Loads of Metal Space Ork Stuff

 Time for some orks! The more I think about it, the more convinced I am that 3rd edition Warhammer 40,000 was a time of great disaster. It's definitely the point where the great grimdarking of Warhammer began, and the orks were hit especially badly by this. With the possible exception of some gretchin, I don't think any of the old models survived into the 2000s, which is a great shame. Still, the blood of martyrs is the heresy of eternal war, or something.

So, without further ado, here are some more old orks! 

First up, we've got two metal minis: a freebooter bad doc (that's a pirate mad medic) and a mek with a burner/flamer. These are such nice models. The detail of the sculpting is terrific on both models, with loads of cool touches. I particularly like the way that the mek is sculpted like a welder, rather than a soldier with a flamethrower. The doc is one of the meanest-looking old orks, and even by greenskin standards he's an ugly customer. The only bum note for me is the small hand hanging from his ear. I painted it like an earring or perhaps a decoration on his shoulder armour. 

Then here are two randos. The guy on the left is a Space Crusade plastic ork. He's not the greatest model in history, but he's got a certain goofy charm, and there's lots of space on the model to embellish him. On the right, there's a metal madboy with a custom weapon.

Madboys were an odd feature of the very complex 2nd Ed ork rulebook. They seemed to be suffering from various forms of delusion and mental illness, which probably wouldn't be treated so comically today, and gave the sculptors the opportunity to make orks with great facial expressions. This chap, I think, is feeling down. He is wearing an apron, and has some little tools in his belt, so perhaps he's a mek who is nervous about firing the ridiculous gun that he's just built.

And here are two plastic boys from the original ork boys set. They're a bit step down from the metal models, of course, and come in two weird poses: squatting as if about to have a poo, and creeping away to the right. Anyhow, they've come out alright, and bulk up the numbers reasonably well.

But that's not all! For the first time on this blog, I present... the ork wartrak.

Back in the ancient past of 1989, there were very few plastic vehicles (four, I think). Instead, ork buggies and the like were made of metal parts that you had to stick together. I found one of these, a wartrak, on ebay minus its mounted lascannon, and so I bought it.

Ye gods, this thing was a swine to put together. We can (sometimes rightly) complain about the complexity of modern plastic kits, but this thing was terrible. I pinned it, used green stuff and superglue, and every other trick I could think of, but it was a terrible struggle to get it to stay together.

It didn't help that I had to improvise a gun out of an old plastic bit (I've no idea where that came from), some plasticard and a sight off an modern Skitarri gun. I put it on a base for some small level of stability: back in 1989, you just plonked it on the tabletop.

Anyhow, at last I painted it, and quickly realised how much easier it would have been if I'd not stuck it together first. I gave the orks lighter skin than usual, just to make them stand out from their machine. I think these guys are probably Evil Suns, given that they use a lot of red, but they could still fit with the other chaps.

So there we are! Old orks is da best orks. Nuff said.

Kroot Lone-Spear Bird Rider

 A couple of posts back, I mentioned projects that I'd acquired ages ago and not got around to finishing. This week, I turned to a model that I bought at a show in the golden age of 2015 or so. It's some kind of large bird, from (I think) Reaper. It's certainly made of some sort of rubbery white plastic, like their earlier (not very good) Bones miniatures. I think it might be something to do with the RPG Numenera.

Anyhow, I've been looking for a rider for this creature for ages. I thought it might work well as a Kroot riding beast. The original model had odd little wings and a very strange lower jaw, so I removed them.

 

I had a pair of Kroot legs - well, a pair missing one leg below the knee, so I'd have to make a bionic one. That was fine, but I had no body. So, I made a T-shape out of sprue as a basis for the upper body, and sculpted around it.

I recently saw some superb sculpting by a guy called "pax acrylica" on Instagram. It seemed that he was using a mix of green stuff and milliput, and I thought I'd give that a try. I found that this worked really well: the resulting mixture was softer than green stuff but lacked the slightly grainy, clay-like quality of milliput, and dried hard with a smooth texture like dry soap. I'd strongly recommend trying this.

This made a decent body, and I sculpted a cloak to cover the back of it, so I wouldn't have to do the shoulder musculature. I sculpted a saddle, some straps, and a weird beaky lower jaw for the bird creature. I added some reins, made out of string, which I slightly regret. String seems to always be a bit frayed when I use it on miniatures, as if it's coming to bits. Maybe if I soaked it in PVA first, it might work better. Anyhow, that was pretty much it. I trimmed his gun down a bit, and added a couple of pieces to the base to strengthen the bird's wobbly legs. 

And now for paint!

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To be honest, I nearly didn't post this at all. I simply couldn't take a half-decent picture of this model. Everything was either too dark or washed out - and trust me, whatever you might be thinking that I'm doing wrong, I have tried to rectify. Nothing works. There are quite a few models that I've painted now - the random space people seem to be particularly prone to this - which I just can't photograph. I have wondered whether to continue with this blog, as it's hard to be enthusiastic when I can't display my models - which is, after all, the point. I probably will continue, but I expect the updates will be less frequent.

Krootox Repair Shop

 

After last week's great big Tau robot, I thought that I'd have another look at their friends, the Kroot. The Kroot are ferocious scaly monsters who fight as allies/mercenaries for the Tau, and fill a close-combat role that the Tau can't. 

The Kroot seem to have evolved from birds, and have a slightly parrot-like look (they also come from a planet called Pech, which I'm sure is pronounced "peck"). Actually, given that birds evolved from dinosaurs, it seems safe to say that the Kroot are dinosaur-people, but this probably isn't the place to go down the genuinely fascinating rabbit holes of avian intelligence and what might have happened if the asteroid had missed. 

Anyhow, there are now loads of different Kroot units, and very nice they are too. Back in the old days, though, there were three: Kroot carnivores (ie warriors), Kroot hounds (attack dogs) and Krootox (a bloke on a gorilla-bird thing with a heavy weapon). They also had leaders, one of which is one of my favourite models ever, but more of that some other time.

This is the metal Krootox and rider. At least, it's most of the metal Krootox: it was missing the rider's upper body and gun. We may carp about the over-designing of modern models, but this thing was a complete pig to assemble, and a lot of milliput was required to fill the many gaps. I used plastic Kroot warrior parts for the upper body, although I had to improvise the left arm out of Green Stuff and paperclips. The gun barrel comes from an Empire outrider, and seems to be a primitive rocket launcher. I've always had a liking for people riding weird alien beasts, although I suspect that as soon as this guy fires his gun, the recoil will knock him over, and the Krootox (whose head is directly under the barrel) will run off towards the horizon, possibly returning to gore its former rider.

I also took the chance to tidy up my old Kroot carnivores, and to add a few details. They're not perfect, but they look a lot better than they did. They're slightly converted for some more dynamic poses.

So that's the Kroot for now. See you next time!