A fresh start with Orks

I hereby swear, this will be the last Sci Fi/Fantasy army I start for a long, long time. This year has been a big one for fantasy games of on sort or another for me. But I'm glutted on them now and really need to return to some more historical gaming. Still in the current phase, I have as mentioned yesterday made a start on painting my recent accumulation of 40 figures. The image below presents the initial 400 point plus combat patrol army.



The core of this is 20 Ork boys, straight out the Assault on Black Reach box, and given a straight forward paint job.

Doc Greenthumb (bonus points for the musical reference folks) the Orc Painboy and his loyal orderly. Bought full price (gasp) from GW. Reasonably happy with what is a quickie paint job for a character figure.



Then there are the Nobs, from the same source as the boys. The paint job here adds a wash of the GW Mud wash mixed with Red wash. A couple of slight weapon reposes were added. Great models with plenty of variety.

Next up are the Deffcopters:

I've really honed the chipped paint technique on these guys, a full tutorial is to follow soon. Overall I think these look great on the table, and the models are fantastic considering the come as part of a starter set.

A Ork wartrakk, cobbled together from one of the Robogear models released (unsuccessfully) by Airfix a few years ago. I picked up a couple of kits for £3 each; they even came with Humbrol acrylics (good for undercoating but not much else). This one needed a substantial rebuild of the running gear, and a new weapon, also from Robogear parts. The crewman is an otherwise unemployable plastic Orc archer.

Finally a couple of the upcoming items for the force, which should make it to 750 points in the next week or so. Firstly a Big Mek; made from a plastic Nob, Robogear parts and plastic bits:

Some work still to do but I'm happy with the pose and equipment. He's tooled up with a custom shooter, 'uge choppa/power claw and a force field generator...

Lastly for today, Robogear and the bits box is also providing some Killer Kans (mini combat walkers). This is the first one, though there's work to do on it.

Best of all, to my mind, there are enough parts left from the one kit to make another of these.

So, about £70 will eventually supply around 1000-1200 points of Orks; an army on its own, or a large reinforcement to my old army.

Cool.

But as thoughts turn to the winter, I wondering what to do next, and influenced by the new 28mm Plastics, I'd have to say I'm leaning toward the horse and musket era for something new. Let's just see though, it might be 6 months before anything comes of it.