It’s perfect, ship it.
A friend Clayton said he put tracks on his, so I’m asking him to send me a photo so I can see what it looks like and make a decision. I think it involves removing the legs, so I actually haven’t done any work on the legs just in case I’m just going to cut them off. Probably going to need some plasticard, and I’m likely also going to saw a Rhino in half. đ đ đ
Going to post a couple quick ones while I build this thing.
I’ve loved the look of this model since the 2014 Codex came out, but I didn’t play enough 40k to justify buying it, let alone storing it. (Storage space is at a premium at my apartment). I came into a good deal, and I’ve played more 40k in the last few months than the previous few years combined, so HECK YES GIANT STOMPY ROBOT.
Like any good GW customer (*cough*), I know that the best way to get the best bang-for-buck is to magnetize the options I want, and that primary happens with the gun arm.
I read a good accounting, and watched a video and got to work!
This photo is of the Deffstorm Mega-shoota front, with a magnet glued to it. Both of the links above used a 25mm 40k base, but I grabbed a Deadzone base of the same size. Deadzone uses perfectly round bases, rather than beveled. I had to bring out the Dremel to sand it down enough to fit in the gun arm, but it’s pretty great!
I glued the back piece such that the gunner will sit at the back, because the gunner is awesome. The back of the Kustom Mega-Kannon isn’t as cool, just having a little power-gubbin.
I glued the KMK wires to the top of the DMS ammo feed and jammed them both into the arm and cut a hole in the ‘naut to run the extra wide bit. I think I need more on the arm-end to make it look cool, but I like that both guns are accommodated.
I need to account for the other differences too – I think one has a skorcha and another has a KMB. I’m going to keep the Gorkanaut head because I like it better though.
Oh, and it has to have a Space Marine theme somehow. >.< (that’s an oooooold link!
I’m super happy with how these guys have turned out. The problem with vehicles tends to be how to deal with flat panels of paint — they’re either uninteresting, or messy if you aren’t careful with the washes.
I was not careful with the washes. Because ORKS WAAAGH!!
Mithril Silver and Alaitoc Blue base was pretty easy. I kind of wazzed Reikland Fleshshade all over the metal, more on the bottom than the top. Drakenhof Nightshade (blue shade) all over the blue sections. Then SW Soft Body Black into the recesses in places.
I then painted up a bit with the Alaitoc, and it mixed with White and added some Mithril Silver in.
They didn’t look great at this point, but weathering saves the day! I took some foam and stippled Mithril Silver and Tin Bitz in places. Then I dragged out the old SW weathering powders, which IÂ still haven’t truly figured out how to use, and put some Dark Yellow into the dusty areas of the front and wheels and MIG pigment fixed it in. Â Then a little bit of Ushapti Bone dry brushed to help out, because I got bored. đ
These guys were pretty great to paint. Quick and simple. I’m using Vallejo Goblin Green, because GW doesn’t have a colour that is identical to it’s old GG, but Vallejo does. Weird. Steel Legion Drab for the brown, Mithril Silver metal.
I decided to use GW Reikland Fleshshade and SW Flesh Wash here. The nice thing about greenskin flesh is that it’s a lot easier to not fuck up. Human skin is pale, and pale colours are hard. We look at human skin all day every day, so it’s easy to tell when it’s wrong. No gretchin at my office to tell me I painted this wrong!!
I noted when I started this project that I don’t actually have any Ork painting projects on this blog. Way back when I started it, I’d finished most of my existing Orks already, or I hadn’t figured out the format I wanted to use for it so I wasn’t blogging about it.
The bases are super simple — black it out, because I primed white, then Codex Grey, Fortress Grey and scorched grass from GW basing.
The carriages will be up next, and then (hopefully) the guns!
I bought Triumph and Treachery from Mr. A. Andrew. It’s a supplement from Warhammer Fantasy Battles, but while reading it I realized there was very little in the rules that were specific to Fantasy. So I wrote some rules for translating it.
This link also includes the rules Duke and I have been using for 40k. They’re super restrictive, because we wanted to play a certain type of game. I feel like there’s some room for loosening the restrictions up a bit, but then I read my gaming club 40k chat and think that maybe there isn’t. đ
https://drive.google.com/open?id=0ByaAQGMZC_bHVjlkRWhKR0JGRFU
A couple things I need to focus on next time — making sure that “enemy players” are selected in each of the 4 phases. Fantasy has 4 distinct phases that you do things to other people in, but 40k in some cases only has 2 — shooting and assault — there is nothing* you do to your opponent in the movement phase, and not every army has a psychic phase**.
*You can tank shock. That’s nearly nothing.
** Everyone but Tau can have one, but psychers just aren’t as popular in 40k as wizards are necessary in Fantasy.
I also want to allow people to buy new Maelstrom Mission cards with Victory Tokens, because I think they would be pretty fun to sacrifice your win-currency to get more win-currency.
Many many years ago I split an army box thing with Mr. Tall Paul and ended up with a bunch of orks that I had no intention of using. Like these tankbustas!
Terrible story though. After I had started sculpting that bomb on top of the squig, I spoke with my fellow Ork nerds and discovered that the Gorkamorkanaught doesn’t have any Fire Points. Which is absolute garbage. It’s like the designers looked at it and thought “we should give it transport capacity, but make it so no ork player ever wants to use it”.
So these guys may get left in this state for a while, since I was going to put them into the ‘naught and have them shoot out. As it is, I’ll be more likely to go with the prevailing wisdom of stuffing it with 6 Burna Boys, with 3 upgraded Meks to repair Hull Points as it goes. And that bomb probably won’t get strapped down for a while.
Duke convinced me to play 40k again, and then had the audacity to make it an enjoyable game. Asshole. So for the first time in ages, I was motivated to build some things this weekend!
I’ve been inspired by this guys Mek Guns post, which is especially good since I had an entire trukk box in my bitz box. I didn’t have a Mek Gun box though, so I don’t really have any guns to use on them! I pulled out some ForgeWorld Supa Zzap Guns I bought many years ago. (partially related: The last FW I painted was from the same purchase, it was this [massive picture] flak trakk I brought to Astro 2013).
Also, some grots from the FW grots kit.
Just need to find a gun for that last carriage!
I don’t remember the last time I played 40k. (though here’s the last time I painted something 40k, and the last time I played in a 40k tournament!) Duke asked me the other week if I wanted a game, for old times sake and I said sure, if he organized it. Turns out he was more motivated than I thought, because we played the next weekend. đ
The rules were: 7th edition 40k, 1000 points, standard Combined Arms detachments, “no fuckiness” (no Lords of War, purchased terrain or flyers), and discard/redraw Maelstrom mission cards that were impossible (“impossible”, not “really hard”). I pulled out my Ork codex and started reading, as I think I’ve had a single game with this book, and maybe a single game in 7th ed. I couldn’t promise I would try to play 6th ed instead.
First — the new books are absolutely stunning. The ork codex made me desperately want to buy new models, the Gorka/Morkanauts are gorgeous, all the paint jobs are great and the page references back and forth are well done enough that it feels easy to find what you’re looking for.
I built a list to throw Duke off — no vehicles. I usually play all vehicles. đ I took a Weirdboy, because PSYCHIC POWERS, 2 units of 24 boyz with 2 rokkits and a nob with pkeach, a unit of 12ish shootas, 1 unit of 12 lootas and 2 units of 5 deffkoptas.
Duke also tried to throw me off by playing Guard instead of Tau! He had a Russ, a Chimera full of vets, 3 sentinels, some autocannons, some lascannons, some Guardsmen, some of them with heavier weapons than others.
We rolled a Maelstrom mission scenario that had us drawing up to 3 Maelstrom mission cards at the start of each round. I really wanted to draw at the end of each round, because one of the things I miss about other games is the need to be involved in the game when it isn’t your turn. 40k is almost “sit back and wait” on your turn, except for some armour saves. Having next rounds cards in my hand during my opponents turn would give me something to scheme about, and also give me a bit more information on how to make tactical decisions about where to Jink/Go to Ground (just about the only decisions you have to make on your opponents turn).
We set up, and I outflanked with the 2 units of deffkoptas, and him with his sentinels. I put down my 3 units of boyz and lootas, screening my lootas behind the boyz. I discarded 3 Maelstrom mission cards before my turn started — the last of which because Duke’s only Psycher’s head exploded on his first turn! Turns 1 and 2 were mostly jockeying for position. The lack of Warboss in my list meant I couldn’t Waaagh to ensure I could get into his men! I don’t like forced models, and it’s disappointing that I think to play the melee game with Orks you need the Warboss. Also disappointing the the Weirdboy doesn’t have “first class” gear support — he can’t buy anything. Whereas you can buy the Big Mek things and maybe, with the right list, make him your Warlord.
A photo to break it up. I think near the end of turn 3. I’d had some lucky draws with mission cards and had cards for objectives that I already held. I gave them up, because I needed to press forward to clear out some of his firepower. My Weirdboy jumped a unit, trying to get onto an objective, but scattered away and landed in a pie-plate shaped huddle, no where that was useful. Duke wandered his vets over, cleared them off the board and then had free reign of my left flank.
One unit of deffkoptas didn’t come on until turn 4, which was very bad for me, and when they did come on they were on the wrong side! This left the above vets available to claim objectives in my deployment zone, as well as claiming Linebreaker (1VP for being in enemy deployment at end of the game) and some other mission cards.
Duke was ahead 9 to 4 at one point, and I was getting a little down because the dice weren’t pulling it off for me. Turn 3 I scored no points at all. The mission we drew, you had to score every turn. Because you draw up to 3, having cards still in your hand at the end of the round meant you had fewer available options to score points. I discarded a card that looked hard to get (which I ended up regretting) just to keep some variability in my hand. Particularly near the end of the game, drawing more cards gives you more options to get the +D3 VP cards, which is huge in winning. I got 3VPs from a card for killing his leader, another 1 because of just killing his leader, and 1 more from shooting an entire unit down, putting it at 9-9 which brought my spirits back up.
The thing I don’t like about certain games, is when you don’t feel like you have a game to play. If I hadn’t scored 5 in that round, it would have been a severe Duke-win, which means my turns 4-5-6 would just be me wandering around and seeing if I could stop Duke from scoring more, rather than having the ability to win. Getting those cards in hand, studying the board to determine how to get them, and executing the best I could, and then being rewarded for it, felt absolutely amazing.
This game feels more like Malifaux than it does 40k — you aren’t necessarily trying to kill everything to get points. The problem with “kill everything” games, is that the goal is to remove your opponents power from the board. To remove their agency, and their ability to play. When you make things other than killing the objective, you ensure that both players can continue to have fun because you still have things you can do. This is why Malifaux is brilliant, and why the core 40k ruleset is brilliant.
At the end, half of my deffkoptas performed well, and the other half failed repeated Ld7 tests to get me points. I didn’t have enough models in turn 6 to win the game, but did have enough to leave the game feeling like I’d done my best. The score, as shown above, was 15 to 12 for Duke.
Afterwards we talked a bit about the meta-game. Duke’s plan was to have a game, to see if it was still fun. If it wasn’t, that would have been another nail in the coffin of 40k — we haven’t played for a while, and if it hadn’t been fun then what would be the reason to keep all these hundreds of models around?
I went home and re-opened my codex and started dreaming of how to fit a [G|M]orkanaut into my case.
4 years ago one of the first things I painted was a set of 3 Ork deffkoptas. I remember being so frustrated with them, I did not want to paint them, I wanted them to be over and done with and gone. I finally pushed myself to finish them… and then they were awful in my army. >.>
A couple years later, my friend Chris Jones put a lot of 8 of them up for sale for a good price. I bought them, forgetting the cardinal rule of GW stuff – “just because it’s a good deal, doesn’t mean you need to buy it”. They’ve sat in a cardboard box UNTIL NOW.
With the new edition of 40k, and a brand new Ork codex, I’m kind of a little excited to pull my boyz in blue out of the case and put them on the table again. The new Psychic Phase looks fun, the Tactical Objective deck looks like a ton of fun, and well, WAAAAGH!!
I usually go into Astro with a lot of excitement – last year I pre-empted my usual post-Astro terrain building excitement by building some terrain in advance. This year, with a bunch of other priorities sitting over me and not a lot of 40k in my life, I was a little less into it.
Which meant that instead of adding whole new units to the orks, I just painted the flakk gun and built and printed a 24 page book for my army. >.> Here are the photos from my book, as well as a link to a compressed PDF of it – the printed version is over 20mb of PDF!
As always, click on the photos for bigger versions.
One unit of 10 shoota boyz, their power klaw nob and their trukk.
One unit of 11 slugga and choppa boyz, a power klaw nob with their trukk.
A second unit of 11 slugga and choppa boyz, their power klaw nob and their trukk!
My weirdboy.
9 burnas and a looted wagon to carry them places.
My dakkajet.
3 deffkoptas
A previously painted “trukk”. This model was originally a looted wagon with a boomgun. But the boomgun was disappointing, so I took it off and made the vehicle a trukk for a while. This year, because the vehicle already had a top hatch it was easy to paint up and magnetize the flakk gun so it fit and became an Imperial Armor Flakk Trakk!
4 meganobz and their battlewagon, with a dethrolla.
WAAAAGH!
I’ve spent a lot of time over the years on this army, and it’s nice to be able to pull it out and be assured that it’ll get some notice at tournaments. There are certainly are updates I could do to the painting – the boyz are pretty basic, someone mentioned I should light the burnas cigars (which I’d never thought of before) – but the character models are some of my best work and the tanks and plane I’m really pleased with.
Here’s the final book PDF – Dug’s Boyz – Online. I gave a copy of this to all of my opponents and the tournament organizers, and kept one for myself – 8 printed in total. Here’s a couple photos of the book, to give you an idea of what it looked like printed.
The front cover of the book – I grabbed this from the internet, it’s a wallpaper that GW put out and it fit so nicely that I had to use it.
The first page of the book. Big full colour photo of my warboss on the left, and his name and unit write-up and his stats on the right.
I’m really happy with how it worked out – I’d never used Publisher before, but it worked perfectly for what I wanted it for. I think the only downside of the book was…make sure you ask what the unit price is before you get the work done. I thought I knew what it was, because I had started getting the printing done online at Staples, but because it’s a non-standard paper size I decided to go into FedEx/Kinkos to get it done. A trainee took my order, and I assumed I knew the price. Oops.
I’m also super glad that I had the terrain lying around my house, and the photography skills to make these photos look real nice. This book was pretty big, but it was relatively easy since I knew what I was doing at almost every step!
