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.
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