Nationals 2013: Leicester Sabres Victory!

This year the Student Nationals Wargaming and Roleplaying Championships were held in Sheffield and I went to compete on behalf of the Leicester Sabres in the Warhammer 40k category. As you all know, I took orks and from the nationals I wanted to achieve 'best painted', 'best sportsman' and 'best fancy dress' rather than any of the tournament placings. That was mainly because I took a rubbish army! There were also two very competent players competing from the Sabres so I thought the best way to grab points would to not be in competition with them. In the end, I came away with 2 out of 3 :p Alas 'best army' still eludes me with a score of 29/30 painting points. The gentleman that won had a beautiful spacemarine army so hats off to him. It was seriously good! Having said that, I'm dead chuffed with the other two awards and the event itself was brilliant fun. I have some great games and I really enjoyed using my army despite only achieving 15th place overall!

Anyway, that's that fluffy guff over with I can get to the meat of this post...the pictures. I'll be posting up pictures of the various units I used at the nationals this year starting with my favorite unit, the nob bikers. So without further ado here they are...

Me in my Fallout Costume (This is a little old, I actually added more pockets holding nukacola...it's all in the details!)

Ok, ok I'll get to the proper pictures!

The Warboss

 The Nob Bikers

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?