Fort Construction: Shanty Town

 

In most mobs on Gorkamorka, the nob and spanners would just curl up to sleep in their beloved vehicles, but other members of the mob probably get booted out once the comfy spots are taken. I'd imagine that a few industrious grots could nick a few sheets of metal and build themselves a nice hovel, while the yoofs in the gang could also nick a few sheets of metal...and make the grots build them a nice hovel.

I wanted to sort of give the impression not just that this section of wall contained the mob's sleeping quarters, but that the walls were probably honeycombed with little nooks and crannies that the mobsters had either purposefully left while constructing the fort, or hollowed out at some point.

Unsurprisingly, I used a rather eclectic range of materials to build this little shanty town. There's lots of plasticard, some bits of random toys, a bit of green stuff, and some tiny cast details. Also plenty of bolts and rivets.

Overall, it certainly doesn't look like the greatest of living conditions out in the deserts of Gorkamorka, but I have some friends in San Francisco who've definitely paid to rent worse places.

Fort Construction: More Storage

 

I figured that my fort needed some additional supplies like food and ammo (and plenty of booze) to keep the mob running, so I made another little spot for stashing supplies behind one of the walls.

I had a bunch of Necromunda crates that looked pretty appropriate for Gorkamorka, but a bit too pristine. After a bit of fiddling around, I decided that I needed quite a bit of variation in the crates to make them look proper Orky, so I ended up making a few of my own out of plasticard and green stuff.  I also made a few wooden crates. Although wood is pretty scarce on Gorkamorka, it seemed like a good way to store a bunch of tasty mushrooms.

In the end, I made more crates than would actually fit under the wall, so I might not be able to get them all on the finished product. Or I'll have to get a bit creative with my stacking. We'll see.

Fort Construction: Spare Parts

 

Now that my mob has a way to gas up their trakks, the next thing they needed were some spare parts for making repairs and building gubbinz. I picked another section of the wall that needed some sprucing up and added a storage area.

Most of the bits for this section came from the various scrap piles that you get in Ork terrain kits. In fact, if you look closely (or not really that closely), you'll notice that I made quite liberal use of the scrap piles and Orky barricades as I was adding detail to the various wall sections.

Although the scrap piles have a lot of really nice detail, they're basically just big hollow domes with detail pressed into their surface, which makes it pretty challenging to dismantle them into individual parts. I was essentially left with half of a bunch of parts, which I just rearranged into a different sort of junk pile. It worked pretty well considering what I had to work with. And I got lots of use out of my Dremel. 

The Ork terrain has quite a bit of Imperial iconography scattered around it, which makes sense in most Ork settings, but much less so on Gorkamorka.  While most of the scrap on the planet originally came from Imperial ships and vehicles (and who knows how many alien vessels might have been part of the 'Ulk), these bits have been recycled over and over again for hundreds of years. With the exception of the Muties, it seems unlikely that anyone would have a centuries-old heirloom toolbox with a perfectly preserved Aquila, so most of those details got filed off.

A few of the bigger details like tires are just blue tacked onto the piece for now, since it seems like they'll be easier to paint separately. I think most of the empty floor space will probably end up with stuff on it eventually.

Fort Construction: Fuel Tank

 

You can't have an entire gang of Morkers riding around in the desert all day long without someplace to gas up their buggies when they get home, so I added a nice fuel tank to one section of my fort. I made the tank out of a tall, thin soda can, but since I'm pretty obsessed with making my terrain as durable as possible, I made sure to fill it with expanding foam before adding it to the fort.  It's still not immune to getting dented, but it should be at least durable as the rest of the wall section.

I added plenty of pipes on the inside, mostly made from some kids' building sets. I actually went through a number of these sorts of sets before settling on this one (although a lot of terrain builders are big fans of this one), but the others had joints made from more bendable, rubber-like materials. Again, since durability is an important factor for me, I try to avoid bendable components that could flex and crack off their paint. 

This section turned out really well and is certainly one of the more characterful sections of the fort so far. Excited to see how it looks all painted up.

Fort Construction: Ladders

 

One important aspect of any fort (especially as far as the rules are concerned) is a way to get up onto the ramparts. In Gorkamorka, attackers can climb the walls from the outside, but ideally you'd want a way for your own boyz to get up there first. At one point I'd considered simply building ladders or stairs into some of the wall sections, but I decided it would be better to put the ladders where you need them, regardless of how your fort is put together.

The main structure of the ladders was built out of some aquarium parts that had a nice grid to them. I originally went with ladders that were two squares wide, but that made the ladders too wide for anyone but my Nob. Most military ladders tend to be thin and lightweight anyway, so I decided to err in that direction.

Like most everything in the fort, I magnetized the ladders so that I don't have to worry about bumping them or having them tip over.  I could also use the magnetic couplings on my walls to attach other sorts of walkways, though I don't know what I would do unless I wanted a really long walkway crossing the entire fort for some reason. Maybe I'll think of something.

Fort Construction: Inner Walls

 

Making some good progress on detailing the inner walls of the fort.  Since this is where my gang's disproportionate number of Spanner Boyz hang out working on new gubbinz and making repairs to the mob's vehicles, it seemed like the fort would have to have some decent (if still somewhat ramshackle) electrical systems. Basically I imagine their fort to be a sprawling auto garage that has grown out of control.

This section is just a bunch of pipes and conduits, with a convenient access hatch on the top. This piece also has the outside, so presumably all the waste from the generators and refineries (and, of course, the Orks) flows through these pipes before being unceremoniously dumped into the desert.

I used a pretty eclectic assortment of materials for this section, including a chunk of a model railroad car, a box of raisin bran, some drinking straws, and loads of plasticard. The rivets and bolts are mostly tiny hex nuts, though quite a few of them are actual nails I used to attach the bits to the underlying XPS foam structure. I also inadvertently melted a bit of the foam with super glue in a few places, which required some appropriately Orky repair jobs.

This piece was a bit more straightforward in its construction. It was mostly plasticard with some random bits from my bits box. Most of the rivets on this piece were tiny glass beads, which I'd previously used on my Big Trakk. These were a lot harder to work with than the bigger greeblies I used on the other section, so I kind of gave up on the beads after this.

I was especially pleased with how these big electrical panels turned out. Not bad for mostly scratchbuilding. 

Now I need to start working on some appropriate power tools to make this a proper chop shop.

Fort Construction: Da Chunk

 

One of the main reasons that I decided to build my fort with modular walls (apart from much easier storage and transport) was so that I could swap out standard, straight sections with alternative ones. This meant I could make diagonal or curved walls, two-story towers, or whatever else I thought might be cool and Orky. For the basic fort, I had originally planned to have two kinds of special sections, both suited for my gang's fort at the far end of the Skid—one corner piece that jutted up against a large chunk of the 'Ulk and some sections where the walls of the fort butted up against solid rock walls. I ended up not having time to do the rocky outcroppings in this batch, so I focused my attention on the chunk.

The chunk is made from a large Nerf gun and a couple smaller water pistols I picked up at a thrift store. Apparently I completely forgot that I own a Dremel while I was building this thing, because most of the work was disassembling all the broken toys. 

There were some advantages to doing it the slow way. Taking out the screws on the Nerf gun and other toys with more complex mechanism allowed me to get at some of the sub-assemblies without damaging them. On the other hand, cheap water pistols made from hard plastic welded together are a huge pain. I mostly tore them apart with wire cutters, and they tended to shatter into sharp plastic shards. It made for some appropriately damaged wreckage, but probably wasn't worth all the stabbing I got during disassembly.

There is a small foam wall section stuck to the back of the chunk so that it connects with the rest of the walls and models on the walkways can still pass by. There's also a bit of internal structure built out of plastic bottles to make sure that all the broken toys stay stuck together. I filled this interior structure with expanding foam, so everything is pretty solid at this point.

I filed a few grooves into some of the more pristine bits of Nerf gun to make it look appropriately worn and damaged. I also filled some of the small holes in the construction with some dangling green stuff cables. It looks pretty decent with just a basecoat, so hopefully it will look even more like a huge chunk of space debris once it gets a proper paint job.

Fort Construction: Outer Walls

 

Work continues on the fort for my Morker boyz. Yesterday I spent some time working on the outer walls of the fort. The fort walls are made out of flame pro-tardant polymascotfoamalate with medium-weight chipboard used for cladding and armor panels. Chipboard works well in this case because many glues will melt foamulon, which can make it difficult to add details to the surface. PVA glue is still safe, though, and chipboard sucks up PVA really well, making a pretty decent bond. Chipboard also has a lot of downsides, such as warping when it gets wet and leaving soft, frayed edges when you cut it. I ended up transitioning to using mostly plasticard as the project went on and even went back and replaced a bunch of the chipboard in some places. Smooth plasticard surfaces don't bond quite as well with PVA, though, so I had to stick it on with two-part epoxy in some places, which was a lot more work.

Since the walls were a bit top-heavy to begin with and would have fragile and relatively heavy miniatures balanced on top of them, I stuck some lead fishing weights in the base of each wall section to keep them from tipping over.

One of the criticisms I got about my walls early on is that despite the abundance of chains in much of the Gorkamorka artwork, having chains on my fort made it look more like a Slaaneshi dungeon than an ork fort. Naturally, I immediately reconsidered this aesthetic choice and instead...just kidding. I added even more chains.

My general goal was to make it look a bit like the remnants of old machinery that broke down and was just kind of left in place. I might add some dangling cables or broken rails as well. Still, it's coming along slowly.

Building Da Fort

It's been a few months since I posted anything here, due to the fact that my town has been hit not just by the global plague that is currently rampaging largely unhindered through my country, but also by earthquakes, food shortages, and whatever the desert equivalent of a class 3 hurricane is. Fortunately, we're still alive and doing pretty well, all things considered. And although I haven't had a ton of free time between work, repairing the house after disasters, and staring blankly into the void, I have made some progress on a proper fort for my Morker boyz.

I actually started this fort over a year ago and the planning began long before that. Since my gang was the most obsessed with vehicles and gubbinz of any in our campaign, I wanted them to be based out of a remote fort on the far side of the Skid, where the the grots are unruly and the spanner boyz are even more eccentric than usual. I designed their fort to be built up against the side of an especially large chunk of the 'Ulk that had long since been stripped of any useful scrap. I also wanted to make the fort modular so that the other gangs could use the parts and swap in their own sections to make their own custom forts.

Like most of the gubbinz for my big trakk, my plan was to hold everything together with magnets. Since there were going to be models standing on top of the walls, I wanted to make sure that the whole thing didn't tip over if someone bumped the table. It also had to fit the dimensions for the fort scenarios and be tall enough that all the vehicles in the campaign could fit through the gate. Fortunately, my mob has the most ridiculously tall vehicles in the campaign, so hopefully this will accommodate everyone.

The project has changed quite a bit as the build has progressed, and there's still quite a way to go until it's ready to go on the table, but I'm pretty happy about the direction in which things are going.

All the Henchmen

I finally managed to get the last of my Verminkin finished up.  This last guy is armed with a push knife and a throwing knife.  Of course, only Heroes get to use throwing knives in Mordheim, so it will just count as a sling.  It was considerably easier to convert than the slings were, so I might make do this again when I need more Verminkin (which hopefully won't be for a while.

The idea for this guy came from the original Mordheim night runners, which featured a number of arms holding throwing knives and shuriken.

As I recall, the knife is a Space Marine knife that I just whittled down to the proper size.  The blades on the push knife are from a Dark Eldar spear of some sort, as I recall.  It's surprisingly hard to find good symmetrical blades in Warhammer, but this one worked quite nicely.  As with my other Verminkin, the body is just a Clanrat with a green stuff cloak.

So at long last, my Verminkin are complete, which should give me enough models for a decent starting warband.  Now I just need to work on some Terrain and we'll be ready to go.

Almost There...

Here's another Verminkin for the horde.  I tried just giving this one two swords, though doing so with the Clanrat shield arm made for a pretty awkward pose.

Yeah, punch daggers definitely work better than full on swords.

One more to go...

Slinger 2: Sling Harder

Here is Verminkin number three.  He's basically the same as the last one, but with a bigger stabber.

You can't really tell, but this guy's actually got slightly lighter colored fur from the other Verminkin. I also like the way his leather helmet turned out.

The sling used the same method as the other one, which, again, was a huge pain, so this guy might be my last slinger for a while.  His sword is made from the end of one of the left over spear tips I had after making the slings.

Definitely have to figure out an easier way to make slings...

Skaven Slinger

The second henchman is now finished.  I decided to give this guy a sling, since having a whole unit of Verminkin flinging rocks can be pretty handy.  Back in the day, Games-Workshop used to sell sling arms for upgrading your models.  After modeling a few myself, I wish that I'd invested in a few of them. 

The sling turned out pretty well, though it's a bit on the large side.  I was mostly concerned with making it solid.

The sling arm is a Clanrat spear arm.  I actually left some of the shaft, which runs inside the sling, giving it some structure so that it's not just two thin strips of green stuff sticking up in the air.  It's solid enough that I can grab the model by the sling without worrying, so I guess it paid off.  Still, not doing a whole unit of these unless I come up with a better method (or track down some of those old GW sling arms).