Victory Pointless

Uzblitz gazed proudly on the new war machines.  It wouldn’t be fair to say they gleamed, exactly, though there was a certain oily sheen in places and the one that had spontaneously caught fire cast a ruddy glow over the others.  But, by Ork standards, they looked fresh and clean and ready for action.

He was about to reward the assembled Mekboyz with a small grunt of approval when a commotion erupted behind him.

The ship had gotten more and more crowded as the Waaagh had grown and now the cargo bays were a sea of green bodies.  With so many Orks pressed together it was not so much that fights would occasionally break out as it was that small pockets of peace would occasionally develop in amongst the violence, while the Orks temporarily took a break to eat or to concoct some fresh grievance against their peers.

This was all well and good and the natural way of things, being a good way of keeping the (surviving) boyz sharp for actual combat.  However this scrap seemed larger than usual and two distinct sides were emerging.  This, Uzblitz took a dim view on.  As Warboss, organised violence fell under his exclusive perview.

He waded into the scrum, scattering smaller orks as he went.  He located the ringleaders by dint of them being the largest two Orks involved and picked both of them up by their heads.

“Woss goin’ on ‘ere?” he demanded.

The ork in his left hand waved his legs in the air fruitlessly and pointed at the ork in his right.  “‘E started it, boss! Sed you weren’t a gud boss, boss!  Sed you woz runnin’ away from them red beakies!  Sed you always get krumped inna first five minutes of every fight!”

The giant warboss rolled his eyes over to the ork in his other hand.  “Er…” It said.  “All I woz sayin’ is… some fings ain’t bin goin’ so well-“

Uzblitz squeezed.  There was a wet cracking noise and a headless ork body fell to the deck.

“Haha!” The left-hand ork crowed.  “Dat showed ‘im!  Gud one, boss!”

There was a second wet crack, and a second headless ork.

“If dere’s wun fing I can’t stand,” said Uzblitz, holding out his hand so that Nasha could lick the brain matter off of it, “it’s a sikko fant.”

It’s now phase 4 of our slow-grow crusade and that means another 500 points for my Ork army, bringing it up to the fabled 2000 points.

Da Bunka – Battlewagon

Tired of seeing his Boyz shot up before they ever even got the chance to stick the boot in, Uzblitz ordered the construction of a vehicle suitable to transport part of his horde into battle in relative safety, if not actual comfort.

I wanted a big centrepiece model and I also wanted more transports – the Battlewagon ticks both boxes.  This was a cheap(ish) ebay purchase, but I didn’t realise that this was the older battlewagon box that doesn’t include the upgrade sprue with the deffrolla, killcannon etc. on it.  Nor are those sprues available separately anymore.  So, I had to scratch-build the rolla out of some acrylic pipe with jagged bits of sprue for spikes.  I’m telling myself this was all worthwhile because I much prefer the look of the big metal cowcatcher chin thing on the front rather than the weird Ro-Jaws face underneath.  By converting my own rolla I was able to keep both.

I’ve kept the turrets, roof etc. unglued so I can easily swap them around and run it in different configurations.  May be handy just in case GW ever reintroduces loadout costs again.

Da Goliuff – Trukk

A recent alliance of convenience with a Genestealer cult did not work out very well but it did lead to the ‘finding’ of an old Imperial toxic waste hauler which made a pretty good trukk once the Meks had given it a bit of sprucing up.

As noted previously, the Trukk kit is pretty horrible to put together, so much so that I elected not to use the proper kit for my second trukk and instead to kitbash one out of a looted Genestealer Cults Goliath kit.  This was a pretty easy conversion (much easier than building an actual trukk) since the Goliath is pretty similar in size to a Trukk and can easily be orkified just by gluing some additional parts from my bits box on.  Even the wreckin’ ball was pretty straightforward – I just inverted the weapon mount that came with it and attached the ball and chain from a Gloomspite Gitz fanatic.

The Reinforcements

As this is the final phase of the campaign I elected to reinforce a few units rather than start fresh with something new.  Another major factor is that the army is getting quite big and unwieldy now and the fewer unit profiles I have to keep in memory the better.  See previous episodes for more in-depth discussion of these kits.

More Boyz

Here as another throwaway utility unit and to sticky objectives.  Like the last two loads of Boyz, these use the newer monopose sculpt but with some heavy customisation to swap around hands and heads to make each of them unique.  This is getting a bit harder now – there’s fewer combinations I haven’t already tried.  This was another 2nd hand ebay purchase while they fortunately came with all choppas they lacked a Rokkit launcha, which I did want.  I converted a Boy to carry one using spare Tankbusta bitz from the Breaka Boy box.  I think this is technically a ‘Heavy’ Rokkit Launcha rather than a regular one but as that only seems to be a meaningful distinction in Kill Team and not 40k at present I think this crime will likely go unpunished.

More Flash Gitz

Flash Gitz are one of my personal MVPs so far, so it seemed prudent to get more of them.  The original plan was to join them into one big unit but the recent points update made that expensive to do, so two units it is.

More Burna Boyz & Lootas

I’ve grouped these together since they come from the same kit, or should I say kits – the Burna/Loota kit comes with everything you need to build 5 of both varients, other than bodies.  Fortunately they’re fully compatible with the bodies from the old Boyz kit, so with two Burna/Loota kits and one old Boyz kit you can make four units for the price of three.  The one slight exception is the bits for the Spanner so I had to do some mild kitbashing for those, incorporating spare bits from Nobz, Meganobz and Tankbustas kits.

Bonus: Mega-armoured Nobz

Two of these were actually the second unit I painted for this army.  Then I realised they couldn’t actually go in the same Boarding Patrol detachment as everything else in phase 1, so they got cut from that list.  I eventually painted the third in this last phase, but ultimately elected not to put them in the list.  35 points per model buys an awful lot of other cool stuff.

The Horde

The full army is now complete, consisting of 144 different models painted over four and a bit months.

Note to self:

• Don’t do any more slow-grows starting a new army.
• If you do, don’t choose a horde army like Orks, you unbelievable dumbass.

In conclusion, Orks are fun to paint but I think I’ll take a break from painting any more of them for a while.