More Gubbinz

I probably should have stayed focused on getting the rest of my grots painted up in time for the campaign, but as is oft the case, I got distracted by another shiny idea and ended up spending a few days making gubbinz instead.  In addition to my lovely spikes and shoutas, Deezo now has a set of boarding planks and a big grabba.

The boarding planks were my first adventure into the realm of magnetization.  I had originally intended building magnetized gubbinz when I was first assembling my trakk, but unfortunately I wasn't even able to get a weapon, let alone a full set of gubbinz completed in time for the start of our first campaign.  I've still got a long way to go (plus two other vehicles that could use some love), but my trakk is growing into quite the monster.

Oh, I also gave myself the option to swap out the big grabba for a wrecka ball, just in case...

Anyway, since this was all being done after the whole trakk was assembled and painted, I had to go about it a bit differently than I had envisioned in the beginning.  Since the planks were detachable, I didn't trust the normal hinges, which weren't very deep.  I ended up putting a pin in each side, which didn't quite line up with the center of the hinge.  There was a lot of friction and sheering stress when you rotated it at first, but it seemed to eventually bend or warp itself into shape so that both planks rotate quite freely now.

There wasn't enough room between the truck bed and the tracks to slide the planks in between them (to say nothing of installing magnets), so I made some small platforms to extend the bed out over the tracks.  I wanted them to be as sturdy as possible, so I also gave each platform two long planks with some pins that would be glued to the bed.  Even with just a dry fitting, it held the platforms on pretty tight, so I'm pretty sure that they're not going anywhere.

Next up was the big grabba.  I was quite fond of Cygnus' use of the Battlewagon grabba on his big trakk, but I didn't want to just copy him outright.  I decided to base my grabba off a big mek power klaw, which had a nice robotic look to it, but was much too small to grab an ork.  The obvious solution to this problem was to bulk it up with a ton of plasticard and sprue.

While I'm pretty pleased with the end result, it was far from a smooth conversion.  Due to poor planning and a few holes that I drilled less than straight, this claw is pinned in somewhere between seven and nine different places.  There are five pins in the "wrist" portion alone.

Fortuately, the arm portion was much more straightforward.  Most of it is made from a Killa Kan arm, with a bit of shoota added on to give it some length.  The arm, shoota, and claw were all connected by a single long pin that ran down the middle of all three, so at least I know I don't screw these things up all the time.

Considering how long the big grabba is and how far forward its center of gravity is, I didn't trust the thin copper wire that I used to make the interchangeable weapon for my slaver, so I got some thin brass pipe to connect both my grabba and the wrecka ball to the vehicle.  The tube it slides into was build onto one of the boarding plank platforms.  The wrecka ball didn't have many changes made to it, other than adding a lot more spiky bits to the ball itself.

The finished gubbinz looked pretty good attached to the trakk.  The platforms for the boarding plank now make my trakk super wide (which can be a big deal in Gorkamorka), but not any wider than it is with all of its spikes attached, so I can live with it.

The big grabba looks surprisingly good painted up, considering what a hodgepodge of sprue and plasticard it actually is.  The mechanical bits that I used to cover up the huge chunks of sprue that made the wrist are a pair of vox casters that I happened to have lying around.  I thought I'd try my hand again at hazard stripes, and I'm fairly pleased by the results.  Ties it in nicely to Grizwoad's choppa.

 I also made a little control panel to control the hydraulics.

The wrecka ball also turned out quite nice, though it probably won't get a ton of play because of how much fun big grabbas are.  Maybe I need to add a mount to the back of my little flamecar...

So if my big trakk wasn't over-the-top enough before, it's certainly a lot more ridiculous now.  Proper Orky.  Although now that I'm to this point, I can't help thinking that it could really use a reinforced ram...maybe a mine layer too...

Sadly, finishing up the gubbinz took up the whole week before the start of the new campaign, so only half of my runts got painted in time to play.  I've also gotten terribly behind in my blogging, so I need to get caught up on all the events of our mini-campaign.  Until next time...

Dakka Grot

Snikshok, my shoota grot is all painted up.  I think he turned out pretty well.  Since he's basically dressed like a ninja, the model is overall a bit on the dark side, though the bright red of his goggles and scarf, as well as the few bits of skin he has showing help to balance it a bit.

I'm now officially half way through painting my Gretchin Herd, which has turned out to be a rather daunting task.  I do like how the models have turned out so far, so I guess I can't complain.

More Grot Conversions

I managed to get a few more grots ready to go.

This guy is mostly made from the Ork Mek Gun crew, with a nasty spiked wrench club from one of the Poxwalker sets.  The rivet gun in his other hand will probably just count as a slugga.

This is the only grot model that I didn't really convert at all.  He's just built out of some of the bitz from the Mek Gun crew.

This one got his original hand lopped off and a nice slugga pinned on in its place.  He also has one of the more unusual pairs of goggles I came up with during this project.  I guess we'll see how they look after they get painted.  The gears he's standing on are more of the random robotic parts that are all over my desk now.

The final grot is also a fairly simple conversion, mostly just adding a pair of goggles.

With the length of time it's taking me to paint all these grots, these guys might not be painted in time for the campaign.  If I'm lucky, maybe I'll have two of the four ready to go.  I guess we'll see soon enough.

New Recruits

At last, the first batch of new recruits is ready to join my Gorkamorka mob.  As usual, I over-complicated both the models and their bases, so it took me quite a while to get these three painted up.  Still, I'm quite pleased with how they turned out.

Zhak's cogwheel club turned out quite well, as did his goggles.  I'm also quite pleased with the color scheme for their skin, which was one of the reasons I decided to paint him first.

This guy started off with few conversions and a pretty simple base, but he got one of the more involved paint jobs.  I quite like how the patterns turned out, so I might use them again on some of my other grots.

The Poxwalker club on this guy turned out great, but paint-wise, I think my favorite part of this model is just how well his t-shirt turned out.  Just a really nice shade of grey.

So I've finally got the beginnings of a grot herd for my Morkers.  We'll see how many more models I can get finished in time for the next campaign.

Gunner Runt

The next converted grot for my Morker Mob is ready.  This is Snikshok, the most heavily armed of my space gobbos, armed to da teef with both a shoota and choppa.  He's also the most heavily converted of the bunch.  His torso is the ammo runt from the Lootas sprue, while his bottom half is from one of the Night Goblins from Battle for Skull Pass.  His head is just one of the standard Gretchin heads, with some goggles added.

I actually ended up chopping his hand off and pinning it back on so that I could reposition his shoota a bit.  It was a bit of a hassle, since I already had to pin his waist together, but I think it was worth it.  I'm quite pleased with the overall composition.

I ended up making greenstuff robes to make his top half match his bottom.  I also made a bit of a scabbard to strap his choppa to his back.  As with the rest of my mob, his desert base is going to end up more scrap than sand, but at least he will match the others.

Four grots down, four to go...

Space Goblins

Things have been a little crazy lately, so I'm a bit behind on my work for the new campaign.  I did, however, finally get a chance to start converting some grots so I can justify taking my dapper runtherd.

This is Zhak, the first of my converted Gretchin.  Since my Morker Mob is mostly a bunch of crazy Spanner Boyz, I decided I'd keep the mechanic theme going through my grots as well.  I decided to give this guy a nice Cogwheel Club, using some robotics parts I got from China.  I also decided that furry loincloths looked a bit out of place in my mob (furry outfits seems to be more of a Digga fashion statement, unbecoming of a sophisticated ork mob), so I converted it into a simple cloth affair.

Twik here got the same treatment with a greenstuff loincloth and a pair of goggles.  As you might have noticed, I went through several iterations with my goggle making.  I got much better as I went on, but a few of my early attempts, like these, actually turned out rather nice, so I ended up using them after all.  I actually chopped this guy's hand off accidentally (one of the hazards of trying to convert a bunch of grots at once) and had to pin it back on.  Fortunately, you can't really tell, which I guess is as much as you could hope for with pinning.

Finally, we have Krik, who is the example to the rest of the mob as to why you always wear your goggles.  His left hand is from the new Poxwalker set, which happens to be mostly armed with nasty looking pieces of scrap, which work perfectly for Gorkamorka, though only a few have normal five-fingered hands like this one.

Anyway, that's all for now, but more grots are coming soon.

The End of the Road

After some intense competition, our Gorkamorka campaign has finally come to an end.  Sadly, we were all a bit rushed for this one, so not all the mobs are fully painted and a few big chunks of scenery were also not quite finished when we played.  Still, it was a day filled with twists and turns and a dramatic (if not unexpected) finish.

Our first game took place at a Mektown Brewhouse, where our nobs were up to their usual drinking and brawling, unaware that an ambush was about to take place.

As the four mobs began to coalesce around the brewhouse in an effort to double-cross each other (or double-cross the double-crossers), my nob, Grizwoad was hurled out a rear window.  Fortunately, Deezo, his big trakk was parked nearby, so he went to rouse the driver and start gettin' da boyz together.

Meanwhile, Chad was casually (and somewhat suspiciously) walking out the front door of the brewhouse, where Urzig's trukk was parked. 

Whie Urzig was still inside brawling, Chad made a dash for the trukk, hoping to take out the unsuspecting driver before he knew what hit him.

One of Chad's boyz also made a move on Marvolork's mob, using the jump pack he'd won in the first race to get the drop on them

Unfortunately, Chad's careful strategic maneuvers were no match for Urzig's brute strength, and soon both he and Marvolork were fleeing for their lives, leaving Urzig and Grizwoad to rule the streets of Mektown.

Thus far, Grizwoad and his gang had been doing quite well.  Apart from one spanner that got ambushed by Urzig's boyz, the rest of the gang had made it to the trukk and piled in.  They still had all their scrap and had mostly avoided any fighting apart from a few of Chad's boys, whom they had run off with relative ease.

In retrospect, the gang should have driven off the table with their winnings right then, but at the time, that seemed rather un-Orky.  Instead I decided to plow through Urzig's scattered forces and get a few more shots off before the game ended.

The outcome of the ensuing fight wasn't bad per se.  My mob's shooting (not to mention my lovely spikes) kept Urzig at bay and everyone in the mob got out unscratched.  Unfortunately, Urzig's mob decided to shoot out my trakks, reducing my movement to five, then four, until by the end of the game my big trakk was only moving three inches on its gas engines and two for each thrust.  I offered to simply concede, but my opponent insisted on dragging the game out another half hour until my trakk finally was able to limp off the table.

The second round found my mob facing off once more against their old foes, Chad and his Ork bros.  They were by far the leaders in the campaign, while my mob was battling for third with Marvolork's.  This time, however, I had my whole mob and they were looking forward to avenging Abby Sr's untimely demise.

Deployment was a little bit tricky, as we'd each placed a large unexploded bomb in the other's deployment zone.  I ended up with my forces split along two flanks, while Chad and his mob were mostly grouped around his heavily armed trukk,which had won a Kustom Force Field in the previous race.  He'd also acquired a number of bikes, and since he was rollin' in teef, he'd made them all 'eavier.  It was quite an imposing force for my tiny mob.

My big trakk rolled forward to contest a few pieces of scrap near a rickety lookout tower.  Chad's trukk took up position in the center arch while two bikes and his jump pack boy raced around to flank me.  Fortunately, the crew were able to lay down enough dakka to stop most of his vehicles in their tracks, and we ended up with a fairly stationary battle line for the rest of the game.

On the other side, one of his bikers rammed Abby Jr. and Shifty head-on, immobilizing both vehicles. Since both vehicles were 'eavy, their wrecks were all but impervious to fire from a standard shoota.  As such, neither side dared leave the safety of their smoking debris and instead proceeded to have a lengthy shootout at just out of arm's reach.

A second bike tried to race across no man's land to break the stalemate but was deftly felled by a single shot from Grizwoad's gun.

While all this was going on, Toast managed to get his brand new flamecar all the way around Chad and his boyz and came up behind the whole mob.

Before they knew what hit them, Toast's skorcha had engulfed half their mob in flames.  Chad's boyz bottled out, leaving nearly all the scrap for Grizwoad.  With the bonuses for taking out a mob that was well over a hundred points ahead of me, this was easily my best game of the campaign.

Unfortunately, my fellow Morker Mob was not faring so well.  On the other table, Urzig had finally managed to take out Marvolork, leaving his mob nobless.

Going into the final race, the stakes were as high as ever.  Chad was within a few points of winning the campaign, but after taking a beating in the first two games, his victory wasn't yet certain.  Marvolork was dead and I had no chance of passing them in one game, but if our boys managed to shut out the Gorkers (or if Urzig and Chad didn't survive the battle) we might keep the game going.

The race began and I was off to a great start.  My two trakks raced forward while the other trukks and buggies spun and crashed.  Chad and Urzig each had a biker that was keeping pace, but neither had the firepower to slow me down.

Marvolork's racers, as had become their signature, got off to a rocky start.  Barely a car-length down the track, they were already stuck in a pileup.

Urzig had his own signature move at this point, and, as usual, jumped out of his trukk to start causing chaos.  He leapt aboard Marvolork's big trakk to try to take out the mob that was already firmly in last place.  Unfortunately for Urzig, his first target was Grokkenstern, who had recently been given a pair of De-Lux Kicking Legs while visiting the Docs for a completely unrelated issue.  Grokkenstern was flung from the vehicle, but Urzig was laid out by a well-placed boot to the head.  Seeing a chance to take out his rival once and for all, Chad rushed in to finish off the downed Urzig.

Unfortunately for Chad, Urzig had become a nigh unkillable combat machine, and the dastardly nob got a taste of his own medicine as he was beat unconscious by Urzig for the third straight race in a row.

Quite used to watching their boss get beat up at this point, Chad's mob pressed on, weaving through the jumble of vehicles while also avoiding their own land mines which they had strewn about the track.

At the end of the first curve, Chad's biker, Michael, had pulled out in front, with the rest of the drivers in close pursuit.  In fact, at this point, everyone still had a shot.  Even Marvolork's two vehicles managed to catch up to the pack.

As the racers passed the big arch, however, things went awry once again.

Urzig's trukk crashed on the inside lane, forcing the other racers to swerve around the rock spire, to varying degrees of success.  Soon there was yet another pileup, and the larger vehicles found victory slipping away from them once again.

And so Chad's biker, Michael, won our third and final race, placing their mob firmly in first place and ending the campaign.  Chad recovered from his wounds, robbing Urzig of a the satisfaction of killing his long-time rival.

Despite placing a distant third, my mob actually performed quite well.  Looking purely at win-lose ratios, I did even better than Urzig's mob (and better than Chad if you don't count the races), though because we were tweaking some of the rules along the way, my early losses put me at a disadvantage that I was never able to recover from.

Our current plan is to do a mini-campaign in about a month or so to hopefully rebalance a few of the rules that were causing us problems.  That also means that unless I want to run another mob that's 50 percent Spanner Boyz, I need to start converting some more mobsters.

And here's my not-last-place Morker Mob in all its glory!