Scuttledrone

Inquisitor Carax's sneaky scuttledrone is a heretical amalgam of imperial and dark eldar technology. At it's core is a organic brain rumoured to have been cloned from Carax's own tissues ( using forbidden haemonculi lore no doubt ) thus enabling a particulary strong mindlink between the drone and its master. 

Blip... blip...blip...scuttle-scuttle

I litetary woke up in the middle of the night with the idea for this miniature fully formed in my head. Got up, pieced it together in 30 minutes flat in some sort of dream fueled frenzy, and then went back to sleep. 

What it is I hear you ask? 

No idea what so ever. Some sort of heretical scuttler-drone of xenos origin to keep Carax company I'd wager. 

Nemesis part II

Finished glueing together Inquisitor Carax polar opposite. I like to think of this guy as Carax mirror universe good twin - presumably Carax has the requisite evil twin pointy beard under his mask. 

Haven't named him yet, but as the conversion took a lot of inspiration from Goodwins classic Inquisitor Covenant model, I'm leaning towards something similar. A quick Thesarus search landed me with Inquisitor Concord(e) - which I find both rather amusing and strangely fitting. 

Nemesis

While cobbling together inquisitor Carax from the plastic sorceror I tried out a lot of different ideas before finally settling on the final design. One that really struck a chord with me was abandoned as it felt too "good" for the extreme "evil" radical I had planned (good and evil of course being very relative terms in the 40k universe). 

However, the design could work for Carax nemesis - a devout puritan dispatched by the Inquisition to take him down. It would also be fun to do two models back to back based on a similar layout, but making them sort of yin yang opposites of each other. 

So off to buy a new sorceror I went! Here's the bluetacked mockup obviously very inspired by the classic Inquisitor Covenant. 

Rogue Inquisitor Carax

Here's the finished radical in all his xenos tainted glory. I think of him as a member of the Ordo Xenos who has gotten just a wee bit too chummy with the dark eldar haemonculii and picked up a few of their bad habits along the way. Now declared excommunicate traetoris he continues his research on cloning and the exact nature of the soul for purposes as of yet unknown.

Decisions decisions...

Carax is nearing completion, but I'm having trouble deciding on his head. What do you guys think?

Radical dude!

I decided to take a break from the orks and do something a bit different. 

While a lot of the minis I make are inquisiton-related there's been a certain lack of truly radical elements - except for the odd xenos and mutant I've stayed away from daemonhosts and similiar heresies. I've never done the kind of extreme radical inquisitor who's gone so far in his dabblings with chaos he's recieved (or is at least well on his way receiving) an excommonicate traitoris. 

So that's what I decided to build. Here's Rouge Inquisitor Carax in a bluetacked very, work-in-progress state: 

Blood Axe

Finally finished!

Now, normally I paint a model in one or two nights - three at the most. 

This one took over a week. Whenever it seemed done I noticed a new little detail somehow overlooked. And when that was done another one came into view. And so on, and so on... There's just a lot of details on these big orks.

Anyway, blood axes are my favourite clan so perhaps it's fitting I spent some extra time on this one. 

Goff

Painted up the third flash git over the weekend:

I really liked this one as a conversion but got bored halfway through painting it for some reason. Guess that's why I never played goffs...

Clan war

The crew is starting to come together, and basing each member on a different clan was a great decision as it brings a lot of personality to the mob.

Here's 'arpooner Kwee-Kweg the snakebite:

Question is - top knot or no top knot?

And here's the beginnings of the goff:

I really think the snazzguns look way better when cut down like this.

Finally I fixed the cap on the blood axe:

As was pointed out it previously was perched a little high which looked a bit silly in all honesty...

Lootin' an' shootin'!!

After yesterdays whining / stroll down memory it's time for minis. Here's the painted third member of the Flash Gitz unit:

Treasure map:

This guy looks like a deathskull, the first one vaguely like a evil sun, so the plan is to make one pirate hailing from each clan.  Here's the bloodaxe:

A lecture on orkish art history

Unsurprisingly I, like most other ork-fans, rushed down to my local game provider / plastics pusher  this weekend and snatched up a copy of the new Codex: Orks.

First impressions are a bit of a mixed bag:

• Well designed - the layout is beautiful. Fresh and modernized, while still unmistakably orky in style.
• Well written - staying true to the background while expanding it a bit. I also like how they toned down the pseudo science bits of ork/fungal DNA and leave the nuts and bolts of orkoid anatomy and inherited knowledge a bit more mysterious. They´re portrayed as a bit too simplistic and bloodthirsty for my taste though - back in the days of Waaagh the Orks, ´Ere we Go and Freebooterz when I discovered the 40k universe they weren´t just bloodthirsty killing machines - there was always a philosophical streak to them. They loved war - but focus lay on the spectacle of warfare, the exhilarating adventure of fighting and genarally causing mayhem, rather than being into it for the sake of slaughtering people. There´s a difference between liking a"good scrap" and liking killing.
• Well designed rules as far as I can tell - I´m not rules nut.
• Great new minis - the orks are some of best designed ranges out there, oozing with character and highly customizable.

The illustrations however, were a big letdown. There´s very few of them to begin with and the quality of the few scattered pieces of art is quite frankly depressing (with a few exceptions - mainly old Boyd and Smith pieces from earlier editions). 

Hackjobs like this should simply not be seen in a GW product - I´ve seen more skilled illustrators in self published roleplaying games...

But instead of whining about it I´d like to take this moment to celebrate the fabulous ork illustrations that GWs products have featured historically - illustrations by the likes of Paul Bonner and Adrian Smith that had a huge inpact on me as a young whelp (which eventually led to me choosing a career as an illustrator myself). Images that tell stories - instead of just showing a bunch of bellowing monsters with explosions in the background they often focus on ork life outside (or just to the side) of the theatre of war. Images bursting at the seams with character and that special wry sense of humour that have always made the Orkoids so dear to me.

I do have to stress that I´m not saying that everything was better back in the rogue trader era. As loveable as the old Kev Adams orks were, the new range of Brian Nelson-styled minis are even better and these days we have stuff like stompas, fightas and gorkanauts one only could dream about in the old days. It´s just the great art and some nuances in the background I miss.

Nuff said. `Ere we go:

=I=

Paul Bonner

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Adrian Smith

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Mark Gibbons

Ded ´ard if you ask me. Coming up - more freebooterz!