Big, shooty and stompy.

Orks love those three words. And nothing embodies them quite like a Deff Dread lumbering its way towards the enemy with unpleasant intentions. 

A great big rusty robot, ready to grab its foe, and start furiously chopping and sawing until nothing is recognisable.

Not so different from me doing a model kit conversion, then.

This particular beast started life as the very excellent Medium Panzer Walker (also known as a Kampf Läufer, or Luther/Ludwig/Lothar) from Paolo Parente's beautifully realised Dust miniatures game. The box it came in had three different weapon configurations, none of which I had any intention of using. Those were put aside, and instead I grabbed a few arms and other bits from Games Workshop's bona fide Deff Dread kit.

This isn't the first time the Kampf Läufer has appeared on this blog. You can also see it here. Sort of.

Some hacking, sawing, gluing, bleeding and about 5 years later, et voila.

There are a few other Ork Walkers planned and underway, so this won't be the last you hear of this unit. Pop back in, let's say, another 5 years and we can see how far I've got with them.

The 'Bork. Persistence is fertile.

"Right lads, fanks fer ya patience. Patients. Geddit? Hurrhur.

You done good, not dying or nuthin. Just lying there looking up at da bloodsprays on da ceiling.

Or at least the 6 of you still here done good. Oh, wait, no, not Snazzbag, da wimp's stopped breathin'. So 5 then. 5 of you done good. Them other lads just bleedin' all over the place, wiv der organs flappin' about, gettin' me gear all wet, an' then croakin' it – dey was just useless. More like grots than 'ardboy nobs. You make a couple of tiny cuts, and pull out a couple of soft pulpy innards... Some Orks just ain't as tough as dey should be.

But da good news is dat I've got da parts. Dat's right, da parts we need to finish your... er, recov'ry. 

And yeah, Radblast, yeah, I knows you only came in for a toothache, but you gotta admit it's gone now, ain't it?

What's that? So are your legs? Well they was part of the problem, see. It's complicated medical stuff, don't worry your pretty little head about it. Well, what was once your pretty little head. Not so much now, is it? Hurrhur.

Anyways, da parts is finally here. Highly spechulised stuff this. Very hard to track down. Took my grots weeks scouring battlefields to find dem armour plates with the right colour yellow and black stripes. You can't just go picking up any old metal. It's gotta be any old metal with the right coloured paint, see?

It's a proper valuable commodity. I can't make oddities like you without commodities like that, can I? Hurrhur.

Eh, what's dat? Why couldn't I just paint da stripes on da metal afterwards?

Well, I... er, didn't fink of dat."

Like the Dok in the intro, I'm not afraid to sit on a project for a ludicrously long period of time. These Cyborks are another unit that has taken years to complete. I started building them about the time this box of plastic Nobz was released. Back when the Ork Codex still had a listing for a squad of Cyborks as an upgrade to the regular Nobz*.

I got all excited, grabbed a pack of robot legs from Kromlech, decided I didn't quite like the tracked variant enough, searched my bits box for anything else that looked vaguely like it might pass as a robotic limb for sentient, humanoid fungi, and then didn't get much further.

Death Face 2000

Fragga Ironside

Meat-Hoppa Tuffguts

Stomper Slice-N-Dice

Radblast

But eventually, after an age, I built the models you can see below. 

And then, after another age, decided I didn't like them enough to paint them. 

And then, another age later, just a few weeks ago, I upgraded and rebuilt the ones I wasn't so keen on, before finally getting some paint on the whole bunch, and being able to call them done.

And so that's another unit of infantry completed for my Ork Armoured Brigade, meaning I can now rush out and buy way too many new models that will probably sit around in a dark corner of my house for yet another age.

*Instead of what later seemed to become a singular warrior with a Super Cybork Body. I haven't yet seen the latest version of the Codex. Are there any Cyborks in there at all? Not a problem if not, as these guys will just become regular Nobz, sporting a few snazzy 'upgrades'.

Deff metal clanker

"Ere, where's dat runty Ork, Kikbag? It's time for his krumpin'. Stop him gettin' all uppity."

"Boss, what's dat noise?"

"He's not just snide and mean, dere's bad stuff too. He's like a humie, that one. Always whingeing and whining. Reckons he deserves more 'n his lot, don't he?"

Stomp... stomp...

"Er, boss."

"Shaddup. Fortunately I'm here wiv his daily dose of clobber, to keep him on da straight and narrow. I'm all heart, me. So where is da weedy little disgrace for a git?"

Stomp... stomp...

"Always 'anging around with dat crazy old doc and dat one-eyed mechboy. I oughtta put a stop to dem three."

"Boss!"

click... whirrr... WHIRRR... SLICE... SPLASH

Everybody loves a ramshackle, post-apocalyptic, bipedal war mech, right? Everybody except that Ork Warboss. And maybe people who play Eldar. In fact perhaps not everyone loves this kind of thing at all. Maybe it's only me? But it's lucky for Kikbag that I do, as this little buzzsaw wielding can of whup-ass was a proper labour of love, taking me years to complete.

It was originally inspired by (and the chassis based on) the Werewolf Walker model in the ill-fated Airfix Robogear starter set from decades ago. Although the Werewolf was pretty far from being a masterpiece, the introductory boxset was an absolute gift to sci-fi modellers. I talked a bit about it back here, but basically the Robogear starter set was full of not-particularly-good models that were constructed from some really cool parts (like jet engines, robot legs, cockpits, tank tracks etc.) so it was fantastic fodder for people who liked chopping fings up and putting 'em back together diff-rent.

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.

In the end I kept only a few aspects of the original model, changing most of its shape and details, then adding a load of spare parts from the official Deff Dread and Killa Kan models, and popping a visible Ork pilot inside.

The Ork pilot idea actually came from a really old Warhammer 40,000 comic book series. In Dan Abnett's Titan God-Machine there is a brief moment when an Imperial base gets attacked by a greenskin horde and we get a page (below right), drawn by Anthony Williams and inked by Andy Lanning, that shows us some unusual designs for Ork walkers. It inspired me to try to ensure that none of my Ork vehicles ever looked too similar to one another.

This one is the second completed member of what will be a larger Dread Mob (you can see the first one, the Mega Dread, here), so I decided I could go all out with the spinning, whirring, choppy close-combat theme and give it the full complement of four rotary saw blade arms.

I'm happy with how the model turned out, and excited to see how it looks alongside the rest of the unit I've got planned. But I'm less happy with my current camera. I bought the wrong phone that didn't have the macro function, and my pics have been blurry and vague ever since. If I'm able to get a better upgrade, I'll post some new pictures in the future. In the meantime, for the sake of completeness, here are couple of the now-mandatory 'nude' shots.

Hammer time! (*hammer not included)

ABC War Robots. Atomic. Bacterial. Chemical. Mass-produced, automated troops, designed to withstand the most hostile warfare environments. I may have said this before, but it's definitely worth saying again: everyone needs one of these in their life. So here's mine, Hammerstein, leader of the ABC Warriors, and now my stand-in model for any dangerous, humanoid robot in any science fiction miniatures game you care to mention.

I decided I wanted a model of this implacable metal soldier after completing my squad of Adeptus Arbites Enforcers inspired by the Judges from the 2012 Karl Urban Dredd movie. 

As a continuing homage, I thought it would be cool to revisit the earlier 1995 Stallone movie, Judge Dredd, and try to build one of the Judges' main foes.

This guy

Seen here deploying signature 'red steel' 'looks to kill.'

However I soon stopped short when I realised I had no idea whatsoever how to go about doing this. No idea whatsoever until I saw something rather excellent on Twitter. Enter Martin Carcosa and his ancient cybernetica combat unit, based on the same high-cheekboned, killer robot.

So thanks are due to Martin Carcosa, not just for this wonderful inspiration, and for working out which parts from other kits looked awesome, but also for being kind enough to let me copy it, and even actively encouraging me to do so.

However there was one downside. I liked what Martin had done so much, it became kind of pointless to simply try to make an exact copy. He had already created what I considered the definitive WH40K version of the Judge Dredd movie robot, so what was the point in me doing the same?

Instead I figured I'd do what I did with my Judges' bikes and go back to the original comics and take some additional inspiration from there. So a quick flick through several hundred pages of collected stories and I'd found the following images:

A panel from the original ABC Warriors strip in the late 1970s, with art by Mike McMahon

The above image showed I could have Hammerstein's iconic ROVER badge on the back of his waist, instead of the front where it's usually found. In my design for the model I wanted V-shaped pistons below his stomach region, rather than a wide, flat space for text.

Hammerstein in classic 80s story The Black Hole, with art by Simon Bisley

In the Bisley picture above we are seeing the character's rank markings on his arm, with a single arch-like sweeping shoulder pad to frame them. This felt like a good look for my version.

Hammerstein in Khronicles of Khaos, with art by Kev Walker

As the comics went on, Hammerstein took more and more knocks, with his armour starting to look heavily pockmarked and battle-scarred. I suspect images like the one above (circa 1992) had quite an influence on the movie version, which hit the cinemas just a few years later.

A page from The Volgon War, with art by Clint Langley

Skip forward another decade or so, and the square-jawed war droid appears to have rebuilt and repaired himself and given his bodywork a new coat of paint. I figured using that blue-grey colour for my model would be a very obvious way to differentiate it from Martin's and would give an instant clue that mine wasn't wholly based on the robot from the film. Although I am still partial to a bit of rust and weathering, so my version isn't exactly what you'd call factory fresh.

So in the end it made sense to base my model around the same head and arms that Martin used, emphasizing Hammerstein's flat-top, crew-cut, and giving up the hammer in favour of those over-sized hands, whilst at the same time keeping all the exposed cabling and pistons from the movie version. But then mix in some of the comic book cues seen above. 

For anyone interested in the construction side of kit-bashing and scratch-building, you can see the, er, 'nude' version of my model below.

And finally, if, like me, you find this monstrous metal infantryman strangely fascinating, and want to know more about the character's appearances in various media, you might be interested in this earlier post detailing some of his history.

Mechanicus approved, hard-shell, hazard-zone, close-protection servitors

Occasionally you see a model, and you just have to have it. No matter that it doesn't belong to any of your armies. No matter that there are no rules for it in your games systems. No matter that it has practically zero crossover with anything in your collection. 

And sometimes you see a model, like these Grymn Walkers, from Hasslefree Miniatures, and you just have to have two of them.

In situations like this I like to come up with a few ideas as to why these models should be on the same shelf as my other miniatures. In this case I felt they would be perfect for my city project. They would be close-protection gun-servitors, sealed for operations in hazardous environments. And they would probably belong to an individual, or perhaps a faction, rich enough to afford them, but not wanting too many people in their employ. Like a Rogue Trader who wants to keep his crew light, or a gang boss who doesn't want his grunts getting too close.

I liked the models so much that not only did I buy two of them, but I left them largely unconverted. I hardly touched them at all – building them almost entirely as they came. I think my only deviation from the kit was to add some spacers between the guns and their shields. And that was only to offer a little more strength and stability. In fact, if truth be told, I think I did more assembly and conversion work on their bases than I did on the models themselves. For example, on one of the bases, to add a bit more variation, I cut out a small section to create a recess in the ground. I think it could be a trick worth pursuing on other models in the future.

Once everything was constructed I decided it would be cool to try an urban camouflage scheme. I laid the original colours down quite some time ago, so I can't remember exactly how I did this, but the following steps seem to make sense. 

1) Spray the whole of each model with Mechanicus Standard Grey, followed immediately by a heavy zenithal highlight of Corax White. The speed allows the two colours to mix a bit, and the heavy zenithal highlight means the darker colour only remains on the hard to reach undersides that would naturally be in shadow. 

2) Make a cup of tea while both models dry thoroughly. Because we are about to stick things to this surface, it is vitally important that the paint is as tough as it can be. I think I left mine overnight, just to be sure.

3) Cut out tiny geometric shapes of masking tape and cover roughly one third of each model with them. A random third that is. A bit here, a bit there. I only did this to the armour panels where I wanted the camouflage pattern. I didn't stick any tape to the weapons or other areas that weren't getting the camouflage scheme.

4) Spray again. This time with a mid-tone colour. I probably used a directional spay of Chaos Black from beneath, followed quickly by Mechanicus Standard Grey from above.

5) Don't remove any of the masking tape yet. Instead leave everything to get really dry again. Maybe go to sleep for a bit. Or paint a different model.

6) Again, leave the tape on. And then start cutting out more pieces. Use these new bits to cover another third of each model. The new tape can overlap the previous bits of tape, but try to ensure that roughly an additional third of the armour is getting covered.

7) The final spray was a mix of Chaos Black (for the undersides) with Death Guard Green everywhere else, and a final, very light dusting of Chaos Black (everywhere).

8) Again, show some serious restraint by not removing any tape too soon. I don't know what would happen if you did, as I just walked away, but my worry is that it could create a bit of a mess that ruins all that hard-fought progress.

9) Once completely dry spend ages finding and removing every last scrap of tape.

10) Sometime later, once you're halfway through painting the finer details, discover several bits of tape that you missed in stage 9 and remove them too.

Those steps were the bulk of the work, but they only really got me as far as the base colours. To finish these off I painted the weapons, grills, lenses, markings and metallic areas, added a tiny decal to each model, edge highlighted some of the armour, washed some of the recesses and gave each model a smattering of weathering to tie everything together.

ADDICTION CHALLENGE
REMAINING: 45

The Giant Robo Alphabot, part twelve

Following on from my previous entry, last month, I'd like to share another poster. This time not about great movie pairings, but instead the culmination of the robot alphabet project that I've been banging on about since 2015.

We've finally reached the end now, so this will be my very last post on the subject. I promise. 

So much time has passed since I first explained it, way back here, that quite a few of the robots used in the project are now more commonly known from updated source material. What do I mean by this? Well, for example, since I compiled some of the original images, (before I even started writing this blog), we've had an updated Ultron in one of the Avengers movies, a new ED209 in the Robocop remake, and a new Warlord Titan from Forge World. In fact, with this last one, and the release of the Adeptus Titanicus game, we've technically had two updates, in different scales.

It's been a fun journey for me, not just compiling the robots and trying to come up with background styles that feel relevant to the subject, sufficiently different from one another, yet also somehow related, but also delving deep into the history of each of the subjects in order to write the blurb. And the best thing about it is I now have a Robot Alphabot poster ready to hang in the corner of my house where I pursue all things geek.

If you're interested you can see all the individual posters on Pinterest here, or read all the previous entries from this project here.

A great big can of greenskin: the Forge World Ork mega dread

It's nearly the end of Orktober and I haven't yet posted a damn thing. That's partially down to the usual reason: I've been busy doing non-hobby stuff; but also because when I have had a free moment, instead of continuing with my Undead War Mammoths, I've used that time to bring some of my background projects a little further forward. It's arguable whether this is efficient time management, but I guess when inspiration strikes on a stalled project, you should make good use of it. Seize the moment. Never look that gift horse in the mouth*. Grab the ball by the horns and run with the bull. Or sumfin' like dat.

So, although a couple of old projects have progressed a notch or two, the upshot is that I have nothing new I'm willing to share right now. Thus I'm going to have to post another old model instead. 

But what a model! One of Forge World's finest. And only fitting that we take the Ork theme, and smash it face first into the walking heavy armour of that other famous hobby appropriation, Dreadtober.

I won't go on about it, except to say that the bike in among the junk on the base is an old model from Ramshackle Games; the target-headed skull logo painted on the shoulder guard is the unit badge of my Ork Dread Mob; and, if I remember correctly, the model itself was really tricky to build, but a joy to paint.


*Unless you are from Troy, of course.

The Giant Robo Alphabot, part eleven

So here we are. We've come a long way together. It's been quite a journey. We've looked at animated and live-action science-fiction films. We've taken examples from board games and video games. And we've explored comics and model kits. Some of this stimuli has been quite new, and some has been considerably older. We've discussed the software needed to create each poster and the time it takes to do it. We've even delved a little into my psyche, looking for motivation and reasoning. It's been emotional.

But all good things have to come to an end. And so do all rubbish things.

And somewhere in the middle sits my robot alphabet. So with that, I give you the last two entires, both from a game system quite close to home.

A weaving of the threads

It's unlikely there's anyone out there who pays particularly close attention to this little ol' blog (anyone other than me that is). But if there was, they might be aware that in among all the jumping around between subject matter, a number of themes have started to arise.

One of the things I've talked about a lot is my fondness for huge great, scary-ass robots. This has been evident in my Miniature Giants series (the first few models of which can be found here, here and here) and also in my almost-complete Giant Robo Alphabot illustration project.*

Another notable theme could be my experimentation with oil paints to apply weathering to models. I now add a little rust or verdigris, in varying degrees, to almost every model I paint. The culmination of this would probably be these wrecked and abandoned cars, where I tried to make them look utterly devastated by painting them almost entirely with oils.

And finally, more recently, I've started adding to my Plague Marines. I bought a handful of troops many years ago, but only started working on them in earnest when the release of Dark Imperium rekindled my interest and turned my small, unpainted war-band into the beginnings of a serious force. My first completed Death Guard model, some kind of lieutenant, can be found here.

Hopefully, the pictures here make it fairly obvious why I'm I going on about all these previous projects. It's because these two new dreadnoughts neatly encapsulate a coming together of those previous three themes: Rusty Death Guard robots.

The idea for spider-noughts first struck me after I bought the Robogear boxset just over a decade ago. Robogear was Airfix's abortive attempt to tap into the wargaming market, and although most of the models in the starter set were not that great, some of the individual components were incredible. Especially at a time before Games Workshop's plastic range was as huge and all-encompassing as it is now.

In this case the mechanical, insectoid legs I used significantly pre-dated Games Workshop's Defiler and Onager kits, yet still managed to make me think they'd be great motive systems for Chaos dreadnoughts.

The rest of the bits were a mixture of Games Workshop parts (bought as individual components from Bitzbox), Forge World dreadnought arms (bought directly from them) and whatever doodads I had lying around from other kits – namely a spare weapon arm, the banners, skulls, censers, and a very live and well Space Marine, who, when combined with an old skeleton body became the much deader impaled marine you can see on the fire support variant (the one with the missile launcher and autocannon).

And then to top it all off, there were a few scratch-built pieces made from cocktail sticks and plastic tubing, and the two lovely, but somewhat hidden, helmets from Chapterhouse Studios.

So with these two newly finished miniatures I'm finally able to adjust my Addiction Challenge score. Hopefully I'll be knocking some more points off with the next post too. More to come...

ADDICTION CHALLENGE
REMAINING: 90

*My obsession with these clanking monstrosities can probably be traced back to a childhood spent reading the comic 2000AD, back in the early 80s. Anyone who read that comic will remember the ABC Warriors, a group of artificial soldiers of fortune, designed to withstand Atomic, Biological and Chemical attack. They were led by Hammerstein, a humanoid, war robot veteran of the Volgan War, armed with a giant hammer, whose major appearances I've documented here.

The Giant Robo Alphabot, part ten

Who said I never finish anything? Well, for a start, probably anybody who has ever glanced at this blog. And that's because when it comes to my hobbies I have a tendency to get distracted. The equivalent of chatting happily with someone, then suddenly walking off mid-

But that's about to change now, because we are rapidly reaching the end of my Giant Robo Alphabot. We're speeding towards the end of this project like a Sentinel hunting the X-Men or a Terminator closing in on Sarah Connor, or Ultron pursuing The Avengers.

The Giant Robo Alphabot, part nine

So we've had the beginning of the alphabet and we've had the end, but we're still missing a few letters from the middle. Today's post is simply about plugging some of those remaining holes in my Giant Robo Alphabot, as I prepare to put everything together to see the final, collected poster.

If you have no idea what I'm talking about, but are intrigued enough at the sound of giant robots not to click away elsewhere yet, then you can see the entire stream of posts on this subject here, or if you'd rather just read the first one (that will hopefully explain the basic premise) then go here.

Otherwise, there's not much more to add, other than the small selection of stray letters themselves. This time they're all from movies, with two being live action films, and the other two animations.