Spikes are Hard

Modeling the gubbins for my big trakk has proved a bit more difficult than I had originally imagined.  With my winnings from the last game, I purchased a big shoota and shoutas, as well as making it extra spiky.  My original plan was to simply create some plasticard plates covered in spikes and simply attach them with magnets.  The problem was trying to decide where to attach them to the vehicle.  There aren't a lot of big flat areas on the ork halftrakk, especially a rather stripped down version like mine.  There are a few flat panels by the driver and toward the back, but that's also where a lot of the details on the model are, and I didn't want to stick a magnet in the middle.

In the end, I decided that rather than stick spike plates directly to the flat panels on the trakk, I would make some bigger plates that could hook over the sides and hang down over the windows.

I used some bamboo skewers for the spikes themselves, which I sawed off in my trusty mitre box.  Actually attaching them to the plasticard proved way more difficult than I had expected.  Super glue wouldn't stick to the wood, wood glue wouldn't stick to the plasticard.  After trying every glue I had in the house, I ended up borrowing a hot glue gun, which worked great (although it got tiny strings of glue everywhere, which was a pain to clean up).  The best part is that if I accidentally broke one off, super glue would stick to both the plasticard and the blob of hot glue around the skewers, so repairs were easy.

I had similar difficulties with my big shoota.  The problem wasn't just where to install a magnet, but how to get my gunner in place.  Although I was quite pleased with how my converted spanner turned out, I managed to make him in perhaps the least compact pose possible.  I didn't want to make a second model for my spanner when he was in the gunner's seat (since that's where I was hoping he'd spend most of his time) so I had to make a turret that was big enough for both his outstretched arms and his bulky base.

My final solution was appropriately ridiculous.  I basically just kept adding parts onto the normal Ork Trukk turret until I ended up with something that was big enough for my spanner boy but still fit onto the model.  My spanner now has an elevated perch from which to gun down those dastardly Gorkers that keep trying to wreck his precious trakk.

In order to balance out the weight of the shoota, I pounded out a big bar of lead, which you can see toward the back of the turret.  I covered it in green stuff just so I woudn't keep touching it while I worked.  Perhaps not the most elegant solution, but it now sits quite nicely in the passenger seat.

Now I just need to finish my shoutas and one more spanner boy, and I'll be ready for the next game.

That Could Have Gone Better...

We just had the first few games of our Gorkamorka campaign.  My nob, Grizwoad, and his gang went up against three other Nobs:  Marvolork, Urzig, and Chad.  Who came out the big winner?  Not Grizwoad.  That's for sure.  Things could have been worse, but probably not by much.

Our first game was a cooperative scenario to ease everyone into the campaign.  Our group uses house rules for Gorkamorka that make the rules of the game more consistent with 7th edition 40k.  I think some of the rules and scenarios we snagged from other groups on the Internet and others we wrote ourselves.  This scenario had the four of us working together to put down a Grot rebellion and take down a bunch of rampaging squigs.  Naturally, this required a bit of cooperation...

...Ork cooperation.

Just a few turns into the game, my big trakk got rammed by Urzig's trukk.  I had only run over one or two of his boyz, I don't know why he had to get all indignant about it.  Unfortunately, this sudden and inevitable betrayal not only damaged my trakk, it completely immobilized it. Abby and Toast, my Spanner with the welding equipment, managed to mop up a few grots, but the damage was done.  My trakk wasn't destroyed, but it had to miss the next game.

This left my little track and as many mobsters as it could hold (which was only three) going up against Chad and his whole mob.  My plan was to just grab a couple bits of scrap and make a run for it before I got shot to pieces.  Toast put up a valiant effort, shooting Chad's driver out of his trukk not once but twice, thus keeping most of the opposing mob at bay.  Unfortunately, there were still too many of them, and Abby, the brash yoof driver was gunned down.

With Abby dead, the mob had to recruit a new driver, who was promptly given the name of Abby Junior in honor of their fallen comrade.  This was quite the setback, as Abby Senior had some decent driving skills.  Fortunately, Spike, the driver of the newly repaired big trakk, had managed to run over a surprising number of things in the few short turns before being rammed, and had managed to rank up twice.  Now with the full mob together and Abby Junior ready for his first fight, we moved on to the final game of the day...Da Big Race!

This was by far the most entertaining and appropriately orky scenario of the whole day.  Each mob was allowed two vehicles (by this point, Marvolork had earned enough teef to add a bike to his mob) and a limited number of crew.  The rest of the mob had to watch from the sidelines.

The race got off to a bad start for Grizwoad and his boyz.  Spike, their star driver, spun out just after crossing the starting line, letting the other racers fly past at breakneck speeds.  Their advantage would be short-lived, however, as Marvolork's boosta rokkits misfired on the next turn, crashing his trakk in the middle of the road and sending the race into chaos.  Chad hopped out of his trukk and climbed up onto a hill in an attempt to snipe the competition.  Urzig, enraged by this, also jumped out of his trukk and proceeded to hack Chad to pieces over the next few rounds.

Meanwhile, Spike had recovered from his bad start and was deftly swerving around the debris-littered racetrack, which also gave me my favorite photo of the whole race:

You can even see Urzig getting ready to plow into Chad in the background.

Despite Marvolork's trakk being out of the running, the competition was still fierce. Chad's trukk continued on in his absence, while Urzig's started falling behind.  Spike pulled into the lead with Marvolork's lone biker close behind.  Surprisingly, Abby Junior and Toast, who had been taking up the rear, began catching up to the rest of the pack.

As the drivers came out of the madness of the first curve, they accelerated down the straightaway.  Spike pulled ahead while Chad's trukk recklessly tried to pass him, leaving a trail of broken parts in his wake (due to insufficient glue rather than actual velocity, sadly).

In desperation, the last grot on Chad's trukk attempts to cut across the course and stop Spike before he reaches the finish line.  Against all odds, he makes it just in time and leaps off the cliffs toward the speeding halftrakk...

...and splats into the side.  It wasn't a great plan on his part.

Meanwhile, Urzig had left Chad skragged on the rocks and was rushing toward the approaching racers.  Spike, whose victory had looked all but certain, spins out, costing him the lead.  Suddenly, Abby Junior and Toast come ripping around the turn, passing an insane number of thrusta tests.  For a moment, they pass the trukk, but Abby's luck finally runs out just before the finish line, and he goes spinning into a rock wall.

As the last standing member of Chad's racing team tries to swerve past Abby, Urzig climbs on board and attacks the startled driver, hurling him from the vehicle.  The race ends as Chad's driverless trukk coasts across the finishline, with no one aboard but a triumphant Urzig.

After carefully reading the rules of the race word for word, we determined that Chad's driver was the official winner of the race, despite not being on his vehicle as it won the race.  Abby Junior took second, while Spike managed to capture third.  An appropriately Orky ending for the first day of the campaign.  The winnings from the race helped soften the blow of the first two battles, though I'll definitely be the underdog going into the next round.  Time to get a proper weapon for my Big Trakk and start building some gubbins.

Oh, and also, because I couldn't resist...

Enjoy!

Da War Rig

At long last, Deezo, the Big Trakk for my Morker Mob is complete.  It's also the only model in my mob so far that isn't really converted (not counting the driver, Spike, and his big grin).  It's basically just a stripped down Forgeworld Halftrakk that I got on eBay.  I had intended to take all the other bits and magnetize them so that I could add them later as I purchased gubbins, but I simply ran out of time.  That will have to be a project for our next game.

Unfortunately, by starting with two reasonably large vehicles, I didn't have enough teef left to buy a mounted weapon for my halftrakk, so I'm not going to have the shootiest mob ever.  I think everyone else is putting their points into one big trukk, so I will probably be outnumbered and outgunned.  Hopfully my little trakk with its big shoota will be able to hold its own.

Anyway, now that everyone is all converted up and painted, there's just one more thing to do before the big game.  Group shot!

Smile everyone...

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.