toaae presents: WAAAAGH! Tortoof

[toaae]

I think the orange colouration on the weapons is a good move. It's very visible and it looks good as an added bonus.

 

Thanks. Now that I'm a few days removed from having painted them, I really do like the look. I've started on the next 4 lootas (the fusion gun ones), and am incorporating a little more yellow this time. It's fun, even if I am slow.

 

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

I was hoping to play in a tournament yesterday, but it was cancelled due to low participation. I did play a game, for the first time in over a month, that ended in turn two with my opponent conceding. I really need this semester to end so I can get back to regular gaming on Saturdays, and be able to attend more tournaments.

 

I'm also making a narrative campaign for my gaming group, who I refer to as "casual matched play" gamers. They don't go all out and play ITC, but they are also not playing narrative games. And since I can get a competitive game in plenty of places, I decided to pitch a narrative campaign for the summer to these guys, who are down. It's looking like it's going to be Imperium vs. Chaos. I'll still be playing Orks, but acting as GM, so I'm just there to help push the narrative.

 

Those are my summer plans. Paint for ETL, play in more ITC tournaments, and run a narrative campaign. I'm pretty excited.

[toaae]

Finished the next four lootas:

 

 

This gets me to 7/15. I'm thinking about taking a break from deffguns, and finishing the Wartrike I painted to tabletop minimum back in January. It's featured in both styles of ITC lists I'm looking at running, so I might as well get it painted. Hopefully, I can finish that by Saturday, so I can start immediately on my first ETL vow.

[Magos Takatus]

It sounds like things are going well. The Lootas you have painted so far are looking good. I also agree that it's good to break up a long modelling project with some smaller tasks. I haven't painted up a single warbiker yet. I guess I'll have to sometime. 

[toaae]

Thanks man! I've learned that I prefer painting small groups of units; at one point, I tried to paint 22 boyz, and it took me over a year! Getting stuck on one color for too long is super de-motivating, so by going to smaller groups, I can avoid that pitfall. It also allows me to easily take breaks during a project, since finishing a group is a good spot for doing something else.

It's not time-efficient, but because I'm able to paint most days due to not losing motivation, I'm getting more done then I ever have. Yesterday was the 146th day of the year, and I've painted/assembled for 120 of them.

[FlamingDeth]

I have the same problem there, I have trouble doing even ten boyz are once. I know intellectually it'll go faster if I batch paint like crazy but killing your motivation sort of negates that. I think I can only really work on 2-3 at once, and even then I prefer doing them one at a time. It goes at a glacial pace that way but at least then I feel like I'm making progress.

[toaae]

Finish the Wartrike, I did:

 

 

 

What a fun model. And I am all ready for the ETL tomorrow!

[toaae]

So I am a patron of the Independent Characters podcast (on their patreon) and their narrative campaign started today. I just submitted my battle for the campaign, but I figured I would share it here. Nothing special, just a fun description of a 1k point game against another Ork player.
 

 

Warboss Grekmawg stepped up onto his Wartrike, having knocked about some of da boyz heads to get them ready for the battle. A Goff warboss had said Grekmawg wasn't that fast in the last race, and this insult would not stand with the Evil Sunz warboss. He would show that squig-licka a proppa beating.
 
---
 
The two Ork forces met on the outskirts of a scrap city, in the dust of some ruined 'umie settlement. The Evil Sunz found the Goffs ready for a scrap, and immediately found themselves losing the initiative of the battle. The Goff Lootas ("Who'd eva 'eard of such a fing?" thought Grekmawg) unleashed the full fury of their deffguns against Grekmawg's Lootas, but the cunning boss had made sure to shepard some grots into the battle, whom promptly took a licking as the Lootas dodged, dipped, ducked, dived, and dodged behind them. As this fusillade hammered the tiny orkoids, the Goffs let out a mighty "WAAAAARGH!" and began to sprint across the battlefield.
 
Grekmawg smiled a big, toofy grin. "Dem Goffs are so prediktitable" he mused, before bellowing out for his boys to "shoot 'em good". Grelt's Boyz, the shoota mob Grekmawg has wrangled for the scrap, ran out towards the encroaching Goffs, getting in a good position so they could make the most of all their guns. Gitwomp, da weirdboy, made funny noises and a popping sound, and the Evil Sunz Lootas found themselves thrown into a different part of the battlefield, but with great lines of sight. Their retribution against the opposing lootas was swift and brutal. Without weedy grots to hide behind, the Goff Lootas ("Seri-uzly, whats dat about?") were quickly eradicated.
 
Grekmawg and his nob bikers raced out around the major ruin between themselves and da Goffs. Armed with many Dakkaguns and a host of Kustom Shootas, they fired into the back on a Goff boy mob. Little did they know that Grelt's Boyz were also shooting at those same boyz. With a lot of noise, smoke and blood, the Goffs found themselves down a mob.
 
But the Goff Warboss didn't care. He bellowed again, and advanced with his remaining boyz towards Grekmawg and the Nob bikers, intent on crushing the Evil Sunz with his mighty claw. Meanwhile, the Deff Dread of the Goffs charged into Grelt's Boyz, who spied the Goff nobz following up from behind.
 
The Goff Warboss unceremoniously tripped as he attempted to close the distance, and by the time he had picked himself up, his boyz were krumpin' with the nob bikers. But running into the wall of lead the bikers could manufacture hadn't worked out so well, and the Goffs that remained found themselves cut down by the Evil Sunz, who only lost a few nobz themselves. Indignant, the Goff Warboss issued his final challenge.
 
Grekmawg was more than happy to accept. The two bosses clashed, and while Grekmawg easily crushed the Goff under his wartrike and snagged him with his snagga klaw, he wasn't ready for the literally-ripped-open Goff to reach up at punch him straight in the toofy jaw. Grekmawg lost consciousness for a moment, but it was long enough to fall on the driver of his Wartrike, who promply crashed the vehicle into a wall. It would take some teef to get that thing running again.
 
With the Goff Warboss dead, the Nob bikers and lootas cleaned up the Goff Nobz, who had been ripping apart Grelt's Boyz after those boyz had managed to overwhelm the Deff dread.
 
He might have lost his trike, but Grekmawg had won his scrap.

Edited June 2, 2019 by toaae

[toaae]

E Tenebrae Lux VII is on, and you know I just had to be the first to vow:

 

 

 

I, toaae, rise to the challenge of E TENEBRAE LUX on the side of da Orks and vow to complete a warboss in mega-armor, a big mek w/ shokk attack gun, a painboy, and a warboss, of total value 373 points, on or before September 1st, 2019. Success will bring me great conquest and loot, but failure will doom me to wear the Badge of the Oathbreaker until the year-end.

 

 

 

And I've been busy. I had an unexpected road trip last week, but I packed a model so I wouldn't miss a day of some painting. And then on Monday, I finished the first part of my first vow. May I present, in all his Orkiness, the Mega-Tyrant of Sterik, the Big Red Boss of Krot, the Conqueror of the Grey Bastion, and namesake of WAAAGH! Tortoff and this very thread, Brakgcrel Nag Krot Tortoof, Warboss in Mega-Armor!

 

 

(my wife got fancy with her filters and angles for that one)

 

I am very proud of this guy. The conversion was a lot of fun and I think it turned out well, and I think the paint job fits. I am pleased with myself.

 

No rest for the weary, though. Got 3 more characters to knock out for this first vow. None of them are as complicated a job as the Warboss, so I'm hoping to finish all three of them within a couple of weeks. And then I've got something special planned for the next vow.

Edited June 13, 2019 by toaae

[Magos Takatus]

Tortoof has a fantastic model! I really like the hammered shoulder plates from the Mek Gun kit, that's a great touch. He looks like he's itching to get into a fight from the pose as well.

[toaae]

Thank you! This is one of the two standard poses from the Ambot, but it was the pose that inspired the whole conversion. It's very similar to Ghaz's pose, and like you said, it just makes him look like he's strutting towards the enemy lines.

[Warhead01]

Dead Ard' and Proppa! 
Very nice!

[toaae]

Finished another character for my ETL vow:

 

This painboy model has such great details, but the face is so, so, so, so wrong. And the grot's face isn't great either. And I don't like that this model is the reason you can't take a painboy without a klaw. All that said, I had fun painting it. Definitely experimented with what I could do with Blood for the Blood God (the technical paint).

Shokk Attack Gun is next.

[toaae]

Almost done with my first ETL vow, so I'm starting to plan the next one. I'm pretty proud that I'll have finished the 4 characters in a month, especially with how complicated Tortoof and the SAG Big Mek* were. I'm hopeful that the next vow can also be completed in a month, but I do want to make sure I don't accidently vow too much, only to find myself unable to finish in time at all.

 

So, the first thing I'll be painting is a Gorkanaut. My wonderful wife got me one for Father's Day, and I just cannot wait to paint it. Though I first have to finish assembling it. Going along with what I'm doing for my Lootas, I'm thinking it'll be a primarily orange vehicle, with major red details and yellow accents. I'm hopeful that I can be a little sloppier and a lot quicker by using the airbrush to paint large amounts of it, with weathering/washing covering up the bleed over (a tip from

). I'm also going to be using chipping medium for the first time. Should be an interesting experience.

With one Gorkanaut on the docket, what else can I include? This is a little bit of a grey area, since I have a lot of stuff that needs to be painted, but due to participating in tournaments, almost all of it already has color on it (to meet a 3-color minimum). This means the remaining 5 nob bikers, 8 lootas, 3 weirdboys, KFF big mek, 40 boyz, and 30 grots that I'm using in my lists are ineligible for vowing for the ETL! I could just get back to work on them, but I really want to contribute to the ETL, so I'm looking for stuff that I have that I can paint. I have a Dakkajet 98% ready to be painted (need to finish the cockpit), so that'll probably be on the vow. I also have this second-hand battlewagon from the same lot as the SAG Big Mek and some of my lootas. The trick with it is while it is only primed black, it is very poorly primed. But I don't think I can easily strip it due to the size. I'm thinking about vowing it, and if I decide it's un-saveable, finishing it to a minimum standard, and either putting it aside to be stripped or turned into terrain later.

Other than that, I don't have much else to do. I'll probably include 10 grots, just because they aren't to the 3-color minimum, so I'll just tag them onto the vow to get them done.

 

Now, to segue, I'm thinking about how to use the Gorkanaut in a list. Per our discussion after the FAQ, vehicle-heavy Orks is something I'd love to see. Despite my professed love for horde Orks, I've been thinking about what such a list would look like. Ben Jureck's Freeboota Orks (scroll to 3rd place) feature two Gorkanauts, and he's been doing pretty solidly with that list. However, I think his list is more akin to the "gunline"-Ork style Nick was referring to.

For vehicles, I'm just not a fan of the rules of any of the new buggies, with the notable exception of the Deffkilla Wartrike. Even that one is merely "ok", with the reason I take it in my current lists and why I'll probably take it in the vehicle-list being that it allows bikes and vehicles to charge after advancing. So, with the new buggies out, that leaves Kans, Dreads, 'nauts, trukks, old buggies, battlewagons, and the stompa as Ork vehicles. Oh, and the Forgeworld vehicles. Straight off, let's eliminate the non-'naut walkers. Dreads aren't awful, but I don't think they'll work unless you're tellyporting them, and Kans and Stompas need no rationalizing their exclusion. Old buggies aren't good, trukks are 100% about whats inside them, and the Forgeworld vehicles are either over-priced or too similar to something I've already hit on.

 

This leaves battlewagons and 'nauts in my mind. With the Dread WAAAGH! specialist detachment, you can double fire a 'naut in a turn, and with both of them packing lots of weapons and very good main guns, this makes their inclusion in a vehicle-heavy list worthwhile. I'm thinking one of each type; against hordes, Gorkanauts would be chosen to double-fire, putting out 36 S6 AP-1 shots, alongside their myriad of other guns. Against vehicles/monsters, the Morkanaut would have 6d3 S8 AP-3 Dd6 a turn. In addition, the Morkanaut could bring the KFF onto the battlefield. Now, I'm not 100% certain on this, but I think with the size of its base, that would effectively cover a massive area in the deployment, covering the Gorkanaut and some battlewagons even without using the stratagem to extend the size.

Speaking of battlewagons, as much as I'd love to just have them bristling with guns, it just isn't worth the points. Spending 48 points on 4 rokkit launchas, or even 20 points on 4 big shootas is pointless, and do not get me started on how bad the main weapon for a Gunwagon is. The reasons to take a battlewagon are: either T8 or open-topped for up to 20-models, and 6+ S9 AP-2 D2 attacks in assault. Those are beefy numbers, and I'm leaning towards 'ard case, because alongside the 'nauts, three battlewagons would give the list 84 T8 wounds. That's more than a triple knight list!**

Those five vehicles and the deffkilla still leave almost a thousand points to round out the list. I'm torn between running battlewagons with 20 boyz inside or bonebreakers with 10. The extra d6 attacks is appealing, and there'd be some left over points to take other stuff. Also, how important are command points to a list like this? There isn't a big unit of boyz to take advantage of Unstoppable Green Tide with, but there would be ample opportunity for More Dakka! and either Kustom Ammo or Showin' Off. On one hand, it's fairly trivial to fit two battalions and a spearhead into the army, with some grots for board control and weirdboyz for smite. On the other hand, if I skip that CP battery, I could probably find the points to take a pair of dakkajets. Probably not worth it, though.

So, my preliminary list would look like:

Blood Axe Battalion
Deffkilla Wartrike

Warboss in Mega-Armor

3x 10-Choppa Boyz

3x Bonebreaka

Blood Axe Battalion

2x Weirdboy

3x 10-Gretchin

Bad Moons Spearhead (Dread WAAAGH! specialist detachment)

Big Mek w/ SAG
Gorkanaut

Morkanaut

4x Mek Gunz w/ Smasha Gunz


I'm not positive on the clan choices. Bad Moons over Deathskullz because of the Gorkanaut, while the Morkanaut would avoid some mortal wounds. Blood Axe because extra save is always nice early in the game, but more importantly, Bonebreakas could fall back and charge again. However, it's unlikely an opponent wouldn't fall back themselves, so maybe some other clan. Goffs, for more attacks? Deathskullz for the re-rolls, and invulnerable outside of the KFF? Hell, Snakebites for extending their wounds? Ironically, Evil Sunz doesn't really seem to add that much, due to the high base movement.

I'm considering building this list and running it for the late part of the year, like for the SoCal Open. As much as I love horde Orks, it's exhausting to playing so hard against the clock, moving so many models around across three games in a day. This list has 74*** models, at least 30 of which wouldn't need to be deployed on the board. Hell, the list can be as few as 10 drops, across 13 models. Think of the exhaustion and back pain I could avoid!

Anyways, that was a long-winded reasoning for me thinking that maybe I'll be painting another 2-3 battlewagons and a 'naut in a third vow. Depending on how well the second vow goes.


* = Pictures coming, just waiting to ask my photographer (cough*mywife*cough) until I'm finished with the last model for the vow, since it's a day away from completion
** = Admittedly, with a worse invulnerable save and without the sheet number of weapons that make all those wounds on those knights so important to take out
*** = Technically, 94, because of the 20 grot gunners for the 4 guns. So far, I've had 0 issue in the 4 tournaments I've been to this year not putting the gunners around the gun, including at the LVO. They just don't serve a purpose behind slightly enlarging the footprint of the model.
 

[toaae]

Well, I finished my first vow of ETLVII. Four characters, including the titular Tortoof, are ready to krump on many battlefields across the stars:

 

 

I'll get individual photos of the Big Mek and Warboss later. Also, I made my second vow, as I discussed in the previous post. A trio of vehicles and 10 grots. I already can't wait.

 

Today also marks the last day of the 6-month, meaning we're basically halfway through the year! Well, almost. The first 6 months only have 181 days, and the second half of the year has 184. But we're close enough for me to evaluate my progress towards my goal this year: 300 days of hobby. I did a review of the first quarter at the end of March, so this will mostly cover the second quarter, with a wrap-up of everything I've done so far this year.

So, since April 1st, I've hobby'd for 83 days, out of a possible 91. This is astounding, as this means I only took one day off for every 9 days I was doing hobby stuff. My goal was to hobby for 6 days a week, so I crushed that, and have set myself up well for this fall, which is typically when my family and I do most of our vacations. I'll have plenty of extra days to skip hobby-ing, as I only need to complete 146 over the next 184.

 

The second quarter was quieter than the first, which makes sense as I didn't have to cram in getting a whole bunch of things up to a minimum standard for a major tournament like I did in January with LVO. I opened the quarter with my Warboss in Mega-Armor conversion. I also "saved" a bunch of second hand Lootas and painted almost half of them, finished painting a few things that were about halfway done, and of course, painted up my first ETLVII vow. In list form, I:

Assembled/Converted (688 points):

1x Warboss in Mega-Armor

1x Warboss

1x Big Mek w/ Shokk Attack Gun

1x Painboy

15x Lootas

20x Grots

 

Completed (674 points):

1x Warboss in Mega-Armor

1x Warboss

1x Big Mek w/ Shokk Attack Gun

1x Painboy

1x Weirdboy

1x Deffkilla Wartrike

7x Lootas

 

Combined with the first quarter, I have assembled and converted 1,553 points worth of stuff, and completed 930 points worth (with another 1,104 point at some stage of painting). I'm pretty happy with those numbers. Here's to the third quarter and second half of 2019!

Edited June 30, 2019 by toaae

[toaae]

Just wanted to update:

I had hoped to start working on the Bonebreaka for my vow, but between the holiday, time with family, and a little hobby lull lead me to not wanting to airbrush much. The Bonebreaka is just a terribly 2nd-hand model that I'm either going to strip, turn into terrain or (most likely for the foreseeable future) just keep around for large Apoc days, so I'm testing some airbrush and weathering techniques on it.

Since I didn't want to dive into that, I started working on the gretchin:

I've decided to sort of go overboard on all the colors, and this will be an ecliptic mixture of grots. I did a rough count in my head, and I think by the time I am done, I'll have used 30 different paints on them, spread between base, layer, contrast, technical, and texture. That's a paint per point for the unit! Probably not the most efficient use of my time during ETL, but what can you do? I'll be the articifer of gretchin, I suppose.

[FlamingDeth]

Man, I know they're not done, but in their present state they remind me of Ninja turtles and I mean that in the best way possible.

[toaae]

 

Never got around to posting a picture of the gretchin completed. And I still owe this thread quality pics of the Goff Warboss and the SAG Big Mek. I'm going to have to give my photographer a kick in the rear*.

So, this past weekend was Slaughterfest at the Pechanga Casino in Temecula, California. I had been very excited about the event up until last weekend, when Geoff Robinson's sudden passing sucked the air out of my eagerness. Let me tell you, it was a somber event at the start, with the Frontline Gaming guys clearly not being all-in on the event, and a moment of silence was held at the start for Geoff. The organizers, the Veteran Gamers Podcast, set up a table for Geoff, with a memorial they asked us to donate a dice or objective marker to. It was very nice.

Once dice started rolling, though, the energy picked up, and a good time was had. I had an exceptionally great first turn, knocking out two Doom Scythes before they could mess with me. But on my second turn, I made a crucial screening mistake, and the game unraveled from there. I'm not saying I would have won if it wasn't for that one mistake, but I do feel like I would have been in a strong position.

That loss was just the first of many, however. A matchup on a terrain-sparse board against Tau wasn't good for me (I do want to note that the terrain for the event was pretty great overall, this was just one table they had for variation where I got an unlucky match-up), and then I ran into a hard counter in the form of Catachan Guard, with three Valkyries and double-heavy flamer chimeras. The next day, I lost to an all-knight list on literally his last shot, giving him a 4-point swing. I finally won a game when I met another Ork player, and then I dropped before round 6. I had a good time, met more great people and had awesome conversations, but I wasn't playing for anything at that point, and getting home 3 hours early sounded like a good plan.

The biggest takeaway for me was that I am tired of playing a horde list. I've run mostly the same list since before LVO, and as much as I love the Ork horde, the green tide, I need to mix it up and do something different. I'm going to the Hammer of Wrath GT in Pasadena in two weeks, and I'm planning on running some version of my "Big Vehicles" ork list. I already have a bonebreaka and Gorkanaut painted to a minimum, 3-color standard:
 

 

And I have another Bonebreaka assembled and primed. I have the deffrolla sprues coming from GW, and another bonebreaka and 'naut on order from my club. I'm hoping that by next monday, I'll have all 5 of these Toughness 8 vehicles ready for an ITC tournament. I'm hoping to run 100% fully painted otherwise, so the list I'm running is less about the best version of it, and more a "proof of concept" test; I want to see if 84, T8 wounds can do what I think it can do. The list is:

Evil Sunz Battalion

Deffkilla Wartrike

Warboss in Mega-Armor

30 Shoota Boyz

2x 10 gretchin

3x Bonebreaka

Bad Moonz Battalion

Big Mek w/ KFF

Weirdboy

3x 10 gretchin

Bad Moonz Spearhead

Big Mek w/ SAG

Gorkanaut

Morkanaut w/ KFF

1 Smasha Gun Mek Gun

[toaae]

Well, my club couldn't get me another 'orkanaut and battlewagon this week, so I have to adjust for this weekend. I still want to use the two Bonebreakas and the Gorkanaut I have ready to go, so I'll be running with this:
 

Evil Sunz Battalion

Deffkilla Wartrike

Warboss in Mega-Armor

2x 30 Shoota Boyz

28 Choppa Boyz

2x Bonebreaka

Bad Moonz Battalion

Weirdboy

Weirdboy

3x 10 gretchin

Bad Moonz Battalion - Dread Waaaagh!

Big Mek w/ SAG

Big Mek w/ KFF

3x 10 gretchin

Gorkanaut

 

This also means I'll be working on completing the Gorkanaut for the ETL this week. There are 4 weeks left in this year's event, and I have to complete the first bonebreaka, the gorkanaut, and a dakkajet to finish my second vow. I'm thinking the Gorkanaut can be completed this week (fingers crossed my son cooperates). The Bonebreaka only needs some work to be "finished", so I'm hoping by Thursday of next week, I'll be working on the Dakkajet. Who knows, with some fortune and work, I might have time to vow maybe a character for a third vow in the last week.

[toaae]

Gorkanaut done:

 

 

 

Also, I promised some photos for the Big Mek and Warboss from my first vow, and here they finally are:

 

[toaae]

Been a hot minute, but that's not a sign that I've fallen off. I finished the Dakkajet for my second ETLVII vow, and then this month I finished my index Big Mek conversion. Here's some photos (my homemade lightbox isn't really working out):

 

 

 

 

I'm also working on some non-greenskin things, but I've got a lot of Orks left to paint this year!

Edited September 22, 2019 by toaae

[toaae]

So today marks the start of Q4 of 2019, and since I've done a first quarter review and a second quarter review, you can be damned sure I'm doing a third quarter review.

 

This quarter was quieter than the previous, by a pretty noticeable margin. On September 30th, I completed my 227th day of hobby for my goal of 300 days of hobby, which while still putting me ahead of the curve, means I only did 73 days out of the 92 of the quarter. In Q2 I did 83 of 91, so I missed a lot more days over the past three months. I'm still good, but I risk not meeting my goal if I have a repeat of this quarter, and I certainly can't do less.

As for what I accomplished in those 73 days, this is a more impressive list, mostly on the weight of how many points each model was worth. In truth, I only did a few things, but they were all big, so the tally is:

 

Assembled/Converted (1,133 points):

1x Gorkanaut

1x Morkanaut

3x Bonebreakas

 

Completed (748 points):

1x Gorkanaut

1x Bonebreaka

1x Dakkajet

1x Big Mek

10x Gretchin

 

A picture:

 

Year-to-date, I've assembled and converted 2,686 points of Orks, and have completed 1,791* points! I'm a lock-in for getting more than 2000 points done in 2019. I keep saying this, but this is my most productive year, ever. And in 16 years of hobbying, I'm mighty pleased with that.

 

 

*= There is a discrepancy with my last quarter update; I'm not sure what was missing, but this is the correct year-to-date total.

Edited October 2, 2019 by toaae

[Warbringer]

Well done sir good progress! I'm at 750points painted in the last 3 months and hoping to get to 1500 by Christmas Built i have more now but good to see your achievements.

 

Love the look of the Gorkanaught, i went with a stompa in the end.

[toaae]

Haven't posted in 4 weeks, but that doesn't mean I haven't been working. I started this month knocking out another unit of Gretchin and then moved on to my Morkanaut. I literally finished the 'naut as my wife was putting my son in the car to take me to the carpool I took to SoCal Open. I need to get better photos of it, but here's those grots:

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

This past weekend was the SoCal Open, and I took my "Big Vehicles" list:

Evil Sunz Battalion

Warboss in Mega Armor

Weirdboy

28 Shoota Boyz

2x 10 Gretchin

Bad Moonz Battalion - Dread WAAAGH!

Big Mek w/ KFF
Big Mek w/ SAG

3x 10 Gretchin

Gorkanaut

Morkanaut w/ KFF

Deathskullz Spearhead

Deffkilla Wartrike

3x Bonebreakas

2 Mek Gunz with Smasha Guns

This is still the first version of the list I made. I took it to one RTT and played 3 other games with it; I just didn't have much opportunity to iterate on it. Furthermore, I was 2-4 in those games, with three straight loses. I made the list hoping that it would counter an anti-horde meta that I thought might emerge after the Castellan was nerfed. Instead, vehicles have popped up everywhere, and as such, the meta became very anti-vehicle. Toughness 8 is great, but not good enough to overcome the amount of anti-tank weapons out there, and I wasn't seeing success with the list, the biggest blow coming against an Aeldari list that just played "the floor is lava", leaving my bonebreakas nothing to do but sit on objectives. So I wasn't too optimistic about my chances. In my tweet about finishing the Morkanaut, I even asked for wishes of good luck, because "my list is so bad."

I finished 3-3, and within shouting distance of 4-2.

So I'm probably more lucky than I am good at predicting metas. I'm thinking that between the Space Marine release and the Iron Hands nerf, more people were focused on anti-heavy infantry. Also, I was certainly lucky with who I got for my first game, as well as lucky with my Shock Attack Gun on day 2. Whatever the reason, I managed to finish with a dead even record and in the top 50% of the field. I could go into every game, but it's not going to be that interesting and I don't have enough photos to really do it right. Instead, I'll just say I had a great time, caught up with a lot of people I've met since returning to competitive 40k last year (at SoCal, no less), met a bunch of new people, had 5 amazing games (only one stinker), and just cannot wait for LVO.

I had planned to return to a more regular, horde Ork list after SoCal, but now I'm reconsidering. I'm thinking that the boyz mob didn't do much for me, either making a charge to kill something have their points or less before dying, or failing the charge entirely, just to then die. Dropping them gives me the points to turn the Spearhead into a third Battalion, giving me the ability to double-fire my SAG and 'nauts for another full turn. In addition, Warhammer Legends is coming (sadly), so I've got to start thinking of tournament life after the Index. I've got some ideas brewing, so we'll see what sticks in my mind come the new year.

Anyways, with SoCal done, I'm taking a break from painting Orks. I don't know how long it will last, it never does, but I fully intend to be back to painting greenskinz by the end of November. We'll see if I make it that long.

Some pictures from the event:

Game 1, my boyz after they Da Jumped and killed a Vindicare assassin. The opponent was an Inquisition army, featuring 3 Land Raider Prometheuses. In the battle of T8 vehicles, I came out on top.

Game 2 was against Lou Rollins, who won the ITC hobby track last year. His stuff is beautiful, and a real inspiration to a hobbyist like me who is a painter first, gamer second. I lost a tight game that came down to the final turn. Simply an amazing game.

Mega-Tyrant Tortoof, moments before punking a Watch-Captain that had the audacity to charge the brute:

Game 3 was against a Raven Guard list that I just wasn't ready to play against. Nothing to note here, it was a painful game and I was happy when it was over. Honestly, the least interactive game of 40k I think I've ever played. Anyways, here's wonderwall (or, my attempt at castling):

Game 4 was against an Aeldari player. I wish I had taken photos of his army; it was painted by his friend and I loved the pale, teal look of the Asuryani, as well as the dark navy blue of the Drukhari. This game saw my SAG consistently deliver 7+ shots at S5+, three explosions that rocked his lines while I never once suffered on in mine, and the undying Morkanaut that sealed the victory for me. This picture is the aftermath of one of the explosions. Missing from the picture: the storm guardians who took 5 mortal wounds and ran way, the rangers who took 5 mortal wounds and got blown off the table, the Warlock who also died, and the Bonebreaka who exploded so magnificently.

Edited October 30, 2019 by toaae

[Kolgrim DeathHowl]

Great conversions and painting! Really love the war  bike it looks super cool!

[toaae]

Great conversions and painting! Really love the war  bike it looks super cool!

 

Thanks! I would love to finish painting the Warboss on Warbike before he hits Warhammer Legends, but my docket is full through the end of January. Oh well, what can you do?