toaae presents: WAAAAGH! Tortoof

[toaae]

I did not finish him this past weekend. While Friday was unmatched, it still was, and is, very warm and I just haven't had the energy to do much. I did paint the skin of the nob, and lay the base colors for his shirt and pants, as well as the pants of the boyz. I'm jumping around as to knock out things with what time I have, just to keep things moving.

[toaae]

July has been a warm month, and the heat has sapped my energy to paint. I'm made some progress here and there, and am confident that I'll have the vow complete to a table-top level. Yes, I do mean I won't have them finished to my full standard, but it will fulfill the vow and I'll go back to finish them. After the Summer.

I need a place with A/C.

[tvih]

Yeah, the heat has been hampering my painting plans too all summer. Hard to focus on such delicate tasks. Not sure if I'll still make a new small vow or not. The heat levels aren't going down at least for another week. 

[toaae]

The heat is a bitch. I lived in Phoenix for 8 years, where the summer days are often 105F/40C, with several in the 116F/47C range. But Phoenix also has central A/C standard and square footage to go around. Living in LA, where the former isn't present in most affordable housing and the latter is at a premium, I've never been more uncomfortable with heat. Add to that the time commitment my new son demands, and, well, it's easy for me to see why I haven't yet finished my vow.

But I did get the warboss up to tabletop, so I'm calling him done for the ETL!

 

 

No basing as I haven't based any of my orks yet*, and the oranges/yellows/all metalics need a lot more work for me to call it totally finished, but I now have a Warboss of my own painting I can put onto the battlefield! That just leaves the weirdboy and the boyz unit to complete for the ETL. The weirdboy is just metallics and a wash away from joining the Warboss in tabletop land. Finishing this guy before the boyz taught me a valuable lesson I'll be able to apply to the boyz: get the skin and faces 100%, and you can cut corners on the rest.

 

*=The grot gunners ealier in this thread were based, but that was a test basing using the exact same style I use for my Blood Angels; I'm not committed to doing my Orks like that yet.

[toaae]

Nothing to show on the ETL front. I did finish the faces for the boyz, and will have them complete tonight or tomorrow. Still on track.

I want to take a moment to talk Kill Team. I picked up my copy today, and immediately starting thinking of what I wanted to build. After reading the rules and quickly skimming the the campaign section, I think I've got the framework I want to build my Ork Kill Team in. A spanner is leading some orks and grots on a scavenge run, looting some part of a recent battlefield. Caught up in this glorious find, they venture too close to enemy lines. Just as they are about to be ambushed, a kommando nob bursts from some unforeseen shadow, and begins to tear into the enemy. The scavengers whole-heartedly jump in, and in the aftermath, pumped up from the battle, they follow the kommando as he looks for new enemies to krump. Only, this particular nob isn't all there.

And with that, I've got the basis for a kill team. Thinking the Kommando nob, either as the leader or a veteran specialist, 3 boyz, 5 grots, 2 burnas, a loota and a spanner (the leader if the nob isn't). This would be a real work of love and passion, with each model intended to be extensively converted, named, and carefully painted. Should be cool.

But first, the ETL vow.

[toaae]

ETL6 is finished, and I'm happy to report that I completed my vow in time. Sometime this weekend, I'll take proper photos of the group and do a post-mortem about my experience in the ETL, with the different skin tones I was testing, and other things. For now, check out this spoiler for the quick, dirty pic of the Weirdboy and boyz:

 

 

 

Today, I started work on my Ork killteam. As previously mentioned, I plan to extensively convert this orks, pushing my meager converting skills to their limit. I decided to start with a loota, that I'm thinking will be a heavy specialist. The ability to move and shoot without the -1 to hit may prove useful, meaning he should always be able to find a target. It may come down that he always is suffering a -1 due to obscured targets, in which case the ability to move and fire won't matter, as a 6 always hits in KT. But, for now, that's my plan.

For the loota, I knew I wanted to do something different than the shoulder-mounted deffgun. In truth, I'm not a big fan of the Loota model, as I dislike that there are only 4 different appearances and they are all mounted on the ork the same way. So, I choose to move the gun from his shoulder to being underslung under the ork's arm. The first bits laid out:

 

The plan was to cut the pistol off, mount the pistol arm on top of the gun, remove/cover the loota arm under the gun, and use greenstuff to make shoulder suspender-straps. I took the ammo hopper for this deffgun off the left arm and mounted in on the gun to cover what remained of the loota arm. I like that it looks like the ork just throws handfuls of ammo* into the hopper. Pictures of the mostly converted gun:

 

 

Now, as cool as I think that looked, I knew right away that I was going to have an issue with how low it was going to hang. The obvious solution was to build up the base. Now, I'm a 25mm base for anything smaller than a Nob for 40k, but since the KT box of lootas/burnas comes with 32mms, I decided I would match it for my killteam. Luckily, I purchased 100 extra 32mm bases when I was rebuilding my Blood Angels this spring. Using a left over bit from a Dakkajet, I gave the base some height, and it looks like a scrap heap, fitting into the fluff for my killteam:

 

 

Of course, this also meant I had to change the legs. Now, my dear frater, I don't have a lot of experience cutting and reposing limbs. I decided to play this one save, and cut the right leg at the hip, rotate it slightly, and extend it with greenstuff to fill the gap. Doing much more is certainly out of my comfort zone as it stands. I added another bit to the base to make it so his right foot was just hovering in the air with just his ankle on the scrap.
 

After that, I pinned the arm to the torso, and the torso to the legs. Considering the pistol arm and ammo hopper is pinned to the gun, this guy has more hard rods in him than an adult actress. I attempted to make the suspender-straps out of greenstuff, and I'm fairly happy with how it turned out. This is how the loota looks right now:

 

I have the head picked out. Nothing special, one of the loota heads with the eye-reticle thing, screaming. I still have to figure out what to do with the left arm. While typing the line above with the *, I realized I could probably use a shoota left arm, and make it look like he is holding a handful of bullets to throw into the hopper. Also, do I want to give him ammo bags? Choices, choices.

This weekend, I'll be playing some KT. I might take pictures, but since this is the first guy I'm building, the rest of the team will just have to be replaced with regular orks from my army.

[toaae]

ETL6 Post-Mortem

 

I wanted to take better photos, but I'm just not getting around to it. Since World of Warcraft's new expansion launches in less than 5 hours, I'm just going to write this post now, as I will definitely not be getting around to anything for a bit. My finished vow:

 

 

 

Again, that was a Warboss, a Weirdboy, 10 boyz with a nob, and a Mek Gun. I chose a small first vow, as I didn't want to bite off more than I could chew. I wasn't planning on starting till June, and despite beginning a week earlier than planned, I only barely managed to complete that vow. A combination of a lot of travel, caring for my infant son, the heat, and playing a lot of WoW's beta meant I had to cut corners to finish the vow. In the end, only the Mek Gun and gunners were finished to my standard, with the rest of the vow merely painted to a basic table-top standard.

 

Even so, I'm pretty happy. First and foremost, that tabletop standard isn't as bad as I feared it would be. I may paint all my boys like this, until I have a proppa green tide, and then go back from time to time to finish highlights, weathering, and the other details. For just this lesson, the ETL was a success, personally.

 

The big, planned experiment was airbrushing different skin tones on the boys. In all, I did 5 different skin tones twice, with two different shades, as well as another skin tone on the nob (though it wasn't airbrushed). The first was using the same colors that I've painted all my orks with prior to this, just with an airbrush instead of by hand. The summary is that only one of the skin tones did I not really like (the palest one), and I couldn't really tell a difference outside of one of the tones between the two different shades. This is great news, as I can easily add variety to my orks by just switching out skin tones easily while airbrushing. I also think their skin looks fine, and I'll continue to use the airbrush on boyz and grots to speed up the mobs.

 

As for the ETL itself, I enjoyed the community aspect of the event. Many, many other places do painting goal events, but they are always individual. The community part of the ETL is great fun, and I think it motivated me a lot at the end. Next time, I'll start with bigger, more expensive, but fewer things, like vehicles, instead of just a horde of greenskins, so that I could make a mark. I also think painting ork vehicles is both the most fun and quickest part of painting an army.

Edited August 13, 2018 by toaae

[Warhead01]

Haha. Well you did finish before the end! We fight even harder next year!

[toaae]

Oh boy, an update:

 

WoW's expansion has me firmly in it's grip, but I'm starting to feel the WAAAGH!!! brewing in my soul again. I've got to finish building my killteam and then getting those suckas painted, and I want to work on basing and "finishing" all the orks I currently have painted. I'm not sure how I want to base them. I did the grot gunners in the same method as my Blood Angels, but I'm think I wanna do something different. Going to do some research.

With the codex coming next month, I want to get prepared for whatever they drop on us. I'll definitely be picking up a few of the new vehicles, and one to two of the Warboss trikes. I'd ideally like to round out my shoota boys to 60 (I think I need like 9), get 30 choppa boys up, get my other two mek guns and gunners painted, and grow my grots to at least 30. Which is a tall order for my slow painting, but it's good to have goals, huh?

Finally, I'm going to be going to the SoCal open in San Diego at the end of October, and just managed to get a ticket to the Las Vegas Open in February. I simply cannot get 2000 points of Orks ready in time for SoCal, especially without knowing what the codex is going to do. If it made Deff Dread mobs viable, maybe I'd have a chance. But I'll probably be taking my Blood Angels to that one. But LVO is 100% going to be greenskins.

[toaae]

HOLY MOLY!

Just as I got back into the swing of hobbying, the venerable B&C went down! I've been jonesing to update with what I've been working on, but, alas, the fickle tendrils of fate resolved to delay that as much as possible. Thankfully, we're back up and running, so I can throw some more stuff up. A regurgitation of my progress, if you will.

 

So I've expanded my killteam, and am now just missing one member. To recap, I've got a loota, two burna boys, three choppa boys, a spanner and a nob planned for the team, and the nob is the only one left to build. I also use four grots in the team, but I don't plan on making special ones of those, just using some from my army. The pictures below were taken before the spanner was completed, so I'll add him into the next update.

 

My other progress has been on basing my orks. I previously mentioned wanting to do something different. I had already done sandy, wasteland bases for my Angels, and wanted to go another route. I had originally planned on doing resin bases for the whole army, but both the expense and extra work painting that that entails have lead me to abandoning the idea. Instead, I wanted to go with something that was effective, easy, and a little different. In that in mind, I picked up some Stirland Mud texture paint, a couple of different kinds of flock, and some grass tufts to see what I could make. The idea was a grassy plain, overrun and muddied by the Ork warmachine. Something with a lot of dead grass, texture, and would be simple enough to do.

And here is the result:
 

 

 

I dig it. It's easy to do and I like the effect. I may experiment with adding some small rocks to some, but for the most part, this is how I plan to base all my orks. And I have. I'm nearly done with this little project.

[toaae]

Finished the basing project, so that will become part of the normal painting routine. So I've moved onto the next project, my other two mek guns. I'm thinking that I'll want to have the mek guns in a Spearhead detachment with a different klan than my main army (probably Deffskullz, if the rumored trait is like the Salamanders). The ITC rules that if you're using multiple traits of the same codex, you have to have them painted differently or in some way that makes it easily recognizable to your opponent. With that in mind, I decided to paint the other two guns different.

Reds the main color in my armor, and I use orange and yellow as accent colors. So I thought, why not rotate that around? One gun will be orange with red and yellow accents, and the other will be yellow with orange and red accents. I'm afraid it'll look a little mish-mash, as most of my army is dominated by red, but I'm waiting to the end to see how it turns out. Currently, the two guns are too bright, but that'll come down a lot when I hit it with Agrax at the end.

Current progress:
 

Finished building the last member of the killteam (so far), so here he is and the spanner I forgot before:
 

[toaae]

I return from the SoCal open! I took my Blood Angels and some IG I borrow from a friend, and despite an abysmal record, I had a great time. I cannot wait for the Las Vegas Open, and I made a lot of promises to my opponents and new friends that I'd be bringing my orks. I have more than 3 full months to devise and paint a list for that great spectacle. Given my hobby habits, it will be a tough task, but one I'm excited to dive into.

I ordered the collectors edition codex, and while that means I won't be getting it Saturday, I'm going out of town this weekend, so I wouldn't have gotten the codex on release regardless. I'm going to be keeping my eyes peeled for every bit of information on the codex I can find, though I'm not a fan of watching long youtube videos of people reading the codex word-for-word. I'll just have to have some patience.

Getting back to the mek guns today before I leave tomorrow. Also, based on what I've heard, I'm going to have to dig the sprues out and get the tractor kannon bits magnetized and painted. For my trip, I'm going to bring a mob of choppa boyz to assemble, as well as pack something to paint in the hotel during downtime.

[toaae]

Brak was an unassuming boy all the way up to the day of his great and terrible revelation. He was passing a fungal farm on the outskirts of Grelgcrel’s shanty-fortress when he overheard a runtherd berating some snotling for some inconsequential yet unforgivable mistake. Brak was a mean git with a strong gob of teef and a penchant for clubbing Grelgcrel’s foes with extreme prejudice, but ambition had never been one of his qualities. He was returning from an afternoon of buggie racing and brawling, but stopped when he overheard the runtherd throttling the small orkoid. Brak watched on as the runtherd’s grip tightened around the scrawny thing’s neck, and as spittle flew from his mouth. The runtherd was laying into the snotling about how the Orks of Krot were descendants of the “Great Beast” that shook the galaxy with his bellow, and had conquered everything he had wanted. As the diminutive greenskin’s eyes popped out, Brak was enthralled by the runtherd’s story, from the great war moons they had rode on to Krot, to the indignation the snotling had shown to a proppa ork of the Beast.

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In the waning decades of the 41st millennium, the Pnoabsterix sub-sector was as prosperous a region of the Imperium as any in the Ultima Segmentum. Left largely intact after the Horus Heresy and the Scouring that had followed, the numerous systems of the sub-sector had long been a beacon of light this far from Holy Terra, nearly to the Ghoul Stars. Relative peace had reigned in Pnoabsterix, with only the galaxy wide incursion by The Beast in M32 to have lasting scars. Several systems had fallen to the Orks before the end of that war, and a sizeable population of the xenos still thrived in the sub-sector’s north-east.

But the last major incursion from those greenskins had come in M37, and they were now considered controlled, if not eradicated. The numerous industries of Pnoabsterix, the wealth of population for the Astra Militarum, and the nearby five chapters of Adeptus Astartes, of which three were founded specifically to contain the Orks and other xenos invasions from the Ghoul Stars, had proven more than capable of protecting the sub-sector.

 

And so, for four, uninterrupted millennia, Pnoabsterix had provided for the Emperor’s wars across the galaxy. Arms and vehicles from the Forgeworld Alcrondre had been used in the Wars of the False Cardinals, helped reclaim the Green Worlds of Koraxsis during the Hroldrean Crusade, and had filled in the production gap created when techno-heretics had destroyed the forges of Melisarius Prime. Regiments from the many populated planets had stood on the sands of dead planets during the Nhrekit Incursion, held the line against Hive Fleet Leviathan on a hundred worlds, and had reinforced the Gothic sector during Abaddon’s 12th Black Crusade. The shipyards of Opherous VIII had produced ships that served in battlefleets across the galaxy. And, of course, the Space Marines of the <Sons of Sikara>, the <Steel Knights>, the <Fire Breakers>, the <Howling Claws>, and the <Emerald Scorpions> had earned glory and renown in the name of the Emperor.

 

But as the 41st millennium came to a close, Pax Pnoabsterix would come to an end. Because from those lost worlds of the greenskins would come a warboss capable shattering the well-laid defenses of the sub-sector. In the wake of this destruction, other insidious forces would strike against in the riches of Pnoabsterix. Ancient xenos would awaken, a terrible hunger would be insatiable, an old enemy would return, and many more would make their move, all eclipsed by the giant, toothy grin of the Mega-Tyrant. In 921.M41, the Pnoabsterix Wars begun.

Some more of the fluff. The Space Marine chapter names are literally taken from a Chapter Name Generator, and the sector is pronounced "NO-AB-STARE-EX". 

-----------------------------------------------------------------

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In hobby news:

 

I finally got my collectors edition codex on Wednesday, and let me tell you, it was just as exciting as I had hoped. Sadly, the book has taken on some sort of warped problem, which I can't for the life of me diagnose the cause of. The pages have a wave to them, and when you lay the book down flat, it doesn't close fully flat. When pressure is applied, there is an audible "pop". It was in pristine condition yesterday, and it sat on my dresser overnight. It shows no other signs of damage, such as water. It's just like the pages slightly shrank. Bizarre. I've contacted GW customer support, but it's a Friday, so I'll probably have to wait a bit.

 

In less bittersweet news, I was able to confirm all the stuff I needed to know before I could really dive into figuring out my army, and I've now got two lists to test tomorrow. In short form they are

 

Evil Sunz Battalion

2x Warboss

2x 30 Shoot Boys

1x 30 Choppa Boys

1x 3 Deff Dreads

Evil Sunz Battalion

2x Weirdboyz

1x 10 Choppa Boyz

2x 10 Gretchin

Bad Moonz Spearhead

1x Big Mek w/ KFF

1x 11 Tankbustas

3x 1 Mek Guns w/ Smasha Guns

1x 1 Dakkajet

1x 1 Trukk

 

and

 

Goff Battalion

2x Weirdboyz

3x 10 Gretchin

Goff Battalion

2x Warboss

2x 30 Shoot Boys

1x 30 Choppa Boys

1x 1 Gorkanaut

Bad Moonz Spearhead

1x Big Mek w/ KFF

2x 2 Mek Guns w/ Smasha Guns

1x 2 Mek Guns w/ Kustom Mega-Kannon

2x 1 Dakkajet

 

I hope to get a game in with both lists tomorrow. And I hope to finish the two mek guns this weekend.

Edited November 26, 2018 by toaae

[toaae]

It's my birthday!

I'm currently in class, having finished the test and waiting for the rest of the class to catch up so we can go on with the lesson. So in the meantime I'm going to update my thread. My codex seems to have solved itself, which just makes it even more bizarre. I had to ask my wife if I was just losing my mind, but she said it was undeniable that something was off. Regardless, I can't feel it now, and it is in the same condition as my Blood Angels codex. Weird. Maybe I've been doing drugs I didn't know I had.

 

I didn't get great games in on Saturday. One opponent neglected to tell me he had to leave at a certain time, and we only played one turn after it took him an hour to make his list and deploy (but he was the guy that lent me his IG for the SoCal Open, so I'll let it slide), and my second opponent is a fun guy but not competitive at all, and took a renegade knight list with death guard dreadnaughts. Against both, I ran the Evil Sunz list.

While I can't exactly decide what was good or not, I did take some things away. One, we burn CP like mad men. The list starts with 14, but after 2x tellyporta and warphead x2, I found myself quickly burning through the other 8. I didn't get a chance to use The Unstoppable Green Tide and got one Get Stuck In, Ladz. One More Dakka! and Showin' Off on the tankbustas failed to do much for me (6 total wounds on a knight with a 4++, post-rotate-shields), but I'm just chocking that up to poor luck. In the end, I think I'm going to need more CP, and that means finding points to add 30 more grots and another HQ to make the third detachment a battalion.

 

In hobby-news, getting closer and closer to finishing the Mek Gunz. I also cut out the Smasha Gun bits and got those prepped and primed, so they'll be done after the artillery platforms. Finally, I forgot to talk about what I managed to finish on vacation, and that's because it wasn't much. I have the last shoota boys built and primed, and I spent most of my free time in the hotel filling in slot bases and then cutting out the slot underneath so I could glue in washers. This wasn't a quick chore, but I did finish it, and have reclaimed 35 bases that I would have otherwise never used. Small victories, right?

[FlamingDeth]

As far as knights go, 4++ saves are kind of a crap shoot but they also only get that strat once per phase. If they run multiple knights and you have mek guns anyways, remember that they act as separate units after deployment. Shoot the guns individually until he uses the ion shield strat then pour all your fire into the knights he doesn't use it on. Edited November 13, 2018 by CardinalVirtue

[toaae]

As far as knights go, 4++ saves are kind of a crap shoot but they also only get that strat once per phase. If they run multiple knights and you have mek guns anyways, remember that they act as separate units after deployment. Shoot the guns individually until he uses the ion shield strat then pour all your fire into the knights he doesn't use it on.

 

A sound strategy. This opponent saved the stratagem for use until the tankbustas fired.

[toaae]

Finished the bodies of the Mek Guns!

 

I really do love that kit. I'm not going to bother painting the gunners yet since they don't have any real purpose in the rules except to make it easier to see the Mek Gun. If it's close, I'll just give opponents LoS to them. I also chose not to take the time to finish the KMK bits, since these guns will 100% be Smasha Guns until something changes, and I don't expect that in the Chapter Approved, so the soonest a change could happen would be late spring for Big FAQ 2019 1.

I did pull the Smasha Gun bits out for all three Mek Guns and got the base (red/yellow/orange) colors down. I'll try to knock those out as fast as I can, though I need more magnets to mount them on the guns.

[MithrilForge]

Great work here ! 

I'm about to build some close combat Nobs to put in a trukk to throw at the enemy ...any suggestions?  (i'm very new back into orks after many years away) 

with the new dex and your experience...should i go big choppa and choppa? or just 2x choppas for cheap and nasty...

 

cheers Mithril

[toaae]

Great work here ! 

I'm about to build some close combat Nobs to put in a trukk to throw at the enemy ...any suggestions?  (i'm very new back into orks after many years away) 

with the new dex and your experience...should i go big choppa and choppa? or just 2x choppas for cheap and nasty...

 

cheers Mithril

 

A mixture! With how cheap base nobs are, a few of those for taking the initial wounds and adding a bunch of cheap, S5 attacks with dual choppas is worth filling out the unit. I like a bunch of big choppas (and, yeah, choppa > slugga or shoota for the 2nd weapon). Currently, when I'm considering running them, I'm thinking 1 killsaw, 5 Big Choppas, 4 base nobs, and two ammo runts in a trukk. Cheap, inexpensive, very good against a number of targets. In the end, they are a distraction unit more than anything, as their damage output is still not comparable to large units of boyz, but they warrant a response. And if/when the trukk dies, Loot it! gets them a 3+ save and the ammo runts take the emergency disembark deaths.

 

I've talked myself into taking them this weekend. I had a lot of fun with a 6 man mob in the index.

[toaae]

Finished the Smasha Gun bits, so here is the completed first Mek Gun Battery:

 

[MithrilForge]

Very well done indeed 

how are these with the new Dex?...

 

Cheers, Mithril

[toaae]

Smasha Guns are spectacular, because they are so cheap. 31 points for each gun and platform. Their only downside is they give up a lot of kill points.

 

If I had 18 guns, the max you can take in matches play, I would.

[MithrilForge]

Cool...i might get a few...but the flip side is how much is each gun in real $$$ though   oh, i just checked...that's $67.00 (Aust) each for me...can you use parts from them to scrap together the other guns from the kit i.e. can you make a smasha gun then use leftovers and plasticard and rod and gubbinz etc to make a KMK for instance?... 

 

Cheers, Mithril 

[FlamingDeth]

You sure can! I still wouldn't buy the kits en masse to try to build a battery of 18 of a single gun though. That's where you want to start kitbashing and scratch building so you don't have to take out a second mortgage to finance your army.

[toaae]

Cool...i might get a few...but the flip side is how much is each gun in real $$$ though   oh, i just checked...that's $67.00 (Aust) each for me...can you use parts from them to scrap together the other guns from the kit i.e. can you make a smasha gun then use leftovers and plasticard and rod and gubbinz etc to make a KMK for instance?... 

 

Cheers, Mithril 

 

Yeah, for sure. With a trukk kit, you could easily make good guns for all 4 types of artillery from one Mek gun. Alternatively, with plastic card and tubes, you could also do it. Finally, KMKs are similar amounts of damage-per-point as Smasha Guns, just less durable due to having fewer wounds. So you could run those to save $ in the meantime for similar offensive performance (and less kill points!).