Monday 12 February 2024
'Ard Boy Ork Breachers, part two
Wednesday 24 January 2024
Agents of the Imperium, shoulder to shoulder, side by side
I'm doing something a little different today. I wanted to try out an idea, so for this single exercise I've briefly changed my approach to the hobby. But before I get into that, a bit of backstory.
In late 1998, Forge World was unleashed on the world as a specialist offshoot of Games Workshop aimed at older, more experienced hobbyists. Although it was meant to concentrate on large scale busts and terrain, by the early 2000s it had dramatically expanded its scope to include an incredible selection of 28mm resin models.
There were so many amazing sets available, from just about every variation of Imperial Guard tank you could imagine, to mobile Ork fortresses on caterpillar tracks, huge Chaos War Mammoths, Death Korps of Krieg troops mounted on gas-mask-wearing horses, servitors, Inquisitors, dragons, aircraft and a hundred other models that I really wish I'd bought.
Forge World's Krieg Death Riders and Ork Battle Fortress. The latter is sadly out of print these days. |
And the Chaos War Mammoth and Marauder Bomber. The elephant might be one of the rarest kits in existence. |
In that last category 'models I wish I'd bought' were the Titan Crew On Foot, consisting of a Princeps and two Moderati, sculpted by Simon Egan. When they were first released they cost something like £12. My younger, naive self didn't know what was to come with the prices of models, and I think I found them too expensive. Yet they stayed in the range for about another decade, slowly creeping up in price to around £17, before eventually being consigned to the big-glass-display-cabinet-in-the-sky in the mid-to-late 2010s.
As soon as they disappeared from the Forge World website, I realised how much I wanted them in my collection. More so than any of the other fantastic models that were still available. A feeling I'm sure many other hobbyists out there are frustratingly familiar with. So I then spent several years scouring eBay trying to find them, in the hope of not having to pay the £70 to £100 they were routinely going for.
Finally, about a year ago, I found them for not much more than their original store price. Result! The downside was that as well as having been painted in colours not to my taste, they had also been converted slightly. But these were minor gripes, and it was still an opportunity too good to miss. So I bought them, dipped them in Dettol until the paint came off, then stripped away all the extra parts that had been added. To my relief the base models were almost 100% intact.
Last week I thought it would be an interesting project to get some paint back on them. I realised that the original Forge World paint job was pretty much exactly what I was after, so that got me thinking about the aforementioned experiment. I decided to break out my smallest brush and do my absolute very best to emulate the display colour scheme of the finished Forge World models as closely as I could. Obviously having the small brush wasn't enough in its own right, and unfortunately my lack of any real painting talent soon came into play.
Nonetheless I've posted the results here for all to see. Below are the original models, expertly painted by Stuart Witter for the catalogue, and then after that, my somewhat less expert attempt to copy the colour scheme and photograph them from the same angle.
Thursday 11 January 2024
'Ard Boy Ork Breachers, part one
Later this year we are due to see the release of the video game, Space Marine 2. It will be the long awaited sequel to the original third-person-shooter-slash-hack-n-slay, that was released in 2011.
Where the new game looks set to feature Tyranids as the main foe, the original game had Orks. Lots and lots of Orks. And it's one of the Orks from that game that has inspired my next set of models.
In WH40K the Ork 'Ard Boy unit takes 'Eavy Armour (and a correspondingly adjusted Save profile) to distinguish it from the regular lads, but in the Space Marine console game the 'Ard Boyz were given breacher shields as well. A simple adjustment that to my mind was a major visual upgrade. Especially as in the tabletop game, even a die-hard stickler-for-the-rules can see it's not much of a stretch to say the shield just counts as that aforementioned extra armour.
Here are some images (from a Space Marine Fandom Wiki article) that show just how tough theses rock-solid brutes looked in action in the original game.
Younger me was immediately taken by the vicious, hard-to-kill monstrosities, and I vowed to recreate a game legal version for the tabletop, armed with Slugga (pistol), Choppa (hand weapon), and, of course, the shield.
Tuesday 19 December 2023
A break from the green
Thursday 5 October 2023
Deff metal clanker
The starter set contained a bunch of models, most of which were also available separately. |
Some of the separate Robogear kits were actually quite good. This was not one of them. |
Thursday 17 August 2023
Cooking with gas
It's been a while since my previous post, but, for once, that's not for lack of effort. I've been furiously working away in the background, trying to get through some of the (many) remaining units for my Ork Armoured Brigade.
I finished these little walking Zippos this week, a unit of ten Burna Boys. They're made up of a cross section of models from some of the various releases since the revamp of the Ork range for 3rd edition WH40K, circa 20 years ago.
There was a tiny amount of conversion work to get them to feel like a cohesive unit, and not a bunch of disparate re-designs – but that was mainly focussed on trimming down some of the excess bulk from the troops in the Loota/Burna Boys boxset. Other than that it was only really a few head swaps to narrow down their design to a mix of face masks, goggles and bandanas.
Saturday 29 October 2022
Muddy Trukkers
So, you're an Ork warboss, and you've got to get a squad of boys from one side of the battlefield to the other, as fast as you possibly can. Unfortunately, as much as they all like running, charging, shouting, getting into close combat, and generally behaving in an aggressive and belligerent manner, those little legs of theirs just aren't going to get them there quick enough.
Enter the first of my trukks*.