The Warforge Miniature Modelling and Conversion

Insult to injury

Not quite a spectacular leap of progress, as the majority of what remains is small details, but I come bearing many pictures.

A friend of mine has very gracefully volunteered me a few ork Kommandoz, which is spectacular, and I cannot thank him enough. I think they fit the scene pretty well, as they are in triumphant and aggressive poses and work very well in an urban setting like this. Of course, the more models I add to the base, the longer painting will take! They currently just pin into tiny holes I drilled in the base, so I can take them out and paint them easily, just like the guardsmen.

 

Al… most… there…

I'm honestly inclined to say that the structure of the model itself is done. Left is the grots, and some orks trailing the gargant on the base, and that's about it.

Shoulders have been attached and anchored onto the main torso through the use of a favored construction method of mine - putty! It's a very-fast drying two part putty I found in my garage that I believe is used for plumbing purposes. It's horribly ugly, and smells awful while it's drying - not meant for sculpting at all! It does, however, have a remarkable knack at holding parts together and when it dries it is literally like cement.

I applied a bit on the underside of each pad and basically pressed it onto the torso till it stayed. : )

Component pictures!

Apart...

And assembled.

I'm not going to lie to you guys, it is ugly when it is in pieces, but once all the parts are on the structural points are all covered up and it comes together pretty nicely. I really wish I could sculpt. I can only imagine how much greenstuff I'm going to make trying to create a decent grot captain hat.

More rivets is never a bad thing

I may have wimped out a bit on the shoulders, but this is how they currently stand.

I skipped the spears idea on the shoulders for a couple reasons. First and foremost, I took a look at my other ork stuff and noticed a pattern of me continually repairing any thin, pointy bits that tend to protrude off the model. My battlewagon alone, for example, has had that grot-on-a-stick fall off and get reattached more times than I can count, and I really don't want to repeat that with this model.

Second, it was a bit distracting. Honestly. I drilled a few holes in the claw shoulder pad to prop the spears and trophy poles up in, and gave it a look, but they diverted attention away from the face and the head, which wasn't quite what I was going for. I patched them up as bullet damage.

Spikes would have interfered with the head's attaching and detaching. At the moment, I am actually considering making the shoulders and the grot bomb one entire removable piece to go on after the head. It'll depend on if I can get the angles to line up right, I think.

I riveted the shoulders and face.

 

Gotta work on it a bit more when I get home later. I don't know what else of the basic gargant construction needs doing aside finalizing how the shoulders attach - I know it needs a new grot in the grotpit and some orks running around on the base, but aside from that...

More armor! MORE!

Just working on the 2nd shoulder... I found the head is a bit asymmetrical in back, which makes the attachment of that shoulder pad a real pain because it interferes a bit with where the head wants to rest. I've been trying to make up for this by removing a decent impact blast chunk of armor in the corner where it pokes into the back of the head, and I think that took care of it.

I'm going to rivet around the edges, and probably plate the tops.. I think the gun-arm shoulder pad would look pretty decent with a chain hanging across it and heads tied to it for detail. I was considering those poles as spikes atop the shoulders, so I sketched it up real roughly. I only have two poles I can think of using - one with the grot tied to a spear and the other with the heads, which looks remarkably asymmetrical and a bit unbalanced.

I figured it looks a bit different when it's full on posed, so I propped it up using stuff on my desk in the running pose to match the concept art. I may tone the backwards-tilted arm a bit down, since it's already leaning forward.

 

Grots are the bomb

The gargant now has a ramshackle grot bomb launcher that slots in on the center of the shoulders once the head is attached. The grot bomb has been pinned to the ramp - magnets proved too difficult to use for that application, so instead it slots onto the ramp nicely on a metal post. In the course of the past few months, the captain, who is the one grot in the grotpit that I did not pin in place, has managed to escape from my slaver. This means I will need to make another, which is alright with me because I wasn't 100% fond of him due to the weird way I had him holding the ship wheel.

Here's some pictures of the grot bomb ramp:

 

I apologize for the picture quality, it isn't my usual camera. The new ramp badly evidences the need for some proper shoulder armor, which is the next thing on my list to build after I magnetize the grot bomb properly.

I was originally messing around with a curved and streamlined shape to the shoulders so that they would not impede the motion of the arms.

Then I came to my senses and realized that 'streamlined' and 'orky' do not go together. At all. So I am working on making some nice, big, chunky shoulders.

I've only got one shoulder's general shape built so far, as I'm trying to make it out of reasonably thick card so that it'll be sturdy. The back is open so that I can properly pose the claw hand aiming backwards in a running position. Also, orks have no need for rear armor! As long as it's a walking wall of death, nothing'll get behind it. It'll get riveted up and a plated a bit, as well.I'm thinking I'm going to put some spears sticking out the top of the shoulder pads - maybe a grot tied to a stick and some beakie heads on a pike.

 

Exhaust-ing engine work

I worked the engine up a little bit.. I have some more bitz to add, but I have to go out to a dinner for the moment, so I figured I'd throw this up here. The back of the head's going to be armored slightly more angularly, and holes are going to be drilled in the plates for the 'pipes' to poke through into the back of the head. I'm also going to drill a hole for a place to pin whatever back attachment I desire to go on, and I need to fix the gears a little bit as I ended up cutting them down more than I wanted to so that they'd fit. Again, lego are phenomenal as little detail adders.

 

Burning up for you

I did finally get the flamethrower part done.. things have been crazy around here recently. The flamer actually attaches to the torso instead of the head so that I can still easily get at the batteries inside the head for when they need changing.

 

Not bad?

I was tempted to add more cabling/wires, and I still might, but I think it works pretty well right now as well - any extra cabling would become complicated in the interest of removing it. I could fix it in place, too, but I may as well make it removable as it's got the magnets there already.. it gets to a point where I think any additional detail will be missed anyway, so now I move on to closing off the back of the head.

I'm probably going to carry the cylindrical look around to the back of the head, close it off with some extra armor plating, then add scaffolding atop the shoulders that buttresses up against the back of the head for the grot bomb/earthshaker mount.

I was thinking about rules for this thing, aside from VDR.. There's one or two particularly fun special rules that I'd love to play with this thing, assuming my opponent would be open to it. For example, the following special rule actually cuts 50 points off the final VDR'd cost of the gargant:

Dis way! No, da uvva way! The gargant is piloted by a team of grots usually work together to keep the stompa moving, shooting, and generally on a rampage. However, the grots will occasionally have a disagreement about what levers to pull or buttons to push, and occasionally begin fighting in the grotpit due to lack of slaver supervision. At the beginning of gargant's moving phase, roll a D6 - on a roll of one, the grots erupt in grotpit brawl, sending the gargant spiraling out of control as levers are hit inadvertently. Roll a scatter die until a directional arrow is apparent - the gargant wildly lumbers 6" in that direction. Any units in it's path, both friendly and hostile, take a wound with a 4+ save. Any units that fail can be assumed to be crushed beneath the unexpected heavings of the war machine. (Additional cityfight rule: As I'll be giving the gargant the 'wrecker' upgrade from the VDR rules - if the gargant's 6" random movement causes it to walk into a building, the gargant takes a strength 10 front armor hit and that building is removed from the terrain).

I think it seems fair.

Me want make blog post!

Well, aside from actually attaching the head this morning I've had a surprisingly unproductive day as I've been tied up in family matters for most of the afternoon and evening. I did get a chance to add that dangly-chain-glyph thing from the illustration - the chain is reinforced by superglue. I'm having trouble with two parts in particular - the flamethrower in the mouth and the back of the head.

 

The flamethrower is proving to be a problem as I need to find a spot to fix it inside the head where it does not obstruct the batteries, as I've designed them to be removable when they die out.. I could put the flamer in the way if I made that removable as well with magnets or some such, but I'm just having trouble picturing a good burna design in my head. Obviously, I'd like for there to be some 'pilot light' sort of thing at the top of it, so that a flame is visible behind the teeth and inside the mouth..

As for the back of the head, I just don't know what to fill that area in with. Maybe cabling of some sort, but remember, the head has to be detachable for painting and grotpit display purposes (and the battery changes), which prevents me from just running cables into the torso. Whatever I add needs to be capable of having a sort of U-shaped scaffolding built on it for the grot bomb / earthshaker cannon concept I have for the back.. just can't visualize anything right now.

I'm also considering adding some sort of shoulder armor (picture a super-enlarged ork shoulder armor bit) to flesh the arm joints out a little bit, as they look a bit fragile right now. Or at least, vulnerable to attack. Then again, it's not all that vital.

I'm honestly thinking of leaving the eyebrows off this thing. They make it look silly in the same way the 'ears' on the original did.

Keep your head up

Got the basic head frame attached. It's going to get a lot more cabling/wires/detailing in the next few hours. Also, please remember that there's a grot bomb going on the thing's back - it looks hunched over right now and a bit odd, but aesthetically I think the extra weapon on the back will help balance it out.

The jaw's also fixed in place. I wanted to make a hinged one, but it just proved too awkward - occasionally opening too much and covering the grots completely, which looked silly. I just stuck it in a halfway pose, so that when I make the flamer and put it in the head it'll look alright. Battery's still removable - I cut the toggle switch down a bit as well, and I'll be concealing it somehow once I figure out what's going on the back of the head. Probably make it look like a valve or something. The lights are on and off in the pictures just because I would walk away in the middle of taking photos to take care of something around the house and turn the eyes off so the batteries didn't die, but forget to turn them back on when I come back to finish picture-taking.

 

The head's a bit of a mess - the new glue I got, since I ran out of my old kind, seems to give off odd vapors that harden and make the surrounding area crusty. :\ I'll clean it up with the dremel and an xacto later. I actually had the suggestion to give it lightning-bolt shaped eyebrows to give it a bit more character and imply that the eyes are, in fact, zzap guns (aside from the extensive cabling). I might give that a go.

A post of suspense and intrigue

So.. nothing really new for the head. Same old same old.

Or is it? What's that on the back there?

Flipping it over, we can get a look at some of Ein's super-barbaric wiring.

Results?

Now to build a flamer and disguise that toggle switch a bit!