40K Friday: Orks!

 

I am still working on the GKs part of the time - got to move a terminator squad and a dreadnought into the "done" case last week - but as 11th edition draws closer I decided I ought to take a serious look at my Orks and try to get them into shape/fill in some gaps/grab some units that may be disappearing or getting replaced soon.

On the Replacement Candidates front it matters because I like some units to fit together, to look like they go together, and while it matters less with orks than with some other armies it does still matter. I assume anything new will be bigger and a least slightly different style-wise. I like most of what I see in the new box for orks though I am not a huge fan of that new weirdboy. So if I am going to fill in some units alongside some existing units I am inclined to pick up more of the existing kits and use whatever new stuff comes out for something new. Also - parts! I am not sure that some of my alternate ork heads, for example, will fit right or look right on the newer boyz or whatever they end up doing with nobz so I need to make sure I have enough heads and bodies that are compatible with each other before these old kits go out of production. 

This guy is great, no complaints here

Right now I have a good-sized Goffs force that is the bulk of force. It's mostly infantry with walker support and I think I'm going to stick with that theme. So the first round of painting time went into improving the pair of black partly-painted Morkanauts I've had sitting around for a few years. They've been used but I've never been ready to call them "finished" so why not try to get them into that state? Plus it's a nice break to paint something orkish that doesn't come in batches of 20. A bunch of boyz, nobz, meganobz, dreads, kans, 'nauts ... i think this makes a great core ork force.

Not as crazy about this guy ... I like my weirdboys to have crazy hair, not Doc Ock tentacles

For a long time now the other part of my ork army has been an Evil Sunz force. Buggies, bikes, trukks, battlewagons - you know, vehicle heavy! There are some boyz here too, plus a unit of meganobz, and some walkers but the emphasis was on the speedy stuff shooting things up and dumping out smaller units of boyz here and there. I'm probably going to stick with that here but there are a lot of things that need to be finished - concepts are easy, building is pretty easy, but finishing things is clearly a stretch for me. 

There may be a third element lurking around now. For a long time I was thinking I might add a Bad Moons force, mostly big gunz, some lootas, probably some walkers and tanks here too, but it never really coalesced into "yes I want to do this now". Recently though I've been looking at how my official battlewagons are built and some of the custom ork heads I picked up a while back and I've been thinking a lot about a Blood Axe force. This would be 50-60 boys, possibly some burnas, packed into 3 battlewagons and then maybe a few trukks. Not sure what else yet but I'm really stuck on the visuals in my head for this and a lot of it is stuff I already have. If the Goffs are my ground pounders, the Sunz are my Recon in Force element, then maybe Blood Axes would work for mechanized infantry.

This just screams "Ork Trukk for Blood Axes" to me

Do I need this many orks? No. Would I ever let that stop me? Also no. Lord knows it hasn't so far ...

So anyway there's the update on the latest area of focus. Yes, I've jumped around a lot this year but I am actually getting things done with these armies so I feel pretty good about it. More to come!