The Warforge Miniature Modelling and Conversion

Naughty or nice?

As part of The-Waaagh's Summer Secret Santa, I had to make a gift for a fellow by the name of Stuart. I did a bit of research on Stuart, and it turns out that he plays deathskullz as his ork army, which means that he requires a number of lootas to satisfy his army requirements. With that little tidbit in mind, I set about leaning how lootas work, and what the most effective weapons might be.

As it turns out, autocannon lootas are one of the more powerful choices, according to my fellow orks. I've never had the chance to play with lootas and test 'em out, but I figured it'd be fun to make heavy weapons squads out of them.

Unfortunately, I set about building these models at a time when I was lacking most of my tools. We had literally a dozen family members visiting all at once who basically evicted me from my normal living space, and with it, access to most of my tools. As such, I did the best I could in the course of assembling these, but they're not perfect; particularly when it comes to mold lines on items, as I didn't have the tools at my disposal to remove them as well as I would have liked.

I set about building the Nob first. My initial ideas for the leader of such a squad were pretty basic - wearing a helmet, and maybe a beefy close combat weapon. I thought to myself that a Nob might see a chainsword dropped by a slain 'umie as a prime choice in looting, so I set about making one from scratch. It was only after I finished making it that I realized I had way, way overshot the size I was going for.

 

A buddy of mine also told me that Loota Nobs are best equipped with a big shoota, anyhow, so I reconsidered a bit and instead slung it across his back as a sort of 'looted eviscerator'.

 

I have no idea what the helmet is from - I have a couple of them as bits that I got in a trade that just happen to be roughly the right size.

The next thing for me to do was to get going on the autocannon teams. I figured I'd set them up true to imperial style, with both models on the heavy weapons base, and the second of each removable via the use of magnets. The first one went pretty quickly once I figured out how to pose an ork firing the autocannon.

 

Each pair of heavy weapons teams I tried to get to match in terms of certain details - for example, these both are wearing helmets and have pairs of marine shoulderpads on. I was pretty happy with how the first pair turned out, so I started working on the second pair...

 

The downside to the design of the autocannon, as I saw it, was that each autocannon 'firing' ork had to be to the same side of the weapon, as the autocannon's ammo drum stuck out too much to allow them to hold it the other way around. It was also hard figuring out what to do with that gunner's left hand, as the only options I could think of involved the same general pose as the first gunner. Instead, I decided he would have a special handle that allowed him to balance it and aim it a bit easier. I chopped down the haft of a choppa arm, cut at the wrist and turned it, and replaced where the choppa was with a length of wooden spear. You'll notice these two match in their single shoulderpads. Then came the third...

 

The upraised hand was the last thing I could think of to go with the posture, which seemed a bit more relaxed than the other two, who were intent upon raining bullets at their targets.

My final efforts:

All in all, I'm happy with how they turned out. I hope Stuart gets some good use out of them - he has taken and posted his own pictures of the group here.

I hope to add shots of the painted models up when he does put a brush to them.;)