So making another effort to post more regularly on the blog here. The plus side of my long hiatus is that I've finished a number of projects in the last few months so there is plenty to show you all.
First off here is a recent commission I completed for an Ork player named Doug, Warboss Mar'Dakka.
We ran into each other while I was working on another commission a my FLGS and asked if I could make him a lots themed Warboss. Now Doug has been building a Deff'Skulls clan Ork horde, so he has been theming his models to look like the masterful Lootas that they are in the fluff. So I figured that to rise to the top of a Loota clan an Ork Warboss would have the biggest gun and the shiniest loot around.
Operating on the Eastern Fringe of the Imperium, Mar'Dakka has become a Scourge of the Tau Empire, attacking Sept Worlds and Expansion Fleets again and again. There are two reasons for this. First the Tau have some big guns and lots of shiny things to loot, so of course he's taken what's his from them. He even has his very own Orky gun drone named Smiley, because why not? Second the Tau are blue skinned and blue things are lucky, so by killing so many Tau not only does Mar'Dakka get lots of nifty stuff to loot but he gets luckier too!
The first thing I wanted Mar'Dakka to stand out for is his size, as Ork Warbosses are often described in the fluff as being 10-12 feet tall and almost the same size across. I used a Forge World Renegade Ogryn as a base to reflect this. Mar'Dakka is armed with a Kustom Mega Deffgun, a big choppa, and has a looted Forgeworld Battlesuit Commander Energy Shield as well.
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| Now that's a big Ork! |
The First step was to de-chaos-ify the Ogryn model and remove its head. Then I looked through my bitz box for tau bitz and found a miscast XV-9 Battlesuit that I got from a friend. I wanted Mar'Dakka's armor to look like it had been looted from a Battlesuit, which it was, but without looking like he was riding a Battlesuit. So in true Orky fashion he is literally just wearing the armor from a Tau Battlesuit. This took a lot of cutting, but came out well. The thigh plates were actually a lot harder to get righty than the chest plate.
Next I needed to unify the Battlesuit armour with the rest of the model while making it look appropriately Orky. I found the old progenoid canister bit from the 4th edition starter set lying around and it makes for a great Hi'Tek looking power thingy so I built his backpack around that part as well as an Ork Deffdread engine. I think I rebuilt the backpack 2 or 3 times until I had it looking how I wanted it to. For a head I used the most scarred and angry Ork Nob head I could find with just an iron gob for a touch up.
Next up I built his Kustom Mega Deffgun. I used a both a miscast Fusion Cascade and a broken Punisher Cannon as the basis for the gun and a IG Sentinal's leg to make the arm. From there I just added lots of Ork bitz with some smokestacks from a Deffdread to top it all off (Because why not?). The trigger and gun shield were made from a chopped up landraider sponson and a Burna, the only hard part there was figuring out how to make it not obscure the rest of him. This was actually the fastest part of the model to build, and a ton of fun.
Next up was the shield arm/axe arm. The model actually didn't have a forearm so I sculpted one from greenstuff and then hid most of it with the chains holding the shield on. I decided that the shield looked best if it looked almost 100% Tau with just a smidgen of Ork Tek on it, a glyph did the job nicely. The Big Choopa was simple although I had to swap the hand out to get the correct pose. Also a pretty quick step and lots of fun.
The last and most time consuming part of the model was the ammo for the Kustom Mega Deffgun. I used the ammo hopper from the Punisher Cannon slung from a Burna Boy's harness. The hard part was doing the actual belt. I used a technique I learned from Recius over at recalcitrantdaze.blogspot.com and while it came out great it took me a few hours to do. Definately a 'use sparingly' technique.
Now as I mentioned earlier Mar'Dakka has his very own gun drone named Smiley. I originally had planned to give him a standard boss'pole but found that the top of the model was becoming too visually congested. So smiley was my solution, it took me about two hours to work out exactly how I wanted to build him and then 40 minutes to actually build.
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| He's just happy to be here! |
I magnetized smily so that his flight stand can clip right onto Mar'Dakka and they can be one huge model, but he also can go on a flight stand on his own for gaming purposes.
Once all that was done I made a bunch of wires with some green stuff industries tentacle makers, these things are awesome. That and a few touch ups and he was done!
Oh and I got bored at work and made a data slate for using him in game.
<a target="_blank" href="https://www.icloud.com/
Let me know what you guys think of him, I'll post painted pictures once I get them from Doug
You need to do videos on how to play 40k in 7th edition for beginners
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