Blood Axe Warband Update - Oddboyz and Snotlings

One unit I really wanted to include in the army was Snotlings. The thought of them being turned crazy by being hurtled through warp and throwing some smackdown on a space marine within his terminator armour was, and still is, quite funny.

  For this I need a Shokk Attack Gun and to have that I need a Mekboy while the little guys need a Runtherd to be allowed to be taken, it all coming together in a beautiful kind of way.

I acquired most of the snotlings from the talented Mr Rusty Painting. I painted the snotlings in brighter colours than the rest of my Ork force, as I didn't want them to be dwarfed simply because of their size and figured Warp transit does strange things to one's colouring.

One of the snotlings got so scared by his journey he couldn't control his bowels.

Keeping these guys in check is the Runtherd. 

I've decided each oddboy type will get its own signature colour and this one gets a brownish-yellow colour that reminiscent of an explorer's get up. This synchs with my vision of runtherdz as collectors and organisers of strange creatures rather than slave drivers.

Mekboyz get a blue uniform reminiscent of the jumpsuits car mechanics wear (which made sense in my head at least) This sculpt is woefully underestimated in my opinion - just looks at the detail of the gubbins on the gun - it has an egg timer, a tap and all sorts. As my fiancé pointed out it's really steampunk! 

The contraption looks like something the Doctor would assemble from odds and sods lying around in the Tardis. I imagine the Mekboy follows the same MO but probably doesn't know how the resulting machine works. It just does....

Until next time...

Blood Axe Warband Update - Completion and Vehicles

It's with great pleasure I can announce my Blood Axe Ork warband is complete in time for BOYL. And with a week to spare!

I'm quite proud as it's a bit of milestone for me as I have never created a force from scratch with a deadline, more just pottered around growing a force organically as I see fit.

Sometimes it's hard going painting units especially so if the troops are uninspiring and uniform - but not so with this one. You may have noticed around 70% of the figures have been sculpted by the Goblinmaster Kev Adams that being the reason did not have this problem at all. His humorous and 'humanisation' of Orks breathes a new life into painting making it effortless. These greenskins have a variety of moods. They are bored, bemused, smug,  mischievous - none of the universal violent rage you often see in Ork models.

If you'd like to see the Goblinmaster in action himself he will be sculpting faces by request for charity at BOYL this Saturday. Something surely not be missed! There's more detail about this on Orlygg's excellent blog here.

Over the next few days I'll be showcasing the different characters and units of the force but right now I need to confess I had a big helping hand from Mustafa Bekir of Pantheon of Chaos fame. The land raider at the back is the centre piece and if its design seems slightly unfamiliar it's because he scratch built it only using materials from the 100¥ shop!

The construction of it is magnificent and really catches the sense that it has been kept running by being patched up after being stolen from an Imperial force. The painting complements it's battered design perfectly.

I'd already base coated my own Rhino when this had arrived in the post from Japan. Once I saw this paint job I just had to try and replicate it! After applying Mustafa's recipe this was the result.

I think the two vehicles have a good consistency in style now. I even tried to paint the blood axe symbol and vehicle numbering by freehand to link them together.

Until the next instalment....

Blood Axe Ork warbike

Another edition to my little blood axe warband.

I'd picked this model up in a job lot in Oz with hundreds of other already (badly painted) mostly plastic miniatures. I decided not to strip this one as it was already painted close to the colours I had intended but this did mean many hours of removing mould lines on a painted miniature! I might think differently next time...

It's a second edition 40K ork plastic warbike, one of the few minis in this warband who I think wasn't sculpted by Goblinmaster, Kev Adams.

He's a bit smaller compared to many of the other minis but I like that he is bit overweight with his burgeoning pot belly. I need to add a flag to the pole on the back of the bike but first I need to make sure I get most of the rest of the warband done.

Blood Axe Orks Big Mob

  Sorry that I've been away for away too long ...

  Pesky real life got in the way in the form of buying a house. While I have been painting the setup at the new place in only slowly getting less chaotic and so hindering me from blogging about them or actually finding them!

  Anyway to make up for this here is a whole unit I've painted which is part of a Blood Axe Ork Army I'm preparing.

Here's pics of the unit split out:

And now altogether:

The army list is being drawn up using the rules from 'Ere We Go which is a supplement to Rogue Trader, the very ever first incarnation of what would become to be known as Warhammer 40K.

Each Ork Clan gets it's own list (a clan has it's own cultural identity) and the untrustworthy, human mimicking Blood Axes can employ humans and Ogryns in their number which attracted me due to the variety this allows me.

The army is being prepared for a Rogue Trader 'tournament' at Bring Your Own Lead in August (from the 5th to the 7th) which is probably the biggest 'Oldhammer' event in the UK. Like minded individuals play the games and field the figures of Games Workshop's golden past - it's not to be missed if you can get there.

http://bringoutyourlead.co.uk/