ORK MEK ARMY (pt.2)

This September I've been mostly hammering together an Ork Mek army. An odd hour here and there. Table full of suitable bitz for a proper fully mechanized Waaaaagh!, comprising mostly of ramshackle vehicles and walkers of all sorts and sizes. A few accompanying units of nightmarish Cyborks and Grotdroids will be assembled later by the Meks and Painboyz as well.

I'll be using the Evil Sunz Klan for the theme and paint scheme. Initial plan is to have verdigrised copper as the main element and colour on the metal/machine/weapon parts. Rusty and oily steel spots here and there. Deep black clothes and very dark skin, with a few sharp and thin edge higlights. Bloody red paintjobs on the vehicles and armour plates, with the occasional yellow flame marks and black'n'white checker boards. Everything dirty, of course. Bases maybe grey(ish) rubble/concrete/rocks/broken machines then? I'll start throwing the paints on propably next week, when the first group of Killa Kans and Buggies are assembled and ready.

Here's some WIP pics from the last two weeks, with a few comments I've written earlier, but went through & partially re-wrote now.

I started by choosing the most basic looking and suitably red toy car (1990s' Standard Template Construct?) to build upon, to get in the right mood for this army and try building something simple first. Gathered a couple of interesting bits and the hot glue ready. Done very quick with the traditional and PROPA Ork Mekaniks approach. Got the good old V8 engine, which allegedly has at least 800 squig-horsepowers. And with the 8 mek speshul exhaust pipes (one for each piston of the engine), this one produces 8 times more speed, more noise and more smoke than da uvver unz. Made from thoroughly red plastic and getting some red paint job on later, this grotspeeda sandblasta is gonna be da fastest one out there. Yet to figure out which one of the Orks many different wotsdat buggyclunkers this one will be best suited for. Then I can add all the weapons and propably more spikes and cables...

More speed freek kustom buggies on the way:

Two up there's kinda Boosta-Blastas or Snazzwagons, one green Shokkjump Dragsta and the grey one kinda Squigbuggy. But dat Squigbuggy van seems a bit dung on da blueprints, so we's gotta smash it up and hammer on uvver mek bits and wings for ta get it be Scrapjet or Trukk! Considered also different kannon options for that one, but it just doesn't feel right.

Last saturday I put dem buggiez away, sorted out different bitz and started hammering on sum propa Killa Kans for dem grots ta hop in:

Round shapes on top of each uvver. Would've been too easy to just use regular barrels or similiar wheel parts on each one. So to get more variety and Propa Ork Mekaniks, all had different base structures. Roughly cylindrical because they're Kans anyway.

Gonna be spider legz on dem Skutlopoids. Or da uvver funny stunty legz? Maybe all of the Kans should get different types of legs!? The Gremlin-looking tingrot could use the good old gyro-stabilised monowheel. Four (4) flimsy gretchin legs for somebody else, and those funny silly stuntyboots with spring ankles for other. How about tripod, giraffe, centipede, skateboard or rollerskates for legs? One already has the tiny-weeny-spidery shins, that I planned on putting for 'em all, but maybe not!

Quite happy wiv da main struktuurs now, still more tiny shiny gubbinz needed and nuts and bolts and spikes gotta be hammered on 'em. Da first three Kans now got skorchas 'n drillas for sum propa barbekoo. Da uvver three Kans will get power klaws 'n rokkits.

I've gone through some seriously hard times (hours? days?) just staring at the LEGOs I've been using for conversions. Lighter in one hand, eager to do some melting. Shears, saw and hobby knife waiting on the table for some cutting actions. Trying to gather the inner strength to even TOUCH the Legos. It's really hard. But since Gork 'n Mork sez we needz more gubbinz on da boys tins 'n dreads 'n speedas, wot wos I gonna do?

Necromunda sessions on the new Towers

I had planned for a session of Necromunda last saturday with a good old friend, who actually brought along a colleague who had never played Necromunda before, but was very interested in. They're both professional set designers (hope I got the title translated right), so it was very nice to have the new Towers properly finished. We use the Necromunda Community Edition (NCE) rules from the utterly awesome YakTribe.

The initiate decided to use my old Spyrer miniatures, because they were painted the brightest. I didn't feel like continuing with the battle-hardened (and crippled) Cleaner folks from House Cawdor with the gang rating well over 2000, but gathered a pack of newly (almost) painted Skavies. Chose to proxy and run them as Delaques for now. Didn't have enough nice Mutants/Scalies for a proper Scavvy gang, or suitable Braves/Shamen/Totem Warriors for Ratskin Renegades. Felt a desire for some serious sneaky business, so Delaques were a no-brainer.

Delaques were my first gang back in the 90s' when the Necromunda initially came out. So as a nod towards the gang I employed then, I just had to pick up a Heavy with the heavy stubber, a couple of Juves with autopistols and gangers with shotguns & manstopper shells. Higher powers were paying attention when I rolled for territories. Very close to the repertory I got over twenty years ago, the dice came up with Old Ruins, Slag Heap, TWO Guilder Contacts and (drum roll...) VENTS!!! When shuffling the dice I actually announced that I had the Vents territory back in the day, and would need and definitely want them now. And then got them. Tears (and screams) of joy!

Facing our fresh gangs of Spyrer Hunters and Delaques were an experienced and well equipped gathering of Redemptionists with their pointy red hats. Almost everyone in their crusade had Frag grenades, which have proven awesome with the terrain we use (high buildings and cramped walkway areas).

I didn't keep any notes on the precise events of the two games we had, but took a couple of pictures when remembered. So rather than try to write a proper battle report(s), here are the pics I took with accompanying notes.

The setup for the first game, which was just a standard gang fight scenario. Tallest buildings on the edges and a killzone of rubble in the middle. We deployed our gangs just outside all the pieces of terrain on ground level, so no lucky first turn shots with heavy weapons/snipers were in order. The Redemptionists had some Quick Witted dude running for better positions, but unfortunately forgot to use another Brothers Infiltration skill. My Heavy along with one Ganger and a Juve were up in the Vents crawling to find the best positions from the Towers...

The tiny Delaque-rat Juve called "Anni Hilaattori" found a nice ventilation tower near the Redemptionists hideouts, and was instantly downed by the fire from their Priest and Brother with two pistols. The Juve immediately recovered to just a flesh wound, while the heavy-rat "Mickey Mausoleum" shot the Priest with 6 heavy stubber rounds but didn't wound with any of them. The Priest lost his balance however, and fell down to the hive floor.

Meanwhile the Spyrers advance amongst the rubble, Yelds flying high and efficiently covering behind their Chameleoline Wings. I missed a pic from a surprising and rather sad moment, when the Malcadon Spyrer succeeded in a 12" charge at the Redemptionists Deacon with flamer, won the combat easily but didn't wound the Deacon. The next turn some mace & plasma pistol wielding Brother joined in the fight. Malcadon failed to wound the Deacon again, and was then put out of action in turn by the brother. I think even the Orrus Spyrer struggled in combat against some shotgun wielding Brother for a while, but won in the end. My snipers (the Heavy and a Ganger with autogun, overexposed in the foreground) try to draw lines from their positions up in the walkway. Despite the Heavy rolling very high on the number of shots throughout the game and hitting with most, he rarely wounded anyone. The Yeld Spyrers in particular were escaping his shots very efficiently.

The other Yeld was also being harassed by three other Delaque-rats with shotgun and pistols to no avail for quite a while. Yeld then took better positions higher up to completely hide from my heavy stubber fire, but one of the Juves with bolt pistol and a scythe took a lucky shot on the uphiver, downing him. The Yeld the fell from the high walkway and later died on his injuries. Definitely not a nice start for a new gang and the player. 😢

One of the Spyrers, this Jakara here fared a lot better. Tried to sneak upon me, got hit with two shotguns (with manstoppers) and bolt pistol, but only got pinned. Then she proceeded to charge and wipe out two gangers and follow-up on my leader with the big staff of Lettuce (or is it Broccoli?). They fought for a few turns very evenly, both having swords, similiars weapon skills, initiatives and dice rolls. In the end the Jakara got one stab through and wasted my leader as well. Then the Spyrers actually won their very first game!

They even managed to capture one of the Redemptionist brothers, despite the poor Yeld (with three lasguns for a head) getting killed. All in all, a horrible number of fatal injuries were inflicted in this game even though only two or three of each gang went out of action. I got head wound and old battle wound on the two gangers sliced by the Jakara, and my leader VERY luckily got the impressive scars as a nice positive injury! Don't remember what the other gangs suffered, apart from the one captured guy.

We decided to settle the capture-thingy right away. Rather than confuse everybody with the actual ruleset from the Capture scenario, or even try to adapt it for three players, we devised our own simple rules. Normal Gang Fight scenario, with the Spyrers getting to place the captured (and drugged near comatose) Redemptionist brother ANYWHERE on the table. If the Spyrers won the fight, they would kill the captive. If the Redempionists won OR managed to get any fighter on base contact with the captive, he would be free and fine.

The game was rather short due to Spyrers and myself bottling out on our first or second rolls. Lots of uneffective shots from my heavy stubber again (he downed the wall-climbing Malcadon however, which was crucial), and the Spyrers managing surprisingly bad despite their superhuman abilities and trinkets. I spent several turns just to get into decent firing positions, and was then remorselessly gunned down by the zealous Redemptionists. In the end three more fighters got captured between us (all got traded back safe to their gangs), and some bitter enmities were developed.

Very nice day (and night) of gaming. The new big towers were an absolute joy to use. Gotta think of some different means of deploying the gangs however, put up some loot on the highest walkways and maybe introduce specific Treacherous Conditions to really get fighters up and running on the highest levels of the buildings as well. Now climbing even at the mid levels (already above 10" high) felt way too risky to even think about.

Start of an ORK MEK army

I got a bag of plastic toys/crap from flea market yesterday, and am going to start building an Ork Mek army for 40K. Maximum emphasis on vehicles and stompas, big and small. Crude robots and cyborks. Sorted out some bits and tools on the table, ready to go.

We've got:
* Toy cars, buggies, koptas, tractors, excavators etc. that will be the basis for the whole army. Stompas and 'Nauts will most likely be made of empty tins.
* Long pipes, cables, granny grating etc.
* Tools
* Wheels, gears, engine bits, armour plates, random junk
* Weapon(ish) parts, bombs, barrels
* Mantic sci-fi & Pegasus sybercliks parts
* Small screws & barbed wire
* Card, copperwire, spikes, glass beads
* Screw anchors, plastic beads, springs, plastic gears
* Orky bits & couple of older plastic Chaos Warrior, Gretchin and Ork minis
* Bag of bigger tubes and interesting bits
* Box of Legos on the floor
* The old codex just happened to casually lay there on the table.