Gorkamorka Firecar

After months of planning, slow progress, and more than a few missteps, my second trakk is finally finished.  As you can probably see, this trakk is armed with a skorcha, which has been outfitted with some gubbinz to have Loadsa Ammo (my mob doesn't do anything halfway). 

Since I already had one trakk that was only slightly modified from the standard Ork Wartrakk, I wanted this one to be unique, while still being easily identifiable as a trakk.  The plan was to change the front to have two wheels instead of one, giving it a cab more like a buggy.  I wanted it to be wider and boxier, like the Warbuggy, but I didn't want to make it any longer than the standard Wartrakk or it would basically just be a second big trakk.  Also, since I had decided that I wanted to add a skorcha to the mob, I decided to base the design on one of my favorite cars from Mad Max: Fury Road, Firecar No. 3.

Obviously there wouldn't be any Volkswagens to modify on Gorkamorka, but I liked the idea of the car being a fairly sparse frame around a bunch of oil drums and a supercharged engine.

Although I've had most of the parts for this trakk sitting around since last fall, the hardest part was figuring out how to attach the barrels.  After tearing apart a wartrakk I bought on eBay, I didn't really have much of a frame to attach them to.  In the end, I ended up building a sort of scaffolding around the upright barrels and then pinning the angled barrels directly to the other two.

The downside of using all four barrels in a bunch, as opposed to cutting them in half and gluing them to flat surfaces, is that they took up much more space than I had originally planned for.  I didn't want to stretch the trakk any longer, so I ended up just pushing it up higher (and a little bit wider).  I also ended up scrapping the engine block, which was a shame, but it probably would have ended up stretching the length to almost as long as my big trakk.

Once I finally had everything mostly assembled, I had two main sub-assemblies, the front and the back, as well as a number of smaller bits to glue together after painting.

The two I-beams on the cab fit snugly around the two front barrels and extended most of the way through the interior of the rear section, making the finished vehicle fairly solid once it was glued together.  I'm sure I carefully measured the width of the cab at some point during its construction, but since the project was stretched out over the course of months, I was actually quite surprised at how perfectly it all fit together when the two halves were finally completed.

The other tricky bit for this vehicle was modeling the skorcha.  I had originally planned on building something sufficiently orky out of a pair of Imperial Guard flamers stuck together.  They ended up looking a bit small for a mounted weapon, so I ended up going with the flamer from the Sentinel kit and attaching it to the Wartrakk's shoota along with some other bits from the Guardsmen flamers.

Although the wartrakk parts came from the same assembled kit that I'd bought off eBay, I had already ripped and chopped the entire thing apart, including the weapon mount.  When I reassembled everything, I left both the mount and the shootas unglued, which means that the skorcha is essentially gimbal-mounted on the model, allowing it to tilt up and down and rotate, which is kind of fun.  It also means that I could easily swap it out for another weapon if I really wanted to.

I'm quite pleased with the finished model.  It was a bit taller and wider than I had originally intended, but I managed to keep its length within about five millimeters of the standard wartrakk, which isn't bad for the amount of scratch-building I ended up doing.

The skorcha turned out especially well.  When I zoomed in this much, I noticed that the muzzle burn on the end of the gun ends rather abruptly, but it still doesn't look half bad.  Finally Toast, our intrepid spanner and resident pyromaniac, has something appropriately burny to take into battle.

The only thing that was really disappointing about the paint job was the timing.  Unfortunately, it was only basecoated by the time of the last big battle of the campaign, which was the first time I couldn't boast of having a fully painted mob, but I'll get to that in another post.

Ork Runtherd Conversion

The next member of my Morker Mob is finally finished.  After months of being hopelessly understaffed, Grizwoad has finally hired a Slaver to help him with his organizational development.  He comes highly recommended, with extensive experience in boosting productivity in the scrap mines, maximizing performance on the battlefield, and positively impacting a mob's bottom line.  Hopefully, he should be able to "recruit" a couple of grots by the next time we head out into the skid.

This conversion has been in the works for quite a while.  As I mentioned before, I based a lot of my conversions off of Paul Bonner's artwork.  This guy in particular was based on the Mek with the top hat from the old Rogue Trader Ork book.  I thought he had an appropriate sense of style that would fit in with my band of crazy spanner boyz and gearheaded yoofs.

As you might expect, project turned into quite an eclectic bit of kitbashing.  I ended up using bits from the Ork Boyz sprue, the Runtherd, Warbiker Mob, Crypt Ghouls, and, of course, the head from the Painboy.  I'm surprised I don't see more conversions with that head, since it's got so much character.  It's one of the few smiling Ork figures left in the range, and it's also got a much less boxy face than most of the current models.  It made a good fit for my dapper Rogue Trader Ork.

Since I had a whole pile of the standard, squatty Ork Boy legs in my bitz box, I had the grand idea of simply repositioning a pair of them for my runtherd. Not surprisingly, trying to straighten one of their legs was quite an ordeal. I chopped off the leg in question and then separated it again at the knee, pinning the two pieces back together.

It gave me the position that I wanted, but also left some pretty big gaps that I was going to have to fill with green stuff.  I was quite pleased with the end result, which blended fairly well with his original clothing.

Since I clearly hadn't made enough work for myself by chopping apart his leg, I decided to do the same thing with his arm.

Of course, after cutting a big wedge out of his arm and then evening up the two pieces, I was left with a pretty big gap that I was pinning back together.

It took three or four layers of green stuff to flesh out the arm.  I also added a wider barrel to his slugga to make it look like a more customized weapon.  The final step was sculpting some muscles back over the new arm.  I toyed with the idea of just wrapping his arm with bandages, or having some bullets, teef, or other trinkets covering up the gap, but I'm glad that I just went ahead and sculpted muscles back on.

I didn't have anything suitable for his hat and pipe, so those I had to build myself from wire and plasticard.

Despite having my carefully bent bit of wire as a base, my green stuff pipe ended up as a huge blob that resisted any attempt to be smoothed into a tube.  It took a great deal of filing after the putty had dried just to get round again, let alone pipe shaped.  Eventually I got it into the rough shape, cut off the end and added a rim, which finally made it start looking right.

Fortunately, the hat was much more straightforward than the pipe.  A straight-sided cylinder stuck to the top of his head didn't look much like a hat, so the first step was adding some green stuff to make it flair out a bit at the top.

Once that bit had dried, I added the hat band, feathers, and the bones of some small unfortunate creatures.  The final step was adding the brim of the hat.  I'd left a bit of plasticard to give it some structure, but this was still probably the most difficult part of the process.

With the hat completed, I was finished modeling.  I was left with seven different sub-assemblies, plus the base that needed to be painted before being glued together.

Attaching the Painboy head to the Nob torso was actually a bit difficult, as it's sort of a snap-together model.  I had to carve out the interlocking neck bits, pin the two parts together and then sculpt a new neck.

All together, the finished model was pinned in six different places.  There might be as many pins in his head alone than in the rest of the mob combined.

Check out that hand-crafted Ork bum...

I think I'm better at modeling than at painting, but I'm pretty happy with how he turned out.  I ended up changing my mind a few times while painting, so his shirt went from black, to red, and then back to black.  Quite a few other parts went through a similar number of superfluous paint jobs before I was finally satisfied.

I also made the head of his staff interchangeable, so it's easy to switch between a Grabba Stik and a Grot Prod, depending on whether the runtherd is focusing on "recruitment" or on "boosting productivity."

Next thing to do will be getting some runts together so that our runtherd has something to herd.

Bodged Job

Work has commenced on a new vehicle for my Morkers.  It's another Trakk based off the standard Ork Wartrakk, but this one will be much more heavily converted than my last one.  I'm basically tearing it apart (I bought it fully assembled on eBay) and then putting it back together with plasticard and green stuff.

Unfortunately, I made the mistake of starting with nothing more than a single sheet of plasticard as the main structural element, which ended up breaking on three different occasions.

After finally admitting the error of my ways, I decided to reinforce my flimsy joints with a few good, solid chunks of sprue.  I also cut off the three little boxes on the top of the tracks in preparation for another sheet of plasticard, which ended up being a much more difficult task than I had anticipated (I broke two hobby knives trying to remove them carefully).

Finally, I added a crossbeam to connect the two halves, as well as a bunch more structural supports that will hold the top and bottom together and help to spread out the weight a bit.

Hopefully this will result in a fairly sturdy vehicle once I add the platform for the gunner.  After that, I just need the driver's seat and some finishing touches and this one should be ready for a test drive.

More Adventures in the Skid

Another four games of Gorkamorka, and Grizwoad's lads are still hanging in there.  As one might expect at this point in the campaign, things have escalated quite a bit, but the gang had a much better showing than they did the first time.

This time around, the gloves were off from the start. The first game was a four-way free-for-all between the four gangs.  Grizwoad and Marvolork were on one side of the table, facing down the two Gorker nobs, Chad and Urzig on the other.

There were a number of dangerous cacti and mushroom patches on the table, but the biggest hazard was a rather ominous unexploded bomb that was right between Grizwoad and Chad.  Two pieces of scrap were there along side it for the ork daring enough to get close enough.

Perhaps not surprisingly, both of us just shot at the bomb until we managed to set it off.  Probably for the best, as we rolled so high for the blast that it nearly engulfed both our vehicles anyway.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the table, Urzig and Marvolork charged headlong into each other, immobilizing Marvolork's big trakk.  Over the course of the campaign, Urzig had managed to become a close combat monster, so this encounter didn't bode particularly well for Marvolork and his boyz.

As hand-to-hand combat broke out across the far side of the table, Chad and Grizwoad's boyz were still blasting away at each other while trying to avoid the sizable crater left by the explosion.  The shoutas and spikes on my big trakk were enough to discourage any attempt at boarding, so I was able to force Chad and his mob toward Urzig's truck.

In the end, I was able to snatch up most of the scrap on that side of the table while the rest of the mobs started bottling out.  It was the first win for Grizwoad and his boyz.

The next two games went fairly quickly and were much less eventful.  First I faced off against Urzig and his crew.  Though they had the upper hand, they simply grabbed the nearest piece of scrap and ran off back to their mines (which everyone else agreed was quite un-orky).  The third game against Marvolork was apparently so intense that I forgot to take any pictures.

In any case, I found myself in a good position going into the big race at the end of the day.  I'd come out on top in all of my games and hadn't suffered any major losses (a refreshing change of pace).  This time, however, I wasn't the only one with two entries in the race. Everyone but Urzig had picked up a second vehicle, so there were seven racers this time around.

Once again, Marvolork took an early lead in the race.  As my big trakk tried to pass it, his grabba arm reached out and plucked Grizwoad right out of the back of his rig.

Naturally, the boyz were in a bit of a panic as their leader was being crushed to death in Marvolork's giant pincer, so they threw everything they had at the enemy trakk.  Fortunately, one lucky shot managed to hit them right in the gubbinz, and the grabba was blown clean off the back of Marvolork's trakk, freeing Grizwoad, who ran quickly back to the safety of his spiky car.

At the start of the first turn, the race had turned into a fairly orderly procession with Marvolork leading the way.  By the end of the first turn, however, everything had erupted into chaos.  True to form, Marvolork's boosta rokkits exploded the first time he used them, forcing everyone else to dodge the flaming wreckage of his trakk.  Urzig's boyz also fired of several boostas, plowing their way to the front of the pack before spinning out.  Meanwhile, a lucky shot managed to knock Grizwoad's shoutas off the back of his vehicle, ruining the vibe for the whole mob.

With nearly every vehicle at a dead stop after collisions or spin-outs, Urzig came charging across the middle of the track and started wreaking havoc.  He nonchalantly tossed Grizwoad, Toast, and Shifty out of their vehicles, while beating Abby and Spike into unconsciousness.  The height of the chaos saw Urzig and Chad locked in personal combat on the back of Abby's trakk (which no longer had any of my mobsters aboard).

With no drivers left standing, Grizwoad climbed aboard Urzig's trukk and started dispatching his boyz in the same fashion.  Within a few rounds, the two nobs had obliterated each other's mobs.

Somehow in all this confusion, Chad's two drivers managed to sneak away (ignoring the fact that their boss was getting the tar beat out of himself by Urzig).

Grizwoad and Toast, who at this point were the only two boyz in the mob left standing, made a mad dash to the finishing line to try and stop them.  Toast managed to get off a few shots before being flattened and Grizwoad got one swipe with his big choppa, but it was no use.  Chad's gang managed to pick up first and second place.  There was no third place prize this time, because there was no one left standing who could drive the abandoned vehicles that littered the raceway.

With an even more decisive win in this race than in the first, Chad and his mob are poised to win the campaign next time we get together.  Despite a good showing this time around, my mob wasn't able to catch up to the frontrunners.  It would take a miracle to pull ahead of both Chad and Urzig next time, but if nothing else, we'll give 'em a run for their money.  I've got a lot of stuff to build before next time...

In Memoriam

One final touch before the mob goes back into battle, da Boyz arranged a fitting tribute to Abby Sr, the former driver who was the first Ork to be killed in the campaign.  Never ones for symbolism when literal interpretations will due, the gang figured out a way that their fallen companion could ride on with them forever...

More Doof

With the addition of some lovely shoutas my Big Trakk is finally ready for the next game.  Believe it or not, this is actually one of the more restrained ideas I had for my shoutas.  At one point, I was considering going all-out Fury Road and filling the whole bed of the trakk with shoutas and then building new platforms on top of the speakers for the crew to stand on.  Ultimately, I settled on one big stack of speakers with some horn loudspeakers on top.  It takes up a considerable amount of space, but since my mob is fairly small, it shouldn't be a problem.

Finding the parts to build what I wanted was challenging.  The box itself is just built from plasticard, but the other parts were scavenged from all over.  The speakers are snaps I got from a fabric store and some ball bearings that were sold as BB gun ammo.  The horns on top were little bells that I was able to remove the clappers from.  I was going to have a few different sizes and shapes, but I didn't really have the space and nothing else I found really fit what I was looking for.

And with that, the mob is ready for another daring excursion into the Big Uz.  Hopefully the boyz fare a bit better this time around.

Spanner Boy

I've now added a third spanner to my tiny Morker mob in hopes of getting another vehicle after the next match.  I call this one Shifty.  Instead of scratch building tools for this one, I used the wrench and backpack from the Lootas sprue and focused my time on building him a kannon.  I tried a few different guns for the base, including the big shoota from the Ork Boyz sprue, but in the end, I settled on a standard shoota, since it worked better for the pose I was going for.  I removed the magazine and built a new barrel out of plasticard tube.

I'm quite fond of the various packs that this guy carries around.  I'm especially pleased with how the patchwork leather wrench holder turned out.  I think the random bit of scrap he's standing on is from the Assault Marine sprue.

I almost gave up on giving him a smile because it was so hard to even get a file or clippers inside his helmet that I didn't want to try to do any modeling in there.  I'm glad that I tried anyway, because his smirk is one of my favorite things about this model.  He might even be my favorite of the three...

...though it's pretty hard to pick a favorite.