Orktober: The 1st Edition Shokk Attack Gun

 

What to do for Orktober? Ummm… Well, Project Legs11 has Orks largely covered, and I have been severely lacking in spoons of late. Oh, I know! I'll finish up something I probably should have finished a decade ago.

Of all the deranged things Orks do that qualify as memes, the Shokk Attack Gun  is likely the most memetic. Simply, it is a weaonised teleporter. More verbosely: it's a weapon that fires little green gremlins through hell, driving them mad  in the process, so they materialise around and physically within their targets, while farting/shitting themselves in terror. Vehicle crews suddenly find themselves trapped in a metal box with dozens of biting feral creatures, while infantry suffer an experience somewhere in between a chestburster and a sudden shower of Snotlings. There is a rather wonderful Codex Compliant video outlining how the rules for this worked at various times, although the modern rules make it a somewhat mundane anti-tank gun. Think something adjacent to Mek Gunz, but outside of the Madcap Meks detachment it lacks flair.

This model was kindly gifted to me years ago by a friend I've sadly lost touch with, and it's the 1st ed original. Its also a model made of lead and hubris. This was intended to go on a 25mm slotta base, and the problem with that should be immediately obvious. There's more mass in the gun than the Mek holding it, and he's holding it above his head. You could put this in a sock, tie a knot to make an improvised weapon, and beat someone to death with this model. And it would probably be fine once the police gave it back. I was greatly concerned by the balance issue this presents, and subsequently, the inevitable stylistic differences that occurred over forty-odd years. This guy largely predates the concept of a Big Mek, and is closer to a Boy in overall size. I pinned him directly to base at first, but I then felt something more elaborate was needed. A resin piece proved ideal, and fortuitously allowed me to offset the models centre of gravity. I also opted to paint the whirling gubbins separately, which I would have a glue mishap with, but I'm getting ahead of myself. I also put a little gem on the left hand, as that area lacked sculpted details. Call it a rivet.

I painted this in much the same way as my recent batch of Boyz, while experimenting with some metallic paints and store-brought mud paint. Things came out a bit darker than they probably should have, prompting some modifications after the wash stage. It's okay, I liked it more when I got it based, but I should probably have gone louder.

 

 

Plamo: Ork Boyz (The Armageddon ones)

And now for another installment of Project Legs11. Codex in hand, I now take a swing at the Armageddon Boyz. And its also Orktober.

Now, as a basic build, the Armageddon Boyz are fine. Not dissimilar to the other fixed pose models I've built, but there's flexibility that been absent elsewhere. The Nob can be built in two different ways, with actual Boyz having two different builds per body, plus the ability to freely swap heads. It's a shame that there isn't more redundancy in the kit, but if you pay attention it's not hard to avoid duplicates. Visually, these Orks also seem to be a bit less armoured than I expected and one is barefoot, but OK. The real issue is the numerous weapon options that we now know are absent. The omission of weapon options for the Nob is forgivable in context, but the absence of the ammo runt, big shoota, rokkit launcha and burna isn't. I suppose there are situations where you could want regular shootas instead, reducing mental load for example, but as the bigger guns don't prevent choppas any more, each represents a straight upgrade. Similarly, there's no obvious reason why you wouldn't take a power klaw if you had the bits for one, which I did. That said, these are definitely useful if you have the resources to overcome these limitations, and you can easily use the 5 gretchin on the sprue to make ammo runts. You will have to work around proportional and stylistic differences with older Ork plastics though. And I probably need to get some new drill bits as gun barrels have gotten smaller…

So I approached the first mob of ten with a few basic kitbash techniques, choosing to trim down and then build up shootas into the desired guns by changing the business ends, and adding related bells or whistles. Green stuff was then used to conceal the joins, and such. I'm glossing over the specifics a bit, but they put the "make a shoota big by adding the barrel from another shoota" trick in the 3rd ed codex. It's a well-established technique, that transfers reasonably well to rokkits and burnas. The burna is perhaps the least convincing, but a resin oilcan and some wire does well enough. Where appropriate, I added sculpted backpacks, sacks and straps. Oh, and the ammo runt? Meanwhile, the Ammo Runt was done as part of an earlier batch. The second mob would feature a headswap for the Nob, but that unit is not complete at time of writing. Real life family issues have marked my schedule, so maybe we'll come back to those later, hopefully befitting from my experience here. There were a lot of little details I was feeling out, like those little squig bastards. Not my best work, but I think they do OK as gaming pieces.


 

Apropos of nothing, here's my rough guide to painting these Boyz
1) Undercoat: Colorforge Trench Brown.
2) Colour blocking. Working from dark to light, big areas to small, drybrush the major colours. That's a brown for the fabrics, a dark grey for boots and pouches, a gunmetal for metals, and Citadel Moot Green for the skin. We don't need to be perfect here, we just want to get the foundations done.
3) Then start focusing in on the finer details and the clan colour, in my case Vallejo Deep Sky Blue. Pick out the teeth and such with an off white, and I like to do tongues and squigs in a dark red.
4) Tidy it up, correcting mistakes, and adding contrasting metal tones were appropriate like pins on stikkboms or ammo belts. I like to stipple the blue onto metal components here, but leave any lenses for now.
5) The magic trick. Apply a brown ink wash, dab off any excess, and let it dry. This should shade the model and highlight details.
6) Having let it all dry, touch up any mistakes, and now attempt any lenses or googles you need to do. Doing this after the wash helps these look bright, but apply a touch of white to the area first to help that along. Soulstone Technical or Contrast paints followed by some Ardcoat are good to use here.
7) Do the bases.
8) Swear violently as you look at everything else you have to do.


Up next: The actual Orktober Project.

 

So What the Zog Happened to the Orktober Buggies?

I am apparently now so old that I am surprised by the linear passage of time. Case in point, the Orktober Buggies, a huge army refresh that reworked the long-neglected Ork vehicle pool. That happened eight years ago. And now two are bring retired with the 11th edition Ork Codex. Damn, that's hardly any time at all. But hey, at least that's older than the Confederacy.

Righty, so the loss of units with a new codex is, regrettably, painfully, routine at this point. Invariably this is a business decision, the charitable view being that GW can only support so much, and must eventually discontinue something that's unpopular. Less charitably, it's an attempt to drive players to buy more stuff. Both are true, and if I'm totally honest, Orks got off lighter than the Beakies did. That having been said, it's a bit of a surprise to see this happen to the buggies. Especially as aircraft still seem to limping on with own detachment and the bloody Bosshead Bunka still being a thing. The buggies were  by any margin a substantial investment, with six distinct vehicle kits. Now only two exist as independent units, two persisting in the same generic unit, and two having been removed as units, if mentioned in the proxy list. Of the two survivors, the Deathkilla Wartrike makes sense, to assist those new Warbikes, but the Rukkatrukk is less obvious. Maybe it just sold well enough? So, let's explore what might have happened here. What happened to the Orktober buggies?

Suspect 1: Conceptual Issues
The Orktober buggies as they were known, sought to replace a quartet of fairly conventional vehicles. The main three of these were the Warbuggy, Wartrakk, and Skorcha, light, two-ork vehicles with exposed crew. These were very much warbike-adjacent, being relatively small models initially done in metal, and differentiated mainly by weapon load-out. These received (mostly) plastic models in the 2nd edition/Gorkamorka period, and aged poorly, promoting a lot of kitbashed versions. The forth was the Warboss on Warbike, which did get a Forgeworld version, but otherwise was one of those odd, no-model units GW allowed in times past. It made sense to do one at the same time. The units that replaced these were not 1:1 updates, and were radically different in character. This is is not in itself a bad thing, these units are so massively Orky on the artistic level they'll turn your skin green. But they didn't fit cleanly into the same tactical roles their predecessors did. In all fairness, the Dethkilla Wartrike (first picture) did OK. It was a bike that got so big it became a full vehicle. But if you want a flamethrower vehicle? Well, that's kinda spread out between the Kustom Boosta-blasta and the Boomdakka Snazzwagon. That might be why those two became the new amalgamated unit. What is the Rukkatrukk Squigbuggy (picture 4) for? If it's anti-infantry, isn't that covered by the last two? OK, the Shokkjump Dragsta (below) is hyper mobile, I get that. Why is it also a precision anti-tank weapon? Meanwhile, the Megatrakk Scrapjet (above) is absolutely amazing, for a one-off special character. I mean, do Orks go through so many aircraft it's routine for them to be turned into tracked vehicles? And if they do, could we have alternative heads on the sprue? Do you see what I'm saying here? These replaced very simple units. These need whole sentences to explain. And all are so quirky that taking duplicates look odd. And speaking of sprues...

 

Suspect 2: Kit Economics
OK, here's were I admit that this entire article was inspired by passing comments made by the Poorhammer Podcast. Setting up a plastic mould is a non-trivial amount of money, so you want to mitigate that cost through volume. This why so many vehicle sets, historically, are dual build or modified from existing vehicles. It reduces costs, and hedges your bets against something being unpopular. Unfortunately, if the completed models were too individual, the sprues were too. The only parts these share are the bases. Was this a result of the Chapterhouse lawsuit? I don't know. But, in all fairness, how easily could some of these doubled-up? Say a common wheelbase, but with a body kit? Hell, the Rukkatrukk could have easily been a regular trukk too, you just have to clean out the flatbed and put new guns on it. Doing all of them as unique sprues must have been a big cost to slowly recoup.

Suspect 3: Game Balance
So you want as many people as possible to buy these models. One way to do that is make them good in game. With the buggies this has had mixed results, such as with the old Ramshackle rule circa 2021. Historically GW has struggled with balancing large numbers of light vehicles, and I don't want to go too deep into the specifics as these shifted with each edition, with unit sizes going up and down and such. But, taking a big picture view: adding six new light vehicles in one go presented an easy way for players to spam them, and a challenge for designers in making these both distinct and valid. Given the number of Leman Russ and Chimera variants, this is not impossible, but that's still not something that’s perfect. Or happened overnight. If the buggies were a problem in an edition, with six examples of them, they could really be a big problem.


Conclusion 
As I worked through these issues, I found myself coming to a somewhat troubling conclusion. I don't think GW was actually wrong in retiring some of the Orktober buggies. I don't think they did it well, there should definitely be legacy rules for the absent buggies. I don't pretend to understand how the Rukkatrukk Squigbuggy made the cut. Possibly vibes and LOLs. Or people were kitbashing them into Trukks?  But, if you told me why this whole thing happened was because the models were an expensive pain in the arse to maintain and they wanted to cut something? Yeah, that passes the Sniff Test. The question is: where do people go from here? Well, I don't think it's a good time to go investing heavily in any of these. They brought the old Wartrakk back! The survivors must be on borrowed time. If you see a cheap Snazzwagon, maybe. If you want to kitbash or 3d print something, maybe. Otherwise it sucks. Not the happiest note to start Orktober on, but here we are.

Maybe I should I just play this, in memorial?