goes it? Another quick post from yours truly today – I have another 5 Scumbos completed for the Wolf Time campaign:

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This takes me up to 65% completed for the Ork side of the campaign! Again, these started life as Fantasy Orcs, but were remodelled with pistols & swords to fit the scenario. These were a bit more involved than the last lot, due to being Archers in their former lives. This meant that there was a bit more ‘making good’ needed where their quivers were removed, and awkward arm poses were rationalised. Here’s a reverse shot to show all pouches and whatnot that I used to hide the cutting:

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I have been busy on the building side of things as well as the painting, and I know that seeing a trickle of painted Orks is somewhat repetitive for you guys so I thought I’d share a teaser for the next stage of the project. I have made quite a bit of progress on some of the named characters for the campaign… see if you can figure out who is who!

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Teenage Scumbo, baby!

12 Saturday Jan 2019

Posted by in OldHammer, Scuplting, Wolf Time

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Greetings Terrans, I hope you are all well, and that you are enjoying getting back to normal after the festive season! After a slightly disjointed Christmas, I am back into the groove with my Wolf Time project – as a result, I have a new skwad of Scumbos to share with you:

As with almost all of my Scumbos, these guys are converted from various fantasy Orcs, with lots of bits sculpted on by yours truly. I’ve given them all a weathered & scruffy look, with plenty of rust & gunk… even the red spot colour is quite subdued – almost an oxblood brown rather than a true red. I hope that the overall effect is one of a mob of lower caste of Ork, (as described in the scenario), when compared to the better equipped and presented warrior skwads. Im pleased with them, and I hope you like ‘em too :-)

In other news, my buddy Ross and I have kicked off a little side project, based on the AoS skirmish rules presented in this month’s White Dwarf. We’ve both drifted away from AoS a bit recently, but this skirmish system has rekindled a bit of interest. In addition, Ross has precious little time for painting & modelling these days, while I’ll be fitting this in around the rather demanding Wolf Time project… Long story short, the small scale of the project suits us both well.

The ‘rules’ of the project are as follows:

  • Build & paint 100ish ‘renown’ points in Feb (to include our Generals), and 25ish renown per month thereafter, up to 250 pts. This should equate to a manageable 3ish minis per month.
  • The warband must be from a faction we don’t currently collect. Ross and I chose the faction for each other, with me getting Daughters of Khaine, and Ross getting Sylvaneth
  • Set in a common realm, (realm tbd), based & modelled accordingly
  • Push the modelling & painting – AoS28 style, crazy conversions, grim-dark, etc.
  • Lowest cost possible – beg/borrow/steal, freebees, scratch build, re-use, etc.
  • Narrative rather than competitive warbands – named characters, backstories, etc.

Should be a fun little distraction for Ross and I, and of course, we’ll be pitching our warbands against each other as we go. Furthermore, you can expect a growing background & narrative from me as the project progresses – I already have some cool ideas in that direction which I hope will make for a good read!

That’s all pretty exciting, (for me at least), but I would like to share that excitement with YOU! I therefore encourage you to take part & share your progress on your blog if you’ve got a hankering to do something a bit different this year. Simply choose a faction & follow the guidelines above – simples! Looking forward to seeing who signs up & what you come up with :-)

Anyhow, that’s all from me for now – catch you all soon!

Teknishun Skwad 2

18 Sunday Nov 2018

Posted by in OldHammer, Wolf Time

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Greetings Terrans, how are we all? Following on from the 1st Teknishun Swad last week, we logically follow on with Skwad 2 :-)  As I mentioned last time, the 2nd Tech squad show up in scenario 2, and these guys are packing some serious heat… Plasma guns, Conversion Fields, Bolt Pistols and Swords to be exact! Dat’s some seriously snazzy guns, so I went with a suitably snazzy colour for these wannabe flash gitz:

 *edit – spotted that I had missed the teeth as soon as I had posted! I’ll get that sorted out :-)

 

Ok, so I know some of these minis are actually packing flamers, and I know that I’m supposed to be doing this project with as much accuracy as possible, but the foot is going down and I’m reinterpreting the minis & calling them plasma… Because Orks… So there.

Speaking of minis, how funny is it that the actual plasma boys appear to be resting their chins on the plasma coils? Clearly they were sculpted in the days before plasma ‘got hot’ and tried to fuck you over far more frequently than the one-in-six frequency that the laws of statistics demand… In fact, keeping in mind that Space Orks have the same ballistic skill as Space Marines in Rogue Trader, this squad is going to be a real handful…

Here’s another angle showing off their swords & pistols:

 

While I was painting these guys, I realised that I got the base rims wrong for my first Teknishun skwad, so I quickly fished them out of the display case and corrected that oversight… Seemed a shame not to take advantage of the situation and do a quick group shot of the whole Techy crew together:

 

This little lot represents a bit of a milestone in the whole project so far, in that I’m around half way through the Orks. I’m also done with all the boys that I had built and undercoated, so it’s going to be a bit of a building phase for the next few weeks I’m afraid… I have the power armoured Guards to work through, and I also have a whole bunch of ‘Skumbos’ to get sorted out… Now, I like converting minis, so this bit is going to be great fun for me, but it might be pretty boring for you guys! I hope you can all bear with me though, because I think this is going to be the really interesting bit of the project.

The Skumbos should be particularly good fun. In the fluff, the poor old Skumbos are described as being ‘lower caste’ Orcs, and they are lightly armed with Bolt Pistols & Swords… Unsurprisingly, there aren’t too many pistol/sword minis of that era, so I knew I needed to think outside of the box for this little lot! I decided to play on the whole ‘lower caste’ thing, and picked up a few fantasy Orc Archers of the correct vintage. After a bit of chopping & some putty work, I ended up with these:

 

Whaddaya think? They aren’t finished yet, but hopefully you get the idea… I’m planning four of these per unit, plus a legit pistol/sword Space Ork to represent the unit leader, (who, bizarrely, gets Mesh armour). I need six such units, so maths tells me that I now need to finish these four, add another twenty, and round up six proper Space Orks to lead them… should keep me busy for a while! :-)

Until next time dudes, be awesome out there!

Armoured Thrugg Bullneck

28 Sunday Oct 2018

Posted by in Scuplting, Wolf Time

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Greetings Terrans, sorry it has been a while, but I was away with business the week before last – jet lag has combined with a busy week to reduce my output a bit, but I do have one last bit of Wolf Time progress to share before Orktober is done. Do you remember these guys?

For those that don’t know, these are all the named leaders of the RTB02 boxed set of ‘Space Orcs’ (sic) from back in the day. Thrugg Bullneck is da boss in the middle, and he’s very special to me, because this boxed set was my first Citadel miniatures purchase. I used to pitch my 18 or so Space Orcs against my mate’s 30-plus RTB01 Beakies, and I regularly got my ass handed to me… The Orcs were tougher, and could shoot just as good as Marines back then, but they really suffered for lack of armour and I was too skint to do much about it… I think I’ve carried a resentment ever since, so when I realised that I needed to do some power armoured orks with chainswords for the Wolf Time campaign, I pulled out a duplicate Thrugg and did this:

This was a few weeks back, but I’ve been too busy painting skwads since then to do much else with him. I didn’t have enough time to get deeply into anything this week, but when life gives you lemons, you make lemonade, and so I used the few hours I did have to finish Armoured Thrugg. Here’s the result:

I must say, I am really chuffed with him – he’s the most ambitious bit of sculpting I have ever taken on, and, while a bit rough around the edges, he’s certainly fit for purpose. He has a Bolter, a converted hand flamer, sculpted power armour & chainsword, so he’s correctly equipped to lead one of Governor Kulo’s guard squads. More than that, he’s a gift to 16 year old me – a proper well-‘ard Thrugg, ready to boot some beakies right inna fork!

I’m away hiking with my youngest this week so I’ll be away from paints, but my success with this guy has got me motivated to try more sculpting. I’ve chopped up a few spare Orks and packed some putty & tools for a spot of evening putty-pushing while I’m away… if they come out half as good as Thrugg then I’ll be a happy chap :-)

Organised Chaos

17 Friday Aug 2018

Posted by in OldHammer, Side projects

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Greetings Terrans, I hope this finds you all well. It has been a hectic time in Leadballoony-land – the idea of running the Wolf Time campaign next year has got me motivated to paint some Greenskinz that I have been hoarding for far too long… I’ve been examining the campaign (in the Book of the Astronomican) to get an idea of the forces needed – and the answer is ‘bloody loads!!’ Quite a few can be re-used between games, but the effort of matching models to stat lines is quite the challenge… I’m determined (for now) to stick to late 80’s lead where possible, and to apply the WYSIWYG principle. I have the first raft of Orks based, primed and ready to take on holiday for a spot of al fresco painting, and I’m super excited about it because the bulk of this lot is made up of RTB02 Space Ork Raiders…  Thing is, the RTB02 boxed set was my first ever Warhammer purchase, and Thrugg Bullneck was my first ever ‘proper’ paint job, so I’m really going way back to my roots with this project, and boy, does it feel good! Here they are, ready to enter the carry-case dropship to painting Valhalla:

I’m going for a general militaristic desert theme for these guys – Wolf Time happens before the idea of Ork clanz Is firmly established, when Orks were really more like savage humans than anything else! As such, I primed them black, and then gave them a light zenithal coat of Zandri Dust – the perfect (and quick!) start to any desert scheme. The theme itself seems like a good fit for the minis – it isn’t particularly novel, but it works for the pre ‘red-era’  period of the Book of the Astronomican, and they’ll fit nicely with my Praetorians too… (Last Stand at Glazers Creek anyone? :-D )

It hasn’t all been preparation though – I also managed to paint a thing this week! He’s a chaos warrior from the Pantheon of Chaos range, and I absolutely love this mini. I keep having the urge to do a chaos warband one day, and he has been primed and ready for painting for quite some time, but I never seem to actually get around to doing anything with him! This week, I had some time to paint but didn’t want to start anything big – long story short, I picked him up and gave him a tickle with my hairy stick:

I have the vague recollection that this guy is supposed to represent Malal – a mysterious anti-Chaos chaos god from the pre-Slaves to Darkness era. I don’t know much of the lore personally, but Orlygg has put together a brilliant piece of research on the subject – you can find it here. From this research we can learn that Malal is all malicious and insecty, that he despises the other chaos gods, but that he isn’t a friend of the ‘good guys’ either, and that black & white skulls is his vibe… As such, I kept the palette restricted, but I did try out a thin wash of violet over silver to give a rather pleasing metallic purple on the armour. I have never tried this technique before, so I’m dedicating this to Azazel’s ‘Technical August’ challenge :-)

Anyhow, that’s all for now – I’ll be off the grid for a couple of weeks, but hopefully I’ll be back with a decidedly big green bang in September! Peace out dudes, and be excellent to each other  :-)