Plamo: The Orktober Terror Ship (Battlefleet Gothic)

 

Well, its the last Sunday of Orktober, so here's the finished model I started a few weeks back. I've not got a huge amount to say here, as the previous articles largely covered the creative process. Such as it was. I free-form stuff like this, a process both helped and hindered by a lack of materials and forgetfulness.

On the plus side: I feel that I can move onto more involved projects, as it does a good job of capturing a fundamental Orkyness, while obviously being a carrier ship of some kind. I have been told it resembles a ship from Star Fleet, which wasn't intended, but is flattering. On the minus side: I goofed with the Nuln Oil wash and ended up making this MUCH darker than I wanted. Things eventually got to the point where I decided to stop messing with it, for fear of compounding a mistake, which I have done before. That brings the painted fleet registry to 3 Kroozers, 25 Ramships, and 6 Onslaughts. It seems I'd forgotten that I had a functional fleet ready to go...

Future projects? Well, I have that incomplete Kroozer, and a 60% done Hammer class. Those are probably doable now that I've had a bits delivery, but I'm not feeling it. I may end up scrapping them both for parts, as I'm rolling in ship hulls and plastic gubbinz just now. Alternatively, I do have a “Gorbag's Revenge”. The more immediate project is however gonna be, probably, a trio of Onslaughts from the bag of cheapo ships...

 

 

Or another Gunpla.

Book Mini-Review: Brutal Kunnin by Mike Brooks

Like most multimedia empires, Games Workshop maintains its own publishing arm for tie-in books. There's hundreds of the damn things, of variable quality and bleakness. The problem in doing this is, I feel, is that Warhammer 40,000 and other GW settings are so relentlessly grim it presents a narrative barrier. Books written in universe, say as a military history, work out great, others I can take or leave. The main exception to this are the Commissar Cain novels, a slightly repetitive series of War memoirs that seeks to ask "what if 40K was also Blackadder the 4th?“. Brutal Kunnin happily joins it as a second exception.

 

Brutal Kunnin makes the rare choice of telling a story from the Ork perspective, something well-loved in rulebooks and short stories, but to the best of my knowledge not attempted in novel format before. It sees our protagonist Ufthak Blackhawk, a recently "elevated" Nob as his Waagh attacks a Forge World. Author Mike Brooks immediately and consistently nails the Ork approach to life as Ufthak faces the GRIMDARK with utter indifference, dumb luck, brute force, and sheer audacity. If Ufthak is on the page, you've usually got something laugh out loud funny, and always Orky. The novel never treats the Orks as simply comedic characters either; they don't know what they are doing is funny, so they don't act like they do. What they find funny is stuff like severed limbs sent flying from an exploding grenade, which the the writing does not gloss over. However, at this point, I must mention the main similarity to the aforementioned Cain series: the presence of alternate viewpoints written in a different style.

 

Narrative tasks like "exposition", "plot development", and "thinking for 5 minutes" are handled by a variety of non-Orks, mainly of the Adeptus Mechanicus. While these changing viewpoints were not advertised, quite the opposite, this makes a certain degree of sense. Orks are about as introspective as a stag-do, and stuffy/allegedly-logical Techpriests are good foils for them. I also liked the unexpectedly diverse selection of pronouns on display, Orks being the personifiication of toxic masculinity, although maybe I'm just showing my age on that front. At the very least, I didn't feel that the fundamental Orkyness of events was being upstaged by a bunch of umies, and those umies are quite well rounded given thier page count. The author also uses this as an excuse to have fun with chapter titles.

 

All in all: Brutal Kunnin is not a deep book, but it never would have been. Its just a good laugh.

Plamo: More Ork Terror Ships in progress (Battlefleet Gothic)

Well, here's that follow-up article I promised. Yes, and this time its with two more Terror ships, because what are diminishing returns?

 

 

Let's start with the most involved of the two. TBH, this little project was about reminding myself how to scratchbuild, and to assess what of my bits box remains useful. Its core component is an actual spaceship this time, one I acquired in a mixed bag of 35 for a tenner, so my expectations weren't high. The contents however proved to be pretty decent, and they accepted a stand without modification. Choosing what I think was a “lander”, see photos, I cut off the back half, and stripped the front engines, and set about bulking things out. It seems I may have cleared out some raw materials since I last did this, so the build was definitely more improvisational than I intended, hence the use of drinking straws and two types of off-brand lego. At the time of writing, I'm still awaiting new materials, but if you compare the unmodified toy to what it now resembles, I think its going OK. Its got ten engines and a face, which seems to be my signature style now.

 

 

Yes, yes. I know it has shiny gems on it. It will be fine with a brown undercoat. Its not done!

As I like to paint things in bulk, I decided to look into another Orky Capital Ship I had knocking about. This second Terror Ship started as an incomplete Kill Krooser I got in a mixed lot, which I started on back in the day and never finished. This demonstrates my distaste for the Kill Krooser at the time, and also how far I have to go before I can scratchbuild something in the same style. I added in launch tubes and more recently new engines in an attempt to balance the thing. I'm rather unhappy with it so far, I really need those new materials, and the damn thing doesn't like stands. Putting a big metal model on a thin plastic flight base, who would have thought that could be a problem?

 

All-in-all, I'm edging towards a functional fleet, as Orks max out at only six standard capital ships, and I've already got assorted Rams and Onslaughts. That leaves the more specialised escorts, and big projects like the Space Hulk. I'll move up to something more involved once these are done, I think.

Plamo: Scratchbuilt Ork Terror Ships (Battlefleet Gothic)

 

Way back in the before times of 2016/2017, I was blogging about model-making. The more things change, the more they stay the same. One project that stalled before completion was my attempt to build an Ork fleet for the long-dead spaceship game Battlefleet Gothic. I think it was the playing of Warhammer 40K proper that did that one in. However, I did not share on here anything of the 2^nd completed Terror Ship, and I'm slightly better with a camera these days, so here we go.

 

Its been a while, so maybe I'm misremembering, but my basic approach here was not to mimic the official models and just make it obviously Orky. I.e. ramshackle and loads of engines, while evoking Ork walkers like the Stompa. Part of that was simply a lack of skill, but also an influence from Gurren Lagann and its big faces motif. These are built a core of knock-off lego and misc plastic, and then dressed with bits, some naval in origin.

So,why am I bringing this up again? Well, I thought I'd tempt fate and try again. I've been in a BFG mood of late, and got lucky with some cheap ships as conversion fodder.

 

Either I'll have something new to show in coming weeks, or I'll never mention it again.