Oddboyz

Orks, orks, orks...

I can admit (and have before) I tend to base my armies around a theme rather than a strategy.  My Orks, the Tekboyz, have always been themed toward the idea of Orky technology with a bit of complete feral violence on the side.  This was kind of a challenge with the previous codex because so many things were left a bit up in the air.  Where did Meks fit into the great Orky scheme of things?  Could you have a Mek-centric army?  Were Weirdboyz game-legal or just a bit of fluff that had drifted in from older rulebooks?

           

I had a Weirdboy and a few Meks that I’d made out of regular orks many years back.  At the time, there just weren’t any decent models for either of them.  Now that the new codex had firmed up a few things, and the new models had set some precedents, I needed to rebuild some of them at Nob-size, and on 40mm bases.

A great thing to do this sort of thing with is Black Reach nobs (get ‘em while you can).  There are lots of places online to find them cheap.  Plus, they’re the same size as the regular box o’ Nobs, so you can swap arms, heads, or just hands with no problem.  There’s a one-handed big choppa my girlfriend used on one of her Black Reach nobs, and we’ve used the arms to get a few different poses and looks for them.  You can even just swap out one of those raised arms for a power claw.  It’s a great way to add some good-looking muscle to an Ork army.

As for my oddboyz, though...

My Weirdboy—lovingly known as Orky Gellah (anyone?)—pretty much needed to be rebuilt from the ground up.  I took a Black Reach Nob and added a loincloth from the Nob set and some Kroot capes.  I had to trim down the ammo belts and pouch on his left side to make that cape fit.  When the capes are run together, they look like one long, ragged cloak lined with bones.

Gellah’s copper staff is made from the existing handle of his axe.  I added the barrel of a Kroot rifle, plus the head from an old Fantasy Goblin drumstick that had been kicking around in my bitzbin for a while. The top is an Ork skull and a thin shoulderpad detail from the Fantasy sets.  The idea was to imply the skull-and-halo motif that a lot of Imperial Psykers use, while still looking sturdy and haphazard enough to clearly be an Ork creation.  I added some bells from different Fantasy sets for structural purposes, and also because Weirdboyz are supposed to be covered in bells so everyone knows they’re coming...

Helpful Hint - The skull is actually a standard Ork head.  I trimmed the lips and ears off with my hobby knife, then drilled out the eye sockets (starting with a small bit and then going a little larger with each of two successive bits).  As a final touch, I filed the sides of the head just a bit to accent the cheekbones.  It took about ten minutes of careful work.  You can do the same thing with Kroot heads if you want to add alien skulls to your scenery or trophy racks.

Also, I needed a Dok for my team of Cybok Nobs—the Bork.  Games Workshop has a really beautiful Dok model, but I wanted to keep it cheap.  I added a bunch of knives, hooks, and blades all over him, scavenged from the Kroot and Ogre lines.  I also gave him a steel gob.  It helps sell his cybork nature.  I also knew I could paint it white with a messy red cross on it and it would instantly imply medic with a face mask.

Since he was going to be part of the Bork, Dok Krusha (I did mention the Trek references, yes?) got the circular saw arm from the Nob set.  This also matched up with the GW model.  For his other arm, I trimmed the muzzle off his slugga and attached three of the thin flagpoles from the classic Rhino sets.   They’re kind of needle-ish, and with the right paint job this will easily fly as his ‘urty syringe.  If you haven’t been playing that long, you could do the same thing with a straight piece of stiff wire, say from a paper clip.  Just drill a hole or two in the slugga as if you were going to pin something to it, but leave the wire exposed.

One of my major Tekboyz was Obryne (aside from their boss, Tiktok, all of my various Meks are named after Star Trek engineers—I’ve also got a Skotty, Laforj, and Blanna).  Obryne was the guy who held the kustom force field... but he was built on a regular boyz body.  With the new rules he really needed to be Nob sized, and on a larger base.

I removed the force field projector and the mek backpack from the old Obryne.  Then I cut off the projector’s two small antennae and added a trio of orbs.  They’re actually from the backs of the Necron Triarch torsos.  Each one has three spheres that look just as good in brass or copper as they do in eldritch green.  I built Lychguard, so that means I’ve got fifteen of these (now twelve) for future projects.

In my first attempt, Obryne was holding the force field projector up above his head on one of the solid arms.  While it works in the sense of Orks being superhumanly strong, it just looked kind of wrong to have a Big Mek flinging his precious equipment around.  I mean, at least the stuff that wasn’t intended to be flung.  So my plan is to do some cuts and snips and move it to his other hand so it’ll be straight out in front of him.  A few extra pouches should finish him up fine.

So, there’s a bunch of nob-sized characters made from the Black Reach nobs and spare parts.  Which means each one probably cost less than four dollars.

Next up, a return to my dirt cheap roots with a Paperhammer flyer.