Big Gunz: Spear Guns

Way back during our first Gorkamorka campaign, I was careful to make sure that all the gubbinz for my mob were modular so that I could slowly acquire them to upgrade my vehicles throughout the course of the campaign. Of course, gubbinz aren't the only way to upgrade one's vehicles in Gorkamorka—you can also upgrade your guns.

At the time, I didn't have the time or the bitz to make a set of fully modular weapons for my vehicles, so I've been using the same Big Gunz in every campaign we've played. But at last I've finally gotten around to making a proper set of weapons, starting with a spear gun.

The first step was to create a way to mount the weapons on my vehicles. I decided to create a magnetic gimbal based on the weapon mount from the old Ork Wartrakk, which is what I was using before. I essentially just built a slightly larger, magnetized version out of plasticard. All things considered, I think they turned out looking pretty good.

For the spearheads, I decided to use some old Warhammer Fantasy grot spears that I happened to have lying around. I initially thought about about leaving the haft of the spears attached and just sliding them into a plasticard tube, but that would have meant using much bigger tubes, so I ended up just cutting the heads off. And since I didn’t need the tubes to be hollow anymore, I just made them with solid plasticard rod.

Next, I needed some kind of brackets or crossbars to hold the tubes together, so I found a piece of plasticard I had lying around and cut it to size.In order for the clamps to wrap around the sides, I cut some tiny sections of tubing and then split the tubes lengthwise.  I also had to trim the clamps a little bit so that the side pieces fit tightly to the plasticard rods. 

Now that I was halfway through building my spear gun with four tubes straight in a row, I thought it might be cool to have a second one with the four tubes in more of a box arrangement. So I set about making some fittings, which I made by gluing four rings of plasticard tube together. I then threaded the rods through the fittings and then glued them in place.

I tried to find some bitz that looked like they could be air tanks for the pneumatic launcher, but everything I found was a bit too big. So I decided to make my own out of plasticard rods. I also glued on some thin rod to make the tubes connecting the air tank to the four barrels.

The next step was adding the rivets. Which is always kind of tedious, but really adds a lot of detail to the model. Even after the rivets, I felt like the spear guns lacked a bit of detail compared to the other guns, so I decided to create some little pressure gauges to go on the back next to the air tanks. I made the gauges by just gluing some thin rings to a sheet of plasticard and then cutting them out. The concept was simple enough, but I didn’t cut the rings quite as thin or as straight as I had hoped. Still worked, though.

Pretty much everything on the spear guns got painted metallic silver, so I painted the fittings on the boxy one to be brass and gave the one with the barrels in a row a red stripe on the end of the barrels. 

The finished product turned out pretty good. They both came out with a nice brutal Mad Max vibe I could have made the pressure tanks brass as you often see with Ork contraptions, but the red gives some nice contrast with metallics on the other parts of the guns.

Very orky.

So at last, I'm no longer just limited to my 'Eavy Shoota (though it'll still be an option). I'm excited to test these out in an actual campaign, and there are a bunch more options coming up soon.