Lets Look at Other Peoples Stuff: Orkquistion

Right, so this is the first of a semi-regular piece from me - call it what you want, Army Showcase, Armies on Parade or whatever, its a blatant rip off of many sites and what they do, but with a twist. Unlike most others, I don't plan on just putting up the pictures and going "look at this cool stuff", I want to present the army to you, give any insight I can offer, be it from directly asking the hobbyist from the forum he's from, or just try and give some information myself.

There is quite literally a fuck ton of stuff I could post for the first one, there are many better done, painted and converted out there than this one, but for many reasons, of which some I will explain, this one just kept me going back and looking at it over and over.

I do want to state that some of my painting tips might not be exactly how the orginal painter achieved the effect himself, but how, if asked, I would tell someone to emulate it (in this case). In some other's it would be my best guess as how to achieve the effect and how I would look to create that result.

So without further-ado, The Ork-quisition!

That's right, a count as army!

This is one of the first things I loved about this piece. Ork's have forever offered a brilliant canvas for count-as and conversions for hobbyists all around. Just sticking to the codex itself, there was just a number of wild and wacky idea's you could throw together. At our LGS (of myself and Atreides) we have one player who has a Russian themed Ork army, with plenty (and I mean plenty) of truck and tank conversion's, making the army entirely unique. Atreides being Atreides pretty much falls over himself looking at all the bits the guy uses. These are the sort of things that appeal to the likes of Atreides as well, as, if you've seen his army (which you have, otherwise why are you on this web page!) he doesn't like "standard" model's, and out of his 843 chimera's he fields at 1750, none of them are the same, then there are his robot autocannon crews, his scratch built dreadknight. Now imagine him with a vat full of Ork bits .... he does, frequently ....


You call that a Coteaz? NOW THIS IS A COTEAZ!

What a fantastic conversion for your figure head.

It just looks so ... right.

The actual conversion seems pretty simple, and mostly it is carried off by the setting of the army itself. A count as inquisition Coteaz, with Orks/Gretchin, you would some what expect a crazy model, but a calm and cool figure head makes so much more sense.

To achieve this, it looks like he simply uses the "Justicar" pieces, and using simple gobo arm's, and the Space Marine plastic Captain back pack to finish it off ... or is it. Take a real close look at the legs! He's using a raised base plus gobo legs, hidden by the justicars front robe, to "adjust" the model correctly. Coteaz is still the correct height, but is still a short arse at the same time. Brilliant. This may require some green stuff, as I can't imagine the gobo lets fitting the marine torso, he might have filed off the torso to a more "proportional" level, and then used some green stuff to widen up the hips of the gobo. The likes of the chain, robe and any purity seals could do you well to hide any unsightly gaps.

Paint wise, it looks like he has applied a painted coat of bolt gun (maybe even Mithril), not dry brushed, and then literally lathered Badab Black on top - giving a very easy and simple weathering effect. (The gold seems to be much the same)

On the cloak area's, he seems to have followed much the same method, except with dry brush effect afterwards - then line highlighting to finish the job off. I am guessing that he has used a dark grey (the GW foundation paint) - then applied the wash (black) - then dry brushed, into various area's, lightly, Orkhide, this is a grey/green tone which gives a quite "ork like" weathering effect. I think he does a light dry brush, probably of codex grey, or an intermediate level shade, finishing off with codex highlight.

As a figure head, this is incredibly simple, but very very striking.

Vroooooooooooom. Tanks.

Well, how simple, again, yet so effective.

Those Rhino's have had very little added. The Assault cannon's all are the way I make them - heavy bolter razorback turrets with assault cannons glued on - he looks to have used terminator assault cannons, as they look a bit meatier than the land speeder ones I used.

Using a bits site like letthedicedecide.co.uk can see you picking up the odd bit of ork shrapnel, but you need to be careful, the idea is that it is a marine army with gretchin posing as real people, you don't want to detract too much from the theme (the orkquisition) and make it look completely like a "looted GK army", 1 piece, or even 1 per 2 tanks, is enough, the paint job should fill in the rest.

The Land Raiders however ....

Some reasonable application of plasticard has seemed to have popped up here.

What I absolutely love is the small little details - notice the twin linked assault cannon is actually manned by a Grot rigger .... now thats machine spirit! Again bit sites like the above will help you get the suitable weaponary - but again, you don't need to stray too far away from the beaten track, you want to enhance the focal point, but not go OTT and create an entirely new theme.

The paint on these seem pretty straight forward again. He actually has a pretty flat base coat, looking like blood red. If you wanted speed, army painter sell's "blood red" base coat, which would certainly make doing the tanks that much easier. You could also pick up the red gore variant as well, and do a semi-airbrush effect, by either base coating the red gore, then going over the higher parts with the blood red (leaving the parts of the tank close to the ground darker), or apply the paint in reverse order.

After that, he has used what looks like a very very watered down badab black to give some form of depth to the base coat. Then applying a second (or 3rd) layer with a much thicker consistency to nothing but the edge/recesses. Then in various spots he is creating metal weathering, literally just dry brushing on boltgun metal. A very good way of doing this is to "stipple" on chaos black, then stipple on the bolt gun afterwards, giving the "chipped effect".

You can go one further ... rust. I typically started with a bestial brown drybrush/stipple base, then added the foundation paint orange (which is a brilliant colour), right up to a near orange consistency.

The white "dust", which I assume is meant to be dust of some sort, looks to be a P3 or FWorld weathering powder.

Independent Gretchin's ....

So the last bit takes a look at some of his IC's and his much more heavily converted razor and land raider. I've covered the painting and most of the conversion parts prior to this, but again I like to take note of this that he never over does it. With Ork conversions its so easy to pile on bits and hope that people see them. Here there is just "nice" touches, the weaponary, painting and panels all work together without being over powering, then you notice the grotriggers for example.

Its much the same with the IC's (Coteaz, the Librarian and the two Techmarines) - all are quite straightforward kit bashes really, while fiddly (especially those techmarines) - they just focus on being coherent within the army, and the dull grey actually makes them stand out against the striking Red and Green's of a typical ork theme.

The list and thoughts ....

Most of the time I won't be able to give a list, but I fortunately have this. He did take it to the Nova, and really I think he aimed for a "quick job to look good and not do  well" type style.  Actually, here's a picture of him playing none other than Jawaballs in the Invitational ...

Orkquisition "Counts as" Grey Knights

1750

Cotaez

Librarian

Deff Kult Assassins x10 Razorback Asst Cannon, Psybolts

Deff Kult Assassins x10 Razorback Asst Cannon, Psybolts

Techmairne Rad Grenades, Psykotropes

Techmairne Rad Grenades, Psykotropes

Land Raider Crusader, Psybolts

Land Raider Crusader, Psybolts

Henchmen, Razorback Asst Cannon, Psybolts

Henchmen, Razorback Asst Cannon, Psybolts

So by no means a "brilliant" list - it seems a lot of fun to play (20 DCA ... in Land Raiders? hell yes brother). It is quite literally two big ass deathstars kitted up with nades and fun stuff to help them touch people in their happy zones. For example, Jawaballs got the joys of this little passage of play ...

"For example I caused 21 Power weapon saves on  Jawaballs' 10 man assault squad (the one on the right flank) at I6 during our Death Match game Thursday Night at the Nova Open. They were I1 from the Psycotrope Grenades, but perhaps more importantly, Toughness 3 from the Radiation Grenades (he hooded my Hammer Hands attempt with Mephiston).

On the right his Termies and Mephiston crumbled under the assault of 10 Death Cults, a Techmarine, and Cotaez at  just at I6 alone.  The Techmarine got a 3 with his grenade roll, allowing whole squad to re-roll their hits in hand to hand. Pretty brutal."

While this is not the best painted, converted army, and I am sure what I bring you in the weeks to come might be more visually striking, what I really hope is this gives you a dose of coolness/inspiration. The first thing I did when I saw this, was jump on GW/Wayland/letthedicedecide and have a look to how I could make this. A few razors, a couple of land raiders and some gretchin ... cant' be that bad really can it!

I do have some favourites of mine out there, and will be using various sources from Bolter and Chainfist, Cool Mini or Not, Dakka, warseer, bols and the rest of the internet. Plus by all means, if you have something funky, give me a shout in a thread and I'll pop it up here!

Next up I have a few I want to share, there is a beautiful Emperor's Children army that I saw a few months ago that has me yearning to try it. I might have a look!