Yes, it's that time of year again. But what to do? As mentioned in a previous article, I've done a lot of Ork stuff lately, so I needed to do something special, without flooding the blog. I also wanted it to be fun, and, if possible, not hugely expensive. After mulling it over for a bit, I decided to go back to my roots and make a Stompa. For the unfamiliar, Stompas are a centrepiece model for an Ork, something roughly on the same scale as an Imperial Knight but much chunkier. There bigger things in the lore and older rulesets, the fabled Gargants, but a Stompa is about as big Ork units can get in regular 40k. They are also amongst the orkiest things imaginable, being a roughly humanoid waddling idol to Gork and/or Mork, with enough firepower to make your average gunclub member drop his pipe and exclaim "Steady on, chap!". Less romantically, Stompas are ambulatory collections of scrap metal with proportions somewhere between an upturned plant pot and a wind-up robot toy circa 1953. They aren't hugely well-regarded in competitive play either for a variety of reasons, but usually for it's low cost-efficiency. GW has historically priced it high, which isn't great as a Stompa is a bit of an enthusiastic generalist, although we're not gonna get into that today. Now, I've built Stompas before. Specifically the GW kit, it's a bit annoying as I recall, and scratch-built another. But I’d like to think I’m better at this now than I was then. It was time to try again.
So, aside from an unreasonable amount of hot glue, how did this go together?
Hull
The majority of the stompa is a Mr Potato head body atop the lid from a coffee jar. It's still in there somewhere. Such things are not unheard of in stompa builds, because they offer such a nice body shape, versus the aforementioned "plant pot" stereotype that is common. I still took the easy route though in that I didn't build distinct legs, just feet with an implied skirt. Hey if the official model does it that way, I can too. Once the mounting points for weapons and limbs were worked out, I layered panels of numerous different materials over it. It's an effect I'd used on my recent Battlewagon, as such a thing like this absolutely should not have clean lines. EVA foam was a big help here, as was my hoarder-level bitzbox. The feet are off a combining robot toy that went an odd colour, and we're basically fine as-is. I did attempt keep this sensibly sized too, I had a tape measure and everything, but it kinda got away from me.
Mega-Choppa Arm
This was off a construction toy I'd been keeping for such a use for absolutely ages. It didn't need much work but the melee weapon presented a bit of a challenge. Eventually, I hit on the idea of using triangular beads for teeth, in a fitting made from a bit of a tank. This was fiddly work, but it looks great.
DethKannon Arm
This was built up from a series of cylindrical bits I'd collected, the largest of which was a Junkbot toy. There's no real trick to this, you just need a lot of tubing, although the Supa-Gatler benefits from some beads. This was affixed to the main body via some some heavy duty wire and some T'au bits, because it's not Deathskulls without looted bits.
Head
The head was built from a pod from a gatchapon toy, onto which panels were layered, and the measuring spoon from a tub of stain remover. The spoon looked so much like a baseball cap this prompted me to go in a different direction for the paint scheme, more on that shortly.
Secondary weapons
These were of a mix of felt-tip pens, beads, and actual pre-existing weapons. The Supa-Rokkits were possibly a bit too simple looking back, as these are merely tubes with spikes from the bead shop, but it works. The secondary turret was mainly the cab off a truck toy, and while inspired by the one on the regular Stompa kit, I felt it needed a bit more punch. Thus it got the twin big shoota and two supa-rokkits.
Painting
I broke out the art/craft paint for this one, as while you can absolutely use miniature paints on a project like this, you are talking about a model a foot tall. Things easily run out, so I used craft supplies for all the major colours, via drybrushing, stippling and sponging. I got a make-up brush for that. The head however was closer to my usual style, if with a quirk. As it had a baseball cap, it obviously followed that I paint it up like crude representation of an ork's face. I used AK Lime Green, as I didn't want to perfectly match the skintones of my Boyz, I needed a sharper contrast. This also led to be doing the hat in my usual blue, and the feet in black, suggesting a kinship with the lads. The head, turret, and main body were painted separately, only to be attached at the final stage. Touch-up followed, and while I'm generally pleased, some of the glyph plates could be better.
Job's a good 'un. And following a discussion with my RPG group, I named it "Mr Giblets".
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