One More Squig Conversion

One final entry for Squig Week, a nice toothy squighound based on the squig from Grukk Facerippa. 

I painted this guy in the same way as my other squigs.  Washing the model with Agrax Earthshade made him look really brown and splotchy, but a nice coat of Bloodletter did wonders, making the red stronger and mellowing out the extreme shadows that he got on his skin.  It did tone down some of the highlights as well, so I went back over a few places again to brighten them back up.

The conversion was pretty simple, just adding some goggles to the model to match the rest of my mob.  I used glass beads for the lenses instead of molding them from greenstuff, which I think turned out pretty good.  There was also a pretty big ridge where the face attached to the body, which I was mostly able to hide with greenstuff.

Since I think our current house rules only allow slavers to take squighounds, I officially have more squigs than I can take in my mob, which means it's probably time to move on to getting my trakk put back together in time for the next game.  So I guess Slash can have his choice of squig next time he's able to buy one, or we're going to have a few more squigs for the next time we try running the Squigpede scenario.

So here's my current stock of finished squigs.  As I mentioned before, I have a couple more sitting around in various stages of completion so hopefully I'll slowly work through my backlog.

Now on to some gubbinz...

Targeting Squig

The next squiggly beast for my Gorkamorka mob is ready to go.  This little beastie is based on the standard plastic targeting squig from the Flash Gitz sprue, though he didn't seem smiley or toothy enough for my Morkers, so I gave him a pair of tusks and a big grin and now he fits in great.

The conversion wasn't terribly difficult.  The tusks are from some Space Marine lightning claws, which I then sculpted his big underbite around.  Fairly simple, but I like the way she turned out.

I painted this squig the same way I painted my others, though the eyeball gave me a lot of trouble.  The eye itself turned out great, but the little targeting reticle ended up giving me a lot of grief.  The first time around, I just drew it on with an ink pen, which gave me a nice thin, straight line that looked great.  The only problem was that as soon as I tried to put some gloss on it, it smeared all over and I had to repaint the whole eye.  Of course, having done it perfectly the first time, I ended up splodging it several times with a brush.  In the end, the center of the eye had so many coats of paint that it was starting to look like it was wearing a contact lens, which I guess is as good an explanation as any as to how these things supposedly work.  In the end, the only real complaint I have is that since the black lines are a bit thicker now, it kind of breaks up the gradient and makes it look really yellow in the middle and really orange on the outside, rather than a smooth transition.  Were I to do it again, I might try having the whole center of the eye solid yellow with the washes only around the edges, but I'm still quite pleased with the finished look.

I decided to give this squig to Shifty, my Kannon-toting spanner boy.  I removed the boss pole from his backpack to add the squig perch, though I also made some modifications to his kannon, adding an ammo feed to the bottom.  I wanted the ammo to look a bit like the rounds from the old Ork Biker autocannons, but a bit smaller.  I got a bunch of random ammo clips from the Flash Gitz sprues, but the ones I managed to find were all either too similar to normal shoota ammo (which I removed to convert his kannon) or were too weird looking.

In the end, I ended up just building my own rounds out of plasticard tubes and the tips of some plastic golf tees, which were rather difficult to work with.  They're still a bit on the large side, as the cartridges are as big as or slightly larger than the action of the gun, but they look good and orky.

Also, since I how have two removable squig perches, I have the option of swapping them around...

...which could be handy if Grizwoad ends up getting a bunch of good shooting skills again.

Nob's Best Friend

My next squig for Squig Week is finally ready to go.  This little guy is an attack squig for Grizwoad, my Nob, though he would also make an excellent mimic squig or squig parrot, since I made this guy to sit on his shoulder.

This guy is based on the little attack squig from the nobz sprue, though I always thought that he looked kind of weird sitting on his perch atop that really tall back pole, so I chopped him off and made it look like his perch was bolted directly onto my nob's shoulder pad.  I also shaved off his hair and gave him some bony spikes, which I liked much better.  Finally, I gave him a pair of goggles just like my squighound.

It was kind of fiddly work with such a tiny model, so instead of modeling lenses in greenstuff like I have in the past, his goggles are actually made from tiny glass beads.  My first time using them, but I like how it turned out.

I also did a bit of touch-up work on Grizwoad while I was at it.  I repainted his big choppa using better paints, and although the streaky texture from the other paint still shows through a bit if you look really hard, the new coat (actually more like two coats, as I kept splodging) is definitely an improvement.  Attaching the squig, fortunately, wasn't too hard, as his left shoulder pad already had a couple of bullet holes in it.  I just drilled one of them out so it goes all the way to his pelvis, and now he's got a perfect squig mount that blends in perfectly.

On to the next squiggly beast...

Squig Week!

Greetings everyone, and welcome to Squig Week!  One of the additions we made to our house rules for Gorkamorka was the inclusion of a squig market where players could go and buy little squiggly beasts for their gangers.  Thus far, no one has used them, because almost no one has any squig models, other than the ones we used for the Squigpede in our first campaign two years ago.  So in the spirit of testing our house rules, I've been slowly acquiring squigs off ebay for the last few months, though this is the first one I've actually managed to convert and paint up.  There's no way I'm going to get all of them built and painted this week (some are still on the sprues), but I'm going to see how many I can get ready for our upcoming game.

Even with his cool shades, this guy is easily recognizable as one of the old metal Warhammer Fantasy squigs.  I thought this happy-looking guy would make a nice addition to my cheerful Morkers, so I gave him a pair of goggles to protect him from the desert sands.  The original model is designed for a slotta base, so I chopped off the tab and pinned him to some interesting looking scrap.  I like how the broken conduit full of cables turned out, though in hindsight, I could have made the break in the pipe a bit more jagged to show off the cables a bit more. Still, I'm quite pleased how it turned out.

Painting my squighound involved a bit of trial and error.  My usual red scheme using Agrax Earthshade made all the little recesses by his scales way too dark, so I decided to try using a glaze for the first time.  A nice coat of Bloodletter calmed down the crazy contrast I was getting and gave his skin a good strong shade of red.  I also decided to make his spikes look extra jagged by painting the lines on his horns, rather than just using a shade like I usually do.  It took way too long on this spiky guy but I like the finished effect.

So now Slash, my runtherd finally has some help keeping the grots in line.  Now I'll just have to see if I can save up enough teef to actually take him in a campaign...

Mini-Campaign: Squig Hunt

Perhaps not unexpectedly, our mini-campaign last fall ended up being a larger affair than we had originally envisioned.  Our one-day rumble in the desert might be turning into another year-long quest to see who's da meanest mob of Orks on Gorkamorka.  Not that I'm complaining.  The main goal of the "mini" campaign was to test out the tweaks we've been making in our house rules to try and make them more balanced and ensure that different strategies are still competitive.  So far the results have been quite positive.

The only downside, is that I have a ton of pictures to sort through, so in the interest of actually getting them posted, I'm going to tackle the first session of the campaign in thirds.

Once again, we decided to start the campaign off with a cooperative game to hopefully get everyone that first important win to up their Nob's leadership and open up more options in Mektown.  This time, however, instead of trying to round up a bunch of mangy squigs, we set our sights higher.  Our four mobs embarked upon Da Hunt fer da Great White Squig.

This scenario used the Rollin' Road rules.  In addition to our normal weapons, each of our mobsters was armed with harpoons.  The basic idea is to drive up as close as you dare to the giant squig and try to get as many harpoons in him as you can, then slam on the breaks.  If you can slow him down and drag him off the trailing edge of the table, you win.  If he escapes off the leading edge, you lose.

Easy, right?

Unfortunately, my big trakk that was carrying most of my mob spun out on the first turn and ended up facing backward.  As the other mobs were closing in on the White Squig, Spike was trying his best just to stay on the table.

As I tried my best to make a giant U-turn, the other trukks converged on the squig.  While the squig itself was pretty dangerous, we found out that the bigger danger was simply trying to drive so many vehicles in tight formation.

On the far side of the table, Gabby was catching  up to the rest of the pack in his little wartrakk.  Unfortunately, he didn't have any passengers to throw harpoons, so there was little he could do except to fire wildly at the squig's legs and hope that a lucky shot might put a slug through its thick hide.

As the Great White Squig neared the edge of the table, the other three mobs desperately tried to get enough harpoons stuck in it to slow it down. As the bikes and trucks swerved around each other, Marvolork's big trakk slammed on its breaks.  Sadly, it wasn't enough to stop the squig, which continued forward, snapping the tow lines and sending the trakk spinning.  Marvolork was thrown high into the air, landing with soft thud in the desert sand.

In a surprising turn of luck, Marvolork happened to land right next to Gabby's vehicle.  The Dook of Skwag pulled himself on to the flame-less flamecar and ordered his fellow Morker to "Follow dat Squig!"

Gabby was so excited to be back in the game that he switched on the thrustas and shot forward like a flash...

...right into a cactus.

Gabby and the car managed to get through the cactus unscathed and continued to charge excitedly toward the squig.  Unfortunately, Marvolork got a face full of poisonous spines and was once more knocked out of his vehicle and left face down in the desert.

Meanwhile, on the far side of the board, Grizwoad and the rest of the gang manage to finally get the trakk going in the right direction, just in time to see the White Squig escaping into the distance.

So the first round is a loss for everyone involved.  As with the previous campaign, I go into the second round firmly in last place.  The second round pits me against Urzig, who despite coming in second to Chad and his boyz last campaign, managed to soundly thrash his opponent in nearly every encounter.  Fortunately, there are more scenarios in the rotation this time around and since I have the lower mob rating, it ends up falling to me to pick the scenario.  I choose "Da Chase," another rollin' road scenario that as a Morker, would hopefully give me a slight edge, even with my lower mob rating.  I also had two vehicles to Urzig's one, so even in a worst case scenario, he would have to choose which of my vehicles to beat the crap out of.

Naturally, I tried to maximize my advantage by deploying my two trakks far apart.  My opponent countered by placing a bunch of barriers on the far side of the only sand dune on the table, taking away the only advantage that my trakks had over his trukk, which was faster.  Fortunately for me, a bad roll on the thrusta busta table sent him spinning, allowing both my vehicles to escape, fully loaded with scrap.

So unlike last campaign, where an early loss tended to put you permanently behind the other players, underdogs really do have a chance of winning a big upset.  There's also scenarios that favor both Morkers and Gorkers, so when the underdog gets to choose the scenario, it's actually pretty helpful.

This big haul gave me plenty of teef to spend back in Mektown, as well as a victory to bump up Grizwoad's leadership.  This time, however, I wasn't going for a small gang with super-fancy cars.  In fact, I was going in the opposite direction.

I was getting me some grots.