Warhammer 40k is the kind of hobby that takes over all your free time. It's well known and a meme at this point how expensive official Games Workshop Warhammer 40k models cost but the time this hobby takes often falls to the wayside. If you view this research, waiting for orders, building, painting, and modeling as work this hobby is not for you. However, if you like me really enjoy the play 'away from the game table' this process can quickly become ones favorite part of Warhammer 40k.
I am an Ork player and my force needs two units of MegaNobz, highly armored orks with especially brutal weaponry. These monsters will be shuttled to the front lines with Trukks where it will take my opponents entire might to deal with them. They are the core of my army. They are also very expensive.
As I'm looking to field two units of 5-6 and 3 MegaNobz come in a box this would mean spending nearly $300 on only 11-12 infantry units. No way. I have a child on the way and that is simply not an option. I bought one box of MegaNobz months back and built it as two Megas and a 'Big Mek in Mega Armor' so that got me started but ... how am I going to get to the finish line?
Etsy has a variety of sellers who print items that work wonderfully as proxy units for Warhammer 40k. Unless you are playing at a high level Games Workshop tournament proxy are the kind of things a lot of players view as a necessary evil.
Orks have a ton of options here other races do not as, according to the lore, Orks both cobble together vehicles and weapons from whatever they find laying around AND loot entire tanks from enemies they defeat in battle. My goal is to get some 3rd part miniatures but have them looking so good no one will feel at all salty about it.
So this meant emailing a bunch of different sellers to buy both a set of Orkas Steelbrutes AND a custom printed set of x20 additional killsaw arms. I want to run nearly all my MegaNobz with dual killsaws for simplicity and brutality. Units with mixed weapon profiles can be a lot to keep in mind and, as I trying to use these Megas as my "unstoppable force" I need them to all have the same weapon so they can attack as one.
After finding a seller and making my purchase some weeks of waiting came before my package arrived. Some hours and superglue later this was our force!
Looking good! These got brought out to the garage for a coat of primer and given a day to dry. Next comes paint. First I hit the entire unit with two thin coats of a darker silver paint. Some areas needed a third coat as I am still getting used to metallic. After deciding on skin color I was able to get these lads about halfway there.
At this point I've likely been working on these models for 6-8 weeks.
I work full time, have a household to keep running, and a child on the way. There is not all the time in the world here but, as I find this very relaxing and NEED something to obsess over, this is a good thing. I'm also never working on just 1-2 projects at a time as you can see here.
While working on my Megas I decided I also needed some Burna Boyz so the entire process starts again.
After months of going back and forth I decided on a color for my army. Orks designate what tribe they hail from using paint color and, while this is not important for the rules right now, it's the kind of thing I put a lot of thought into. Completly unable to decide on a single tribe to represent I remembered that Orks also believe color has magic properties. While there is no urple tribe Orks believe purple makes you proper sneaky! So ... let's go with purple!
Oh, and toss them on some bases! Thankfully I have bases made up for these guys already.
You can see here the difference between a single and double coat of color. All and all the models used about 5 different colors of paint so far and have been a real learning experience. The last step before getting them on the table is a heavy wash layer. Wash is a thin paint thats designed to flow into the recesses of a miniature to give it more depth.
Look at the face here:
prewash
postwatch
How all there is to do is get down to the game store and get these lads on the table to play! Thanks for reading friends. I'd be happy to answer any questions you may have.
The lads in action.