Something which happened a lot in the old days was that Games Workshop would present rules for something, but neglect to put out a model for it. A lot of the time this was fairly mundane, like a lesser-known special character or particular weapon option requiring a conversion project. GW was, historically, quite happy for people to do this; they allowed people to order specific bits from them, routinely put conversion advice in the codexes and White Dwarf, with some entire armies like Kroot Mercenaries being heavy duty kitbash affairs. This practice has long since been stopped, it was the Chapter House Studios legal battle I think, and GW seems to be limiting possibilities for customisation that might allow a third party to happily undercut them. This brings us to the modern Mega-Armoured Warboss, the first actual model for this unit ever, it took them decades to actually make one, and while it's undeniably lovely to an extreme, its a fixed pose affair that has none of the usual Meganob weapons. Funny that.
Now, Ork players are a resourceful bunch, many built their own, and when the 3rd edition Ghazghkull Thraka model came that just got easier. A head-swap, a few gubbins, your clan colours, and you're there. That's what I did. I think everyone did that. And their mums. And their dogs. It's not really table legal now though, and I like my stuff be theoretically game worthy. So, there's another modernisation job. After mulling it over for a while, the scale of what I was actually attempting hit me. At the bare minimum, I'd need to do new hands, possibly entire new arms, but hands would the tricky bit. If that new model been equipped with the standard klaw and gun combo it would have been a simple matter of looking at Deff Dread bits. Instead I was looking at a polearm and a little grot on top firing a machine gun. It's an undeniably awesome concept, don't get me wrong, but I was gonna have to step outside my comfort zone just a little.
Eventually what I decided to do was to use arms from non-mega Warbosses and build them up with plating and gubbins. This is an approach attempted by various people more talented than myself, dressing wholly plastic models usually, but I was aware of my limitations. I wanted this done within a week of vacation time, and in a manner befitting the grand celebrations of Orktober. Smaller and more intricate works will come later, but here I took advantage of the sheer size of the metal model and kept it basic. The hammer arm is taken from a 3rd Ed metal Warboss with armour built from foam, cable ties, and the ring from a floss dispenser. Its piston is a bead on a wire, with the hammer being a largely hollow affair built from a clothing tag, bits of old trukk, foam & and water pistol innards. The right arm was off a "black reach" plastic warboss built in the same manner, but given a spare hand from a 30MM kit. This was both expedient and a nod to the previous version of the model, which had a big 1/100 hand to slap fools with. Yes, that works.
The
big shoota and gunner grot were a bit more finicky. I visualised this
as a turret made from T'au bits, and produced one that was fine but
approximately twice the size it should have been. That will get used
in another build, so I had a rummage and found the tiny Gretchin
co-pilot from the Stormboyz kit. The completed build was then painted
in largely the same manner as my meganobz, but with one final flair,
a tattered cape made from a bandage. This along with the hammer is a
nod to various giant robot shows, and you may recall a previous attempt in the before times. I dyed this over-night in a pot of
thinned-down paint, which kinda worked, before being attached via
thinned down PVA glue. It worked reasonably well, but drying the
thing out took a wee while. I named hime Gorion Da Hamma (& Timmy).
I like how this came together, and I may very well make more Meganobz in future as scratchbuilds.
Work in Progress Pics
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