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.

Spiky Gubbinz

Both my spiky gubbinz and my big shoota are now painted and properly installed on my big trakk.  I think the finished product ended up a lot better than my original idea of just magnetizing them and sticking them right above the tracks.   This method makes the trakk look appropriately both hazardous to approach and haphazardly constructed.

Just needs some shoutas and this one is ready to go.

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!