The Big Boss on Bike made mostly of Trukk!

Last week saw me get cracking on the warboss on bike, which was slightly more challenging than the nob bikers in the sense that I wanted his bike to be mostly built from trukk parts?! It was the only way I felt his bulk would be accommodated so I set about mounting the engine block and large wheels from the trukk kit onto a very cut down deff kopta chassis.

I kept the deff kopta legs because they aren't actually all that much smaller than the normal warboss legs. Instead I raised the torso and re-sculpted the lower back just to give him some extra height and prevent the legs from making him look a little misshapen  (then again if you spent your whole life on a bike I guess you'd have short legs too!).

The finecast parts, although in pretty terrible condition, were a God send as it meant I could cut the parts to fit with ease. The fact they are so light also helps to prevent this guy from falling over, which I'm certain would happen a lot on the battlefield if he was all metal. All in all I'm very pleased with the result and I'm sure he's going to turn heads (and a few stomachs) on the field!

Here's a size comparison with the previous Nob bikers! He's an absolute beast!

Share the pain

Despite having an extremely busy week, I have managed to get some work done on the nob bikers unit and I began assembling my grot separatists! If that wasn't enough I also got my first game in with this list and romped home to a crushing victory over the spikey boyz! It's a good start but I did make a few mistakes and my strategy worked more as the result of luck than anything else...practice practice practice!

Nob Biker Painboy

As you can see, he's not quite finished yet. There are a few extra micro-details I want to add to his bike and he needs a head. I'll sit down later tonight and sculpt a medical face mask for him, which should be good enough to truly mark him out as the painboy. 

Happy Smurfing New Year...

So a new year dawns and although unlucky for some, 2013 should be a promising year. I've been very lax with everything in my life recently, be it work, hobbies or relationships so I think it's about time I took charge of a few things and got moving again. As ever, a target deadline is a great way of motivating oneself into action!

The student nationals....it's creeping up fast. Last year I did rather well coming a very close second (1 point between us) in the 40k category. This year I fully mean to win, although I'll admit it will a massive uphill struggle. We have a new 40k edition to master and a new army to build. Nothing is certain anymore, with allies, people playing in the tournament could bring literally anything!! That scares me. I like things to be guessed at and for armies to follow certain patterns. I like to know what works and what doesn't. I like to know what to expect. This all means radically changing my army to fit a more 'meets all comers' style. Something I am not hugely familiar with.

So.....I will be chronicling my progress towards the nationals through this blog and I'll hopefully gain a little pride back in the hobby and a joy and love for painting and converting. I will also expect you, my dear readers, to offer up some advice on how to play this game and what I should be adding to my army.

For the nationals I have decided to stick with my orks. I did tinker with the idea of taking Necrons but then I remembered that I was seriously penalized at the student nationals last year in the best army award for not having enough character. Blood Angels are after all...well red...and gold.....but not much else. I tried by adding in all the details and painting about a million gem stones but alas my efforts went unnoticed.

Orks on the other hand are choc full of character! I also intend to fill them up with some pretty awesome scratch builds and conversions just to really grab the judges attention! What better way to start than with Nob bikers......no available models......loads of character.....perfect! 
Anyway, you didn't come here just to read a load of nonsense from me, you came to see what I spent all day building :)

Ork nob biker with big choppa

Inspired by Irondog Studios' take on Wazdakka, I set about scratching up a nob biker using parts mainly from the deff kopta, trukk and nobz kits. Like Irondog, I felt that the ork biker kit is too small a basis for a Nob and that a deff kopta would be more suitable.

I carefully removed the rockets from the front, the skids from the bottom, the rotor chassis from the top and the torso of the pilot leaving legs, the engine block and the front chassis untouched. I struggled to attach the wheels (from the trukk, small at the front, large at the back) to the deff kopta, but eventually managed a similar arrangement to Irondog. Then built a rear fender and attached that the the rear suspension via some jury-rigged pneumatics and began the process of detailing! Rivets, bolts and other such details were all scavenged from my bits box and greenstuffing was done along the way to re-enforce some of the scratch built joins.

With the bike complete, I then focused on the rider, which was simple enough as I just cut a plastic Nob in half, posed the torso and filled in (the rather large!) gap between the torso and legs with greenstuff.  

 I do have a slight problem though (maybe). The biker is extremely big! Here is Barry the humble shoota boy to demonstrate what I mean. The biker completely dwarfs him and I still have a warboss on an even bigger bike to build! I'm a little worried that up against some of the tanks I intend to build, these guys will just look to big. What do you recon?

Blood Angels army up for sale!

Dear readers,

The time has come for me to move my Blood Angels army onto another loving home. I've had some great games with this army and came second in the student nationals 2012 with it. Painting this army was especially challenging! Painting all those gems really took some effort but in the end I was really happy with the results. Another lovely touch with this army is that all the figures come with bases from dragonforge's urban rubble range! So without further ado, please feast your eyes on what's available in the lot. The auction can be found here.

The Chaplain, sanguinary priest and assault terminators

Some extra characters: Chapter master Seth, Commander Dante and a captain with lightning claws

 There is also a WIP honour guard squad

Assault squad one with razorback transport

Assault squad 2 with razorback

Assault squad three and two storm ravens

Finally, the whole army fits into this custom pull and pluck army case!

To top it all off, I will also include some blood angels sprus I have left! If you have any further questions about the lot, or you would like to see some more pictures then please get in touch either via ebay or through leaving a comment below. Once again the auction can be found here.

Good luck and best wishes!

 

Ork Lootaz- A Little More Dakka

So here's the second loota I've been working on. These pictures are a little premature because he's still not quite finished yet, but I wanted to keep the updates rolling. So without further ado, I present the 2nd ork loota to be...ahem...finished :)

 

 

Here you should be able to see the ammo hopper. The story is that Dokket, the ammo runt, is removing the rounds from an old ammo belt and dropping them into the hopper. The hopper then feeds the rounds into the gun. Unfortunately, the poor guy needs to act fast or else face the displeasure of his master when the gun runs dry!

Ork Lootaz- Re-visiting the Project

I'm sure many of you have been peering back at the blog from time to time wondering 'what ever happened to those lootaz you were working on?' At the time I was getting some fantastic feedback from everybody, which really kept me going with the project but then I moved and they became lost amongst all the other things I've been doing.

Well 2 weeks ago I played a game of 40k using my ork army and did astonishingly well considering my opponent. I also fielded my lootaz in this battle, which had many people attending club that day giving me praise on how cool they looked. Kind words combined with game success has inspired me to get cracking on finishing the unit properly and that means putting the painting hat back on!

So, as I promised Pom, I spent all of Sunday relaxing with DS-9, paint and Toad in the Hole! However, it wasn't battle wagons I was working on (sorry to mislead you Pom). Instead, I got the first of 12 lootaz finished, based and weathered. I do hope you enjoy, oh and keep dropping in, I intend to finished this project fully.

Don't worry you're safe so long as he's aiming at you personally!

Captain Janus Theodramis

The weeks have not been kind to my painting schedule but despite all that I have been able to grab a seat and get some painting done every now and again.

With the advent of 6th edition and my recent painting experience in Cardiff, I have decided to re-visit my characters. Since the chaplain became down regulated as a marine killing powerhouse (with his AP 4 maul), I have decided to take a captain instead. 'For the love of the God Emperor why?' I hear you all shout.

I admit it's a difficult decision to justify but my somewhat flimsy reasons are two fold:

1) I believe you need a character that can really dish out the pain in close combat and be capable of killing many marines at once. The changes to fearless (or know no fear) means that every last marine must die! The captain is the only real choice when it comes to building this kind of character. The captain is also reasonably cheap at just 100pts, I have only given him twin lightning claws for 30pts the pair. He will be getting 6 attacks on the charge (chapter standard) with re-rolls to hit (chaplain) and re-rolls to wound. That should hopefully be 5 dead marines on the charge and about 4 every round. Yes, I think Tycho is a better choice at doing this but that brings me onto the second reason...

2) I need to add character to my army. What I mean by this is I need to create a personality for the force and a conversion to match. A main criticism of my army at Cardiff was the lack of a unifying theme within the force. Yes they were all on matching bases, yes the colours were the same. But people felt the army lacked a 'character' or 'theme', which I put down to a general lack of conversions and a heavy reliance on the beautiful plastics in the blood angels kits.

As such, I have decided to replace my characters with some nice new converted ones and try and tie that character in with the ideas of the force as a whole. Hence Captain Janus Theodramis, see I named him and everything! I wanted him to be a young captain who received his rank on the field of battle after slaying an ork warboss in personal combat. I wanted him to have been an assault marine (the youngest recruits in the blood angels structure) originally and so represent a very unusual situation. I want him to convey aggression and the thirst for blood, which has not yet been tempered with age. I also didn't want to cover him in honour markings as his career is only just being established. Maybe I'll add them to the model as I use him? His honour guard have been taken from his original squad, whom where with him throughout the battle and I'll be building them all up to have personalities of their own in order to create a unit that oozes character and a sense of story. 

So there you have it. I also intend to scratch build a new chaplain similar to the one featured on FTW. It's a fantastic build if you have not already seen it.