The Warforge Miniature Modelling and Conversion

Cunning and brutal, or brutal and cunning?

Got the first 5 of Wurrzag's entourage painted up to reasonable satisfaction, or at least something approximating tabletop. Not a huge leap, but I'm going to try and update more often, damnit.

Colorful savages!

I figure I'd just throw these pictures up here to show that A) I am alive, and trying to update semi-regularly, and B) I am, in fact, painting.

These were taken with my phone's camera, as my current camera is indisposed at the moment. It just gets the point across, though!

 

Yes, I am painting these orks almost entirely with washes thusfar. Consider it an experiment - I'm starting with white primer, and wash-wash-washing my way to normal looking models using the Citadel washes; devlan mud on the lower halves, and gryphonne sepia on the upper halves that have shirts. A couple washes of both go on the mask. As painting goes, it doesn't look all that bad (though I will get you better pictures within a couple days for the sake of proving this), and it's super easy, since the washes basically make the model paint itself - great for someone like me, who has minimal time free. Farther down the line, I will get a detail brush and pick out the things on the shirts like straps and what have you - actual painting - but for now, this is nice.

I think they'll look better once I get the skintones on there, but I'm going to do all the clothing first, before I move on to things like metal and skin.

Voodoo still a to-do

So I've been jumping around between projects sort've at whim, just doing whatever I feel like. It's sort've nice, though a bit unproductive.

A while back  I started out with the concept of a bunch of shoota boyz that would follow my voodoo-themed Warphead around, and I felt like it was one of those things I should finally get around to doing, so I started working on assembling a couple more of the ladz.

To fit with their shamanistic leader, all of the boyz got wannabe wooden masks. However, I'm also trying to keep other details mostly consistent across the models - all of them have loincloth-type lower bodies, and where possible (meaning, as many as I had) I used shirtless or relatively bare upper torsos. These are the sorts of details that'll stand out more on the painted models, but don't really show well on gray plastic, so I didn't bother wasting a lot of time photographing each individual boy. However, I did snap a couple shots of the group I have done so far.

There's one boy with a Rokkit lurking among that squad's numbers, and by the time I hit 20 I expect there to be a second. The main reason for this is that I find there to be nothing funnier than a Warphead deepstriking a bunch of gitz with rokkits behind enemy armor. Suck on that, Leman Russes!

Once I hit the 12th boy in the squad, I felt like making a Nob. This was mostly just because it's the right size squad to get crammed in a Trukk, and for no other reason. Still, I had to scratch my head a bit because I had a bunch of pretty good options available to me as far as the 'savage boyz' nob went.

After struggling with choosing a proper Nob body for a while, I stumbled upon the plastic runtherd body from the new(ish) grots kit, and I really liked him. The only problem I had with the body was that while larger than your average boy, he's not quite nob-stature. However, the tried-and-tested solution of plasticard spacers under the feet helps give him a little bit of extra height over his surrounding boyz, and his extra-big-and-impressive-but-not-quite-as-big-as-the-warphead's-mask helps clearly set him apart as 'da git in charge'.

 

A size comparison with a boy from the squad:

I obviously wanted to give my Nob a power klaw, but I thought the image of a vicious, iron-gobbed squig fit the 'savage/feral' profile of this squad a bit more thematically than some electric snippy bitz. Hopefully the average Warhammer 40k player won't give me too much guff about using a barely-restrained snappy squig as a counts-as power klaw!

A last point to make is that the Nob'z banner actually has a bit of wood grain texture carved into it, but that's not entirely evident from these pictures due to the difficulty of getting white-on-white details to photograph nicely. I have a feeling paint will make this whole squad look a lot snappier.

Hoodoo Voodoo

Since finishing up my warphead model, I've been quietly lamenting over the fact that warpheads and weirdboys are somewhat difficult to fit into normal lists. Despite that, I usually try cramming both that and a Shokk Attack Gun into my casual game lists, because I find the randomness of both to be unremittingly hilarious. After a fair bit of playtesting it attached to different squads, I feel that Shoota Boyz are probably in the best position to get the most use out of the Warphead's presence, though fluff-wise I have no doubt a warphead's normal rabble would tend more towards the slugga side. Shoota boyz have the advantage of moderate range, meaning that if my warphead suddenly decides he wants to use his deepstrike power (courtesy of a hapless D6 roll) they can still get a good volley of pain off at their target of choice. If no good infantry targets present themselves, you can always try for a deepstrike behind rear armor of an enemy's vehicle so that you can unleash a rokkit salvo. This adaptability beats something like slugga boys pretty solidly, and they're cheap enough to be a good 'psychic buffer' for the Warphead's leadership rolls via Mob Rule.

With that said, I turned to the idea of what the orks that hang around with a Warphead must look like. From the outset I had two competing ideas. The first was that given Wurrzag's ability to tap into the warp and inadvertently reanimate corpses, I imagined that some of the boyz he hung around might be zomborks, or 'Dead 'eadz' - orks that had fallen in combat near him, and had therefore been crudely reanimated by his Waaagh! powers. You'd have boyz with somewhat hilariously mortal wounds just walking about unaware that they were dead yet, missing limbs, that sort of thing. The second idea I had for these guys was that they might adopt Wurrzag's tendencies by taking up crude wooden masks of their own and adorning themselves in strange fetishes.

I think overall I've decided on something leaning more towards the second idea than the first. As-is, I find the idea of a unit wearing masks and trinkets to be much easier for general purposes than having to explain to everyone who asks why a squad of my shoota boyz are zombies. There's too many Chaos-y, Nurgly connotations there. Plus, the appearance of a unit wearing masks led by my warphead is probably going to look a lot nicer. That said, I expect the majority of the boyz in the unit will be the shaman types, with maybe a handful of Dead 'Eadz lurching about among them just for variety.

So, a while back, in anticipation of this very project, I entreated my good buddy, Nozeminer, to help me out by making a set of wooden voodoo masks that would fit on boyz, yet match the overall 'theme' of Wurrzag's. After talking a bit of design with him, he was nice enough to sculpt up some greens for me:

These masks have since been sent off to D6 Hobbies, where they have been cast and may be purchased, should anyone be interested.

Anyway, with these masks made, it was just down to the simple task of casting them up and putting them on. Given that they're mostly flat, fitting them onto an ork face poses a bit of a challenge if you don't first hack the front of their gobs down a bit. However, with a little bit of knife and filework, you can glue them right on. I'm going to be greenstuffing straps a bit later on, but for now I think it's a pretty good look for a squad:

These guys are not an overwhelming priority for me at the moment due to an impending tournament in two weeks time that I have to prepare for. However, I'm aiming to have 20 of them made and ready to paint shortly after the tournament ends.