160th Special Ork Assault Regiment (or: "Black Ork Down")

[jaggedtoothgrin]

Hey All. I'm back, and I bring more orks.

So backtrack a few months. Rumours about the new Necron codex are beginning to materialise, and I am not feeling inspired by them. It seems likely that, given what happened to my Tyranid army at the release of their latest codex, my Necrorks would probably be sitting things out for the forseeable future.
Rumours also placed the codex release date at approximately the right time for Stouthammer, which is my big yearly 40k event.
So I thought it was about time to get a new army in place.
An idea (or atleast, a pun and an observation on one of the newer and more maligned plastic kits) had gestated for a while by this point, and as GW announced their grand plan to close off the great warpstorms access to our shores, I took advantage of the final days to buy the last of my GW boxes.
Fast forward to Friday evening, through a hurried trip up to Brisbane for a fortnight, Housesitting for a friend, and some other stuff that doesnt really bear talking about, and I am finally putting the finishing touches of the army in place for the tourney.

Anyway, tourney is done and dusted, and while I'm a bit disappointed with my paint score, it was a good fun event and I had some nice memorable games. Having spent most of yesterday asleep, I whipped out A camera this morning to take some shots of the army.
My photography skills arent the best to begin with, and in all the bustle moving things between houses over the last few weeks, I have misplaced my usual camera (with its nice super-macro setting) so the photos are smaller/less detailed than i'd prefer and do not really show up the highlighting on the skin in particular. The army is quite a dark one (which was a very intentional choice to cause certain elements to pop out more) which unfortunately makes it hard to appreciate in tournament lighting. Clearly I need to try painting a brightly coloured army next time if i want to get the judges onside more!

Anyways, here is the blurb I placed before my army list, followed by some pictures of the army.

M41.Y993: Soma System. Planet: Lee-Alpha. The Plains Of Moghur Deeshu

The City burnt. In the distance, Forward Kommander Grue Bad-Fang lowered his viewfinder and gazed across the sandy bluff. Despite disappointing readings, 'Da Itch' behind his skull told him that somewhere out there in the haze and smoke their prey lurked. 'Umies with da red hats. He'd sent out a handful of lads earlier to look, but so far no reports had made it back.
Behind him, Da Boyz, the '160th* Specalist Ork Assault Regiment (Airborne)' had broken off into small clusters, gambling, fighting, or both. They were restless, itching for a fight. He didnt blame them.
"Boss -" Skargut, his radio operator called out over the whine of the idling turbines, "Report from da city. Someone shot down one of the ladz. He says it wasnt da 'umies after all."
Zog it. He was gonna get them one of these days. Maybe not today, but someday. For now though, the Boyz wanted a scrap, and whoever it was out there was gonna get a great big stomping.
He chomped down on his cigar, motioned crudely with his power klaw to the tracker who was idly picking his nails with a large knife and yelled over the din.
"Ok Boyz, get your gear together, we're moving out!"

(*Best not to dwell on What had happened to the previous 159. This last batch hadn't exploded in over a week, which the Meks took as a good sign.)


And now the pictures.
First, the objective. the "Black Ork Down" himself


And then what the enemies of the army see when first they peer over their trenches *Cue ride of the valkyries*

[jaggedtoothgrin]

And pouring out of the three wagons comes


(not all of them, just a few of my favourites)


Unfortunately the photography also doesnt really do any favours to the basing (which have submerged skulls and rocks and tufts of dying grass on them, much of which isnt noticable here. I really must get some better photos of them one day)

[jaggedtoothgrin]

But where, I shall pretend to hear you ask, is Kommander Badfang himself? (No, its not the guy peering out from Sierra One-Thirty-Seven, although that was originally the plan< when the list was nastier and had KFFs in it.)

Here he is! And he's got friends!


And in some more detail





And last of all, the big army shot

[New Cult King]

These are just flippin' awesome! I love what you've done with the cockpits of the Storm Ravens Fantastic army all over.

[Sicarius the 2nd]

Wow, and I don't believe it, this is a great looking army, though you have stole my idea! Joking it was only last week I was thinking about doing something along these lines and bang you post this army, great inspiration and love all the conversions, I particularly like the basing scheme!
Andy

[Hadriel Caine]

This is why Stormravens annoy me as marine vehicles; they are clearly Ork vehicles. Wonderful concept and execution. I like the Forward Kommander the best. He exudes badassery.

[Npf6]

wow! this is a great army cant wait to see more. Querry: What did you use for the barrels on most of your guns?

[BeatTheBeat]

Insane mate! Easily on par with your Necrork army. Do you never run out of ideas or orks?

Cheers,
BTB

[talonatreyu]

Wow this army is sweet! Cant wait to see what you do next

cheers

[Icarium]

great idea and well executed. U definately should have scored high for painting. 'Gentlemen, we just lost the initative' tell me u used that line whenever u attempted to seize the initative.

[jaggedtoothgrin]

thanks guys. i quite like the armys feel (though i have to say, its not the most exciting to play)

alas, my painting score came in at mid 60's%, with 40% being awarded to some largely unpaintd armies!
still, thems the breaks. i'm happy with it, which i guess is all that matters)
and yes. kommander badfang is a total badass (although snikrot is also pretty awesome)

the silencers are just two different sizes of plasticard. the ridges are made via the pipe-cutter i used to cut them with, just not all the way through.

and i rather suspect i will never run out of orks ideas, every army i build with them gives me ideas for two more. the simple fact is that orks are the most fun to make. so while i'm not likely to do any more on these, i do have some more ork armies perculating (though i do have atleast 3 other armies also in the works, so it might be time to focus on non-ork projects for a little while*)

(*he says while working on a gargant army for epic...)

[self biased]

i like it, but your colors seem to be very flat and don't pop too much. maybe look for a little more contrast within your colors?

[jaggedtoothgrin]

that was pretty much the intention of the scheme. i rather carefully kept all the colours muted except for the green of the night vision goggles (it doesnt show up in the pictures, but it near glows in real life, its glossy fluero green, and it stands out pretty well in person)
the idea was they'd have a subdued muddy palette, to make them look more grim and realistic in tone, and to draw attention to the goggles. the result works well in person when you look at the individual models under good lighting conditions, but on the table, they suffer from Dark Army Syndrome (which is what i attribute to part of my poor painting score. it didnt help that one of the painting judges spent all of fifteen seconds looking at the army from the other side of the table before assigning its score)
like i said in the original post, i probably need to pick a brighter scheme if i want to win the judges over, but doing that here would completely defeat the point behind the paint scheme (and though that, largely the army itself)

[Jo-Jo]

Wait.

Foehammer? Hocus?

Halo reference?

[jaggedtoothgrin]

yes, they are indeed, they've also got the correct alphanumeric designations
the other one is a reference too, but not to halo
(there are also a couple of references in the written blurb of the army, though they're also not in any way halo related)

[SDKFZ]

Bugstomper is from Aliens isnt it

Great army, love the theme !

/ SDKFZ

[le Mediko]

Nice!
Those guys are definitively Blood Axes!
I like both conversion and painting work very much. Only the Stormraven could have been more converted.
Keep posting!

[andyg2006]

Really nice realisation. I like the Imperium's view of "Ork's don't do stealth", but then the Orks are like: "Oh yer? Well wot about wen we loot's ya stormravens, oomie?"
Nice muted colours and conversions...I need to get a pipe cutter, as that's a cool idea.

[colonel kane trine]

That army is amazing! I like the dark scheme and the stealthy theme!
Arent they on the wrong size bases though?

[jaggedtoothgrin]

bugstomper is indeed from aliens.

yes, they are on the wrong size bases. they're on 30mm instead of 25 (orks look wrong on 25, as they hang over the edges too much)
as an assault army (and one that piles out of a transport) the extra size is quite a pain in the ass, but it's worth it for having it look a bit better. most people dont even notice (kinda like the orkified winged skulls, or the orkified rivets) but i think it improves the figures quite a lot.

i think the storm ravens look plenty orky enough when you look at them as "the pinnacle of orky engineering" rather than "a looted vehicle"
i wanted to stay away from the ramshackle look of most orks. these guys are the most disciplined orks you'll ever find, they have well maintained and uniform equipment, so i avoided the "loads of plates of armour stuck over everything" approach, and just relied on the nice boxy feel of the stormraven. (i also removed the spikey bits on the deffkopta rotors, and tried to apply the same design aesthetics where possible)
originally the top hatches on the storm ravens had small turrets (from the battlewagon) on them, but it didnt look right (it clashed a bit with the rest of the ravens, and the list dropped the zzap guns it had once had)
i also had to abandon plans for sniper rifle rokkits in the squads, cause none of the conversions looked like rifes (you cant put scopes on ork guns held across the chest, the head gets in the way) so i went with the SAWs instead (which are a terrible choice, but look cool)

and yes, pipe cutters are easily one of the best most under-rated hobby tools you can get (the other two i really love are the precision sanding station, which got used a bunch in this project, and the corrugator, which did not)