Moving to the Three Fold Land

So here am I in the desert. I have been here for a couple of months and it took nearly that long for me to get a painting table set up. Since then I have only done a bit of work on my Circle Bloodtrackers and a test paint of a space wolf scout to see if the primer I bought worked. Finally getting a job has taken some of the wieght off my shoulders as far as daily angst and I hope to be back to painting regularly soon. Chairs are so important and should never be taken for granted. Having only one in the house has made the logistics of getting anything done tricky but now that I have the days to myself and no need to spend hours poring over want ads hope springs eternal.

A few models for people to look at if they like.

Here are a few assorted models I painted up at various times over the last year or so.

Kaya the Wildborne turned out fairly well given that I lost her left arm and had to sculpt one for her from scratch.

The Blue Fellow is a model from a game called Vor the Maelstrom. He is a proxy for a Gorax until I pick up the new one...the old one was not among my favorite models.

Here we have an old Warhammer FB Ogre, and my wife's Dwarven cleric from a brief and ill fated DnD campaign...damned kobolds.

The Horde of Hormagaunts.

I recently started doing some commision painting to raise a few dollars while I am between jobs. The Horde of Hormagaunts is my largest single job to date in terms of models. The only pieces I painted in this first one are the 100 hormagaunts filling up the two shelves. All other pieces were done by a variety of other companies.

These next few shots are the Gaunts in progress, actually some images I sent to the client as test samples for the color scheme. He elected to go a bit more yellowish for the back armour but quite liked the bone claws in preference to the black talons that some of his other peices had been given.

State of Waaaagh

It has been months since I posted to this blog. I realize that is kind of normal for some and abhorrent to others but it is what it is. I got into Warmachine/Hordes over the summer and sort of focused what little painting energy I had on that.
I recently played a 2k battle of 40k with my Orks vs some Nids. I lost. This is not the worst part. It was a really close game...a few dice rolls one way or the other and it might have come out a win. But I was bored. I was bored at moving my dozens of boyz, bored shooting, bored fighting, bored looking up obscure and convoluted rules for a game that used to represent a couple of generals mastering forces across a battlefield and having a tactical and challenging game. Now, I see min maxing, I see unstoppable monsters and special characters. I see space marine armies witH hardly any marines in it and I just think....I would rather be playing war machine, or watching TV, or just about anything other than playing this broken boring souless version of a game I used to love.
Maybe it is not the game, maybe I have just descended into beardiness, maybe I am just bitter about my favorite army. Honestly though I just think there are better games than 40k. I look forward to playing some fantasy battles and maybe 6th edition and a new codex will redeem the hobby for me. For now though I am setting aside my boyz and focusing on the beasts of the Circle of Orboros and the zealots of the Protectorate of Menoth.
Thanks for reading and I truly hope to return to regularly posting on this site.
Rob 'Grokka' Ferrick

Summertime Blues

I have not really been getting any painting done on my orks or anything else for a bit. Real life issues getting in the way and other interests with the warmer weather serving to distract me have come up here and there.

Mekaniks R Us

It has been some time since I posted anything new. This is partly because I have been doing a bit of playing (YAY!) and partly because I got a lesson in the new rules and how my codex has been changed. Mostly due to the effects of Mob rule and Fearlessness as it operates in 3rd edition my dreams of fielding a boyz based army will have to be modified a bit. I am still up in the air with regards to grots but it seems I forgot just how much armoured horror the humies is capable of. On the bright side I have been joined by a big mek with a big gun and a big tool...hey you don't have to have a female of the species for bigger to be better.
Dis Mek has an old school Shokk Attack Gun and a bit of conversion work. I know everyone is wetting thier pants about the importance of the Kustom Force Field and I may well do one but I could not let the chance to play with a SAG keep passing me by.

Orks of course are not a very shooty army. Anyone who has played against them knows this and while they can adopt shooty ways and even have some degree of sucess it just grinds against my instincts to not field slugga boyz. In spite of my protests I may end up assembling a unit of shoota boyz...but not anytime soon. Mean while I have unleashed my inner mek to get some dakka and put a little bollocks into the boyz to get em into the fightin faster.

First off the mek...then apparently the Power Klaw is gonna be needed a bit more than I had ever figured on so Da mek crew is at work on cobblin em together.

Da prototype was a bit big. I am thinking a greenstuff gauntlet will be less bulky even if it takes a bit longer to cure than plasticard ones...I am sure I can do plasticard as well but i end up using about enough grenstuff to build the glove just holding the card bits in place so I may just cut out the middle medium as it were. Still...the HUGE claw is kinda fun even if he needs a squig back to rest it on.

The armour plates seem a bit much as well...maybe I can take a surface molding and put it on like a decal...or if I just use greenstuff I can press the glyphs right into it for bas relief.

Ok but all of this is just the apetizer...on the the main course. This is a model I dreamed up an age ago partly thanks to Lobo that crazy Czarnian bounty hunter who would fit in well among the orks in spite of his coloring.

Meet...Waagh Dedeye's very first Deff Choppa. When asked about it Big Mek Strakk said "I saw dem panzy eldar flyin bikes and said to me grotz...We can do better dan dat ladz...lets get to cuttin!"

Sporting parts from Trakks, Warbikes, Trukks, Stormboyz dat went in 'ead first, and a few other bits and bobs I plan to do at least five of these ork jet bikes and may even do more cuz they are hella fun to build. I also need to do a battle wagon and some new trukks but I will have to wait for the wounds to heal and the glue to flake off...convertin aint easy.

I thought why should da ork be the only one to have some fun? So this snot gubbins fixer got his foot tangled up in the cable that holds the wing jet in place.
The core of the model is probbaly the trukk front end mounted on a 'wing' made from the back firewall of a gorkamorka era trukk...everything else is just spare bits...the nacesls might have been a bit much but its the mark I so I think future models may be slimmed down a bit.

The rear engine compartment is pretty well scratch built out of plastic card and bits of armor and trukk fender.

The stormboy rockets are great but I gotta make a mold of em or something because they are way too pricey. As simple as they are I am sure I can sculpt as many as I will need though.


The base is just temporary. Ultimately he will skim low over the ground jus high enough so that his bomb wont get set off hitting da boyz in the head...most of da time.

Next one might have a slightly enhanced wingspan. I don't want to get too crazy with it though. The temptation to go big with orks is such that you can easily get out of control if you dont riegn yourself in...I once had a biker with a banner so over loaded the bike kept falling down. there were about 40 trophy heads attached to it so it is understandable...but thats what trukks and battlewagons are for.

With true los nobody will complain if your models are easy to see...unless of course they end up blocking los to something they REALLY want to shoot at.

Converting ork vehicles is the best reason I can find for playing a more Kult of speed style army...seconded by the ability to take a turn without spending an hour moving your boyz.

After being painted those "anti grav" thrusters will be glowing with the pulsing force of the energy keeping the Choppa from hitting the ground.


Well ok so I don't have as much commentary as I have pics but a pic is worth a thousand words eh? Maybe five hundred in this case ...the direct sunlight made taking these fairly straightforward even if i did have to do it on the kitchen floor...Guess I could have put down a battle mat in retrospect.

Lemme know what you think.

First Battle Report

Ok well I forgot my Camera. One of the gentlemen at the event in question had his camera phone and said he would try and send me some pics. If that happens I will gladly post em. The battle was great. We both had a lot of fun and were delighted that the other guy was not an ass. We decided to go classic so annihilation with pitched battle setup for simplicity.
Orks deployed and went first. Turn 1..Orks..move move move move move run run run run run run...Tank takes a shot...falls short boo.
Turn 1 Tyranids...move move move move move run run run ...pot shot at the grots from the zoanthropes kill a few grots and an ork.
Turn 2 Orks...Move move move move run run run pot shot with cannon...hits...deals NO DAMAGE. Warbikes decimate Termagant brood between shooting and combat..two survive and are fearless Ork shooting is almost universally pointless.
Turn 2 NIDs ...
Ok It gets a little fuzzy on the details at this point...note to self..take notes during the fight..and bring camera.
Basicly we played two or three turns and had a huge melee in the middle of the battlefield...really we shoulda just deployed 12" apart and said lets get some.
Nobs mob was wearing out the big ugly thing with the cool base whose name completely escapes me at the moment. Bikers were set to join as was the nobs mob. One full mob of ork boyz and one half mob of ork boyz still in combat. Woulda been a great fight but we ran out of time as I had to head to work. I am starting to think maybe I need to do necromunda/mordheim stuff during the week..that or get a smaller more compact army/learn the rules backward and forward to speed play up a bit. Well we shall see.
In any case the orks may not have finished the whole battle but they looked pretty good on the field.