The state of my army...

[KingNic]

And what I'm gonna be doing about it.

Evening all.

So yeah, I started out with Ork footsloggers last christmas after a good 5 year break from Games Workshop. I tried out a LOT of new techniques that I hadnt used before for painting including *gasp* drybrushing, washing and highlighting. So it took me a couple of dozen orks before I settled into a good colour scheme that I could paint effectively. By the time I'd painted 60 Orks, I was MUCH better at painting and my army seemed to be a mish-mash of differing skill levels. I could NOT get the hang of footsloggers at all and pretty much stopped playing over the summer holidays. After the last game of footsloggers where I managed to get *gasp* 3 models into close combat (and that was more than I usually got into combat...), I decided to call it quits and move to speed freaks.

Now because my old army was mostly painted badly (relative to what I could do), and the conversions mostly sucked, I decided to completely start over. I salvaged what I could from my old army, which was about 40 odd boyz, a few nobz and a Looted Leman Russ. I brought them to Uni and convinced myself that I WAS going to build up a decent speed freak force before the end of the year. I stripped the boyz and started painting them up as best I could (although having to hand-paint the undercoat is a :bleep ). I made cityfight bases using plasticard and scratch-built some trukks.

However, because it got to the point where it'd take me about 6 hours to paint 3 Orks, not including an hour to make the bases and undercoat them, I slowly stopped painting. I had attempted early on to do a more olive skin tone using the paints I had and failed miserably. I had a grand total of 15 Orks painted, out of a projected 40+ needed for the 1500 point army, and I still only had 2 half-finished trukks. After a failed attempt at kit-bashing some trukks, and finding out that they took just as long as the scratch builds and were waaay too big for my personal preference, I decided that I needed to optimise a fair bit.

It's the middle of march, and my final assignments for this year of uni are due in the 2nd week of april. I have a good few grudge-matches lined up against my panzee skumgod back home. I have just over a month to get 1500 points together...

This is what my army's shelf looked like as-of last night:


Some of the highlights:


Looted Leman Russ and unfinished 'Ard Boyz squad.


Complete Trukkboyz squad, minus Trukk.


Burna Boyz mob, with a mix of old-style painting and my new optimised paint scheme...

[KingNic]

Motor Pool


Right so I've come up with a much faster way of painting now. Before it was taking me around about 7 hours to go from unpainted, unbased group of 3 Orks to being finished. Now it's taking me the length of a Battlestar Galactica episode and a half to do a group of 3 Orks. My old method consisted of a lot of careful blending, highlighting and drybrushing and I also have the Olive skintones that I origionally wanted. Now my method is as follows:

-Undercoat all models with a mix of 2 parts vallejo black, 2 parts GW black ink, 1 part tamiya acrylic thinner and 1 part water. With a BIG brush.
-Paint all skin areas with Vallejo Camo green, paint all bone/teeth and cloth areas with Vallejo Bonewhite.
-Ink painted areas with GW flesh wash (old pot style with the evil sunz logo on the side)
-Paint weapons and armour with GW Tin Bitz.
-Drybrush with Vallejo gunmetal.
-Paint straps with a 1:1:1 mix of Vallejo Gory Red, Blood red and water.

DONE. Actually painting the orks, including their bases takes about the length of a battlestar galactica episode - the undercoating takes another half an episode.

In 6 months with my old method, I managed to paint a grand total of 15 orks. In one night I managed to paint 12:



As for the bases... well... Building cityfight bases is a pain to do and took me waaaay too long. So I started looking around for some pre-built bases and chanced upon this website. While they were all out of stock on the website for the bases I wanted, there was an ebay auction for 5 bags of bases. 50x25mm cityfight bases cost me a grand total of 20 quid, including shipping. Compared to spending hours making cityfight bases manually...

[KingNic]

The bases after their soapy bath to remove release oil residues:


I'm gonna be ordering some 40mm bases, a 65mm base and some bike bases just for the heck of em in a few days!

So the next problem is vehicles. Scratch building takes too long, kit-bashing isn't as long but the end result is too big to be hidden behind even a Leman Russ. No good really. So I've decided to build my trukks out of slightly modified GW Ork trukks - I have a converted trukk, conversion thread here.

The trukks I've got will most likely be sold off/traded for unbuilt, unpainted GW trukks. Feel free to make me any offers on any of the motor pools

[stahly]

Nice start, dude, keep it going!

But to be honest, yor new way of painting orks looks not half as decent as these sweet greenskins:



I'd say take the time and do it more carefully, the result will be more rewarding. Or, as an alternative, I'd go at least the snot green/dark green ink way.

[cerealkiller195]

nice hope this thread keeps going, my own orks are currently shelved for other projects.

[chuckyhol]

I much prefer the original strong green colour scheme. The new one isn't as eye catching, or IMO nice. Your plasticard skills are great,but I pity your wallet. An ork army with epicast bases...ouch!

Chuck

[KingNic]

Got another six done tonight:


The plan is to get this trukk boy mob and the Burna Boyz mob finished with this style. The remaining models in the mob have been stripped and are just drying on my window sill at the moment. Then I'll do my 'Ard boyz (which I also finished modelling today).

I know the mini's aren't particularly neat - I want to get an army done rather than get set into what I did before and have one mob finished. I will be going back and fixing up the paintjobs once all the units I've currently got are painted in this scheme.

Chuckyhol, I tend to prefer more realistic colour schemes and the bases are much cheaper than epicast. A 20 quid order set me up for all my foot troops, while another 20 quid order will set me up with enough 40mm bases for all my nobs, plus bases for a warboss on bike and a 6-ork bike squadron.

[Warboss Garfang]

Woah, your stuff looks GREAT! I really like the bases you bought, they add that extra little touch, very nice.

Your plasticard skills are deffinately ggood as well, some really incredible detail work(like those burna's/'ard boy's masks!) you've done.

[spongebob103]

Wow that looks great but, I do prefer the green skins... Still great work!

[Darkseer]

Great vehicles!

Seeing vehicles like that makes me want to hack up loads of old tank and plane kits and get converting.

[KingNic]

Got my bosses bike modelled last night:


No boss yet - I've managed to completely mangle his arms trying to get him to hold onto the handlebars so I'm ordering a new set from MO today.

Got the 9-ork burna boy mob (need to order another burna head to finish the mob off...) and the boyz in the trukkboy mob finished - Nob is on my desk ready to go.


I think I've got the 2nd lot of bases arriving today - 6 40mm bases for Nobz, a 65mm base for my bosses bike and 6 biker bases for a future army expansion.

[spongebob103]

Nice work. Does a speed freak army perform well?

[KingNic]

Alrighty time for an update. I've been mostly working on coursework since my last update and I've come down with a rather nasty cold so been in bed a lot (slept 20 hours today).

I have managed to get six of the ard boyz painted (and I just noticed that I've done 4 big shootas when the mob should only have 3 - WHOOPS). I'm not too happy with the red, but speed is the key here and I dont have enough time to do multiple layers of red. I may go over with chestnut ink/black ink when I've finished this mob and the 2nd mob of trukkas.





My new set of bases arrived today - sortof. I ordered 2 packs of 3 40mm bases, 2 packs of 3 rounded bike stands and a 65mm base. Unfortunately the parcel only contained 3 40mm bases, and 3 rounded bike bases. I've sent an email off since there's no phone number listed on the site I get them from so I hope I can get this sorted...



I just realised how zoggin 'uge the bosses bike is when it only JUST fits on the 65mm base.

[KingNic]

Tonight I want to work on my battlewagon. So far:
From the front:


Rear:


Size reference:



I want to build this up like the FW battlewagon, but with a slight difference. One theme that I want to convey with my speed freaks is that they LIVE on their vehicles. The trukks will have equipment and squigs hanging off the side, while the buggies will be the same chassis as trukks, but with even more equipment taking up the transport space. Zapp Guntrukks will be trukks with BIG badass power generators on the back, connected to a zapp gun.

My battlewagon will be an Oil Refinery on tracks. Time to burn the night oil!

And yup! A speedfreak army performs MUCH better.

[Warboss Garfang]

Sounds awesome, can't wait to see the battlewagon.

Those are some nice bases, and the boss's bike is awesome, absolutely stunning.

[Red Skullz]

A lot of great conversions there, no doubt about it.
But I gotta agree on what someone else said about the skin tone. Your "old" version is like 10 times better than the new one. Seriously the new one looks kinda muddy for some reason. Might be something with the pics that does it but imo ya gotta go back to your old skin tone.

[Unique1]

A lot of great conversions there, no doubt about it.
But I gotta agree on what someone else said about the skin tone. Your "old" version is like 10 times better than the new one. Seriously the new one looks kinda muddy for some reason. Might be something with the pics that does it but imo ya gotta go back to your old skin tone.

orks dont wash.

gud stuff Kingnic, gud to see it being painted, not just built!

[KingNic]

Alright, I didnt work on the battlewagon - so shoot me! Instead, I decided to make a guntrukk and went to the BWC archives to pick up the templates for the FW gunwagon. While there I checked out the useful links and found a link to a program which allows me to import some of my models from maya, and convert them to printable cut-out templates, which can then be stuck onto plasticard and speed up the scratchbuilding process by approximately 600%. I've got a guntrukk and another trukk almost ready for wheels, but unfortunately I don't have any photos of them yet.

I have, however, recieved my GW bits order and I've finished my Warboss on bike off. Photos:

[KingNic]

I also got a reply to my email from Nexus games and they'll be sending out my missing bases - will hopefully arrive tomorrow.

Unfortunately I don't have much time to work on this army in the next couple of weeks - got the Queen visiting Uni on Friday and I gotta get a buggerload of coursework ready for demonstration and then all my assignments are due in next friday.

[Thoth62]

That looks great, I love the warboss. I can already imagine, "Look, boyz!!! No 'andz!!!"