Sporty Desert Trakk

The first of my mob's vehicles is done!  It's a pretty straightforward trakk, as I actually quite like the design of the standard GW Ork Wartrakk.  Most of the conversions were just fixing it up, rather than trying to change the overall style of the model.

The main problem, of course, was the crew.  The ones that come included in the model are tiny compared with the current Ork Boyz, so I went about making a new driver, mostly out of an Ork Biker.

The arms that come with the Warbiker Mob are actually attached to the handlebars, which isn't really a big deal, but looks a bit awkward when you have to remove the driver.  Instead, I cut up one of the open handed arms from the Boyz sprue and pinned it in place so that it could rest on top of the handlebars.  I was actually able to use some of the arm that I had cut off to fill the gap back in, which meant that I didn't have to completely resculpt his muscles.  I also gave him a smile to match the other members of the mob.

I bought the Wartrakk on eBay, and it unfortunately came with one of the handlebars broken off.  I decided that the original ones looked a bit small on such a large vehicle, so I made my new ones a bit bigger.  They're made mostly out of some old Chaos Marauder spears with some more Sicarian Ruststalker bits for the throttle.  I made sure to pin them on so that they don't get broken off the first time this thing tips over.  I was probably a bit overcautious, as I think the pin runs halfway up the handlebars, but you can never be too sure.

Overall, I'm pretty satisfied with the way the trakk turned out.  Nothing fancy, but I'm still quite fond of it.  I have named my driver Abby, on account of his great abs.  He's just a yoof, but Morker yoofs can get drivin' skills, so hopefully he'll do a good job.

 

Now I just need to finish my Big Trakk and I'll be ready for our first game.

Ork Dentistry

I finally finished converting my Nob for my Gorkamorka mob.  The metal plate bolted to his head just counts as a helmet for now, but we'll see how his trips to the Doc go during the campaign.  I gave him a big choppa in the hopes that at least one of my mobsters can do some damage if I get boarded.  I quite like how the little Ork skeleton on his base turned out, though it's kind of hard to see on the table because the choppa kind of covers it up,

My choice of the Biker Nob head wasn't particularly conducive to my plan to give all my mobsters huge grins.  I almost gave up and just gave him an Iron Gob, but it didn't really fit over his huge tusks.  In the end, I ended up carving out most of his teeth, then reinserting a few of them that came out intact.

He ended up having a really goofy expression, but it kind of grew on me while I was painting him up. 

Now all that remains is to finish up the vehicles and their drivers.  With any luck, I should have a complete mob in a few days.

Gorkamorka Morker Mob

After a great deal of coercion, I have begun work on a Morker mob for my friend's Gorkamorka campaign.  It's a bit hard to find the old Gorkamorka Spanner Boyz these days, so I set out to convert my own.  I also always thought that it was a bit odd that the Games Workshop Spanners were generally less armored and less heavily-armed than the other Ork models.  They even used to paint them a lighter color of green, which always made them seem a bit more like newly hatched Yoofs than aspiring Meks.

In any case, my main goal was to recreate the two old Spanner Boyz, one with a welding torch and one with a bag of tools, using mostly bits from plastic Orks.

I decided to build the welding torch out of a bit of plastic tube and some copper wire.  The business end of the torch is the hilt of a Sicarian Ruststalker sword.  The wrench is from a charm bracelet.

While I like the Ork plastics, I found the choice of dozens of different snarling faces a little bit underwhelming for making a Gorkamorka mob.  I really like Paul Bonner's artwork and the amount of character that he is able to give to his Orks.   To that end, I decided (for better or for worse) that I was going to sculpt smiles onto all of my mobsters.  I also decided that I'd give this guy goggles to match his buddy.  As I recall, I made them by slicing up a couple different sizes of spears.

 I had to fiddle with the goggles quite a bit to get them to fit him right.  The end result is that the two lenses are slightly askew, which actually ended up looking kind of cool once I painted it.  He ended up looking particularly deranged.

As much as I liked the charm bracelet wrench, I wanted to keep all my Spanners looking unique, so I decided to scratch-build a pipe wrench for the next one.  I started with a choppa from the Savage Ork sprue (I think), cut down the blade and added some other bits and some plasticard.  The teeth on the wrench are the bottoms of two shoota magazines and the threads for adjusting it came from an Imperial Guard vox caster.  The rest of the vox caster got turned into a makeshift radio that the Spanner carries around in his pack.  His face took a lot less sculpting (though his arms took a fair amount of work to reposition) than the other Spanner.  I added some little balls of green stuff to make the lenses of his goggles convex so that I could paint them up like the other one as well as the obligatory smile.

This spanner ended up with a rather eclectic assortment of gizmos in his pack, including the aforementioned radio, a spare wrench, a hammer (another purchase from the charm bracelet store), and some assorted munitions.

All things considered, not a bad start for my Morker mob.  Next on the agenda is converting up a Nob to lead them in their quest for scrap and glory.