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The story so far.....
After being away from tabletop gaming and miniature painting for 18+ years I realised that I missed painting after building a Star Wars model kit that my wife bought me for my birthday. So I hunted out by old citadel miniatures, stripped them and repainted them and my love of painting was reborn. Meanwhile at university (I'm a mature student) I found out a couple of friends were wanting to start playing 40k so I decided to build an army. So after buying the Assault on Black Reach box and a few purchases on e bay I have slowly acquired an ork force. Any hints an tips what unit's to get and how to best assemble and paint them would be most welcome. Please excuse the quality of the photo's as they are my first miniature shots.

The e bay test ork

First off, photo not showing, need to fix that, second off depends what you are going for, nob bikers, speed freaks(truck boyz), green tide, or mech stompy(lotsa kanz and dredz). So think about that, decide and we can give yous some imput.

Should also add it's my first experience of writing in a forum and the joys of HTML but got there in the end (when I realised that linking photos in the forums is NOT the same as photos in the articles )...
As for my army it's more going to be what ever I can grab cheap and which models catch my eye kind of affair. More photos to come...
Cheers Mu

First off Id like to say hi and welcome!
I cant se all that much in the photo, but the skin is looking great and the same gose for the teeth You dont need to choose what kind of orc army you whant to go for yet if your just going to buy what you fint and looks cool (most fun way to go imo)! But be aware of the nob bikers! Nobody want's to play against me when I use mine:(

Ill be waiting for more potos!

Cheers for the welcome, now that my test ork is done i've decided to work my way through the troops alternating three boyz followed by three grotz at a time split up with the odd deffkopta/ warbike. As for buying I've just picked up someones old army on ebay which should keep me occupied for most of the summer and I have a couple of ideas for trying my hand at scratchbuilding anyway photos:
First few boyz from tha Assault on Black Reach:



First gretchins another ebay find:

... and the first Deffcopta:

Nice work bemused by the pink ribbon on the Deth Kopta though.

Cheers!.. as for the ribbon I'll blame my photography skills...it's more red in real life.

Thoughts at the moment.... after nine ork boyz and a handful of grotz is that in painting this army could get very bored with green..... so thinking about non standard ork skin colours after all orcs were originally black / brown and I always painted my fantasy orcs kakhi brown.
I was also wanting a way to easily identify different units when playing although having never played yet I don't know if this is a problem that comes up.
Different skin colours might be solve two problems in one.

I thought he was supporting the fight against breast cancer!

Seriously, nice minis!

Thats orks they'll.... fight anything

hehehehe

very nice work so far. how big an army you looking to build?
Any thoughts on tactics or a style of fighting?

look forward to seeing this army grow

Cheers, I'm currently waiting on the arrival of an army from ebay that should keep me occupied for a while and I might do a couple of 'before' photos when it's here.
As for tactics and styles I have no idea still to have my first game If my uni mates don't hurry up I might have to pop down to my FGS.... but that idea fills me with dread.

Nice Army!

Cheers! (must stop starting my posts with cheers.....) little update on the troops. I made the mistake of varnishing my last three boyz when it was poring with rain outside and they ended up totally 'misted' up, once I was done cursing the weather, GW, life the universe and everything I got myself together and tried to sort them out after trying out a couple of the tips I found elsewhere in this forum I found the best way to fix them was to turn a radiator on up full and re spray them and voila as good as new. Meanwhile the Ebay army has arrived which means as well as my AOBR orks and bargain gretchin I have:

70+ boyz
10 Nobz
5 tank busters
6 stormboyz + parts for 6 more
a nice looking Zagstruk model (maybe a conversion?)
2 warbosses (1 in mega-armour)
2 shok attack guns (1 old, 1 new)
1 new wierdboy
15+ assorted mechs, painboyz, wierdboyz and runt herders
2 killa kanz
2 warbuggies (slightly damaged)
3 Deffkoptas
4 older warbikes

Photo:

That should keep me busy....

Obviously that's not enough for me... I've got the scratchbuilding bug finding an old flying saucer model I reckon I can make a saucer technology cybork deffkopta. The photo is just an idea until I get some real green stuff again this is a first for me so any comments and constructive criticism would be appreciated.

Looking good I too may be getting my grubby mits on some 2nd ed goodness for orks

A few more pictures to show my current progress, I'm having serious thoughts about alternative skin colours maybe some brown skins or some reds.....
A few Boyz....

These ones were the ones that suffered from the dreaded varnish 'white mist'....

My first Killa Kan and also my first conversion, not as good as I hoped for but more importantly not as bad as I thought it might be.

Finally A runtherd and more gretchin

Busy busy at the moment but still time for a bit of painting. Managed to finish my first 20 ork boy squad and start on some brownskins not totally happy with the skin colour but it's getting there.
Greenskin orkboyz:

Runt herder:

My first squad of boyz:

My first try at Brownskin nobz:

Finally brownskin boyz:

It's nice to see Orks without the typical greenskin tones.

Cheers think I'm going to go for a rainbow-klan kind of thing.

Still busy but time enough to put some paint to metal and plastic, I have been experimenting further with alternative skin tones with mixed results but it's all practice...
Firstly pinkskin nobz:

Some more brownskin boyz:

A warbike:

And a wierdboy:

Gosh this army is coming along nicely!
Some very cool ideas and work in here sir.

i look forward to the rest of it

Back again and just received another parcel of ebay goodness consisting of Grazgul Thraka complete this time, a one handed Doc Grotsnik, a lobba with crew, a handfull of Nobz, a couple of burna boyz, some tankbustas, some broken warbuggies, bikes covered in way too much plastic cement, a dozen or so stormboyz and more boyz than you can shake a squig at. So that's me busy for the next year or so, on another note I might be getting to play about with some CAD and rapid prototyping equipment which could mean a battlewagon or even Deff Dread he he he....
Anyway latest miniatures...
My second Deff Kopta


What turned out to be an incomplete Grazgul Thraka painted as a regular warboss

A few more brownskinz


My AOBR warboss

Enjoying the sun but still have time for a bit of painting, tried out a different paint method of painting ork skin I like the shading but feel the end result is way too bright.

My first stormboyz seem to be lacking something not sure what, maybe lighter coloured faces.

I noticed the shock attack mech was wearing doc martins so I couldn't resist making him a skinhead.


Pleased with my grotz much better models than the other single pose models.

Finally hoping to have an actual game I've speed painted the tactical squad from my AOBR set, didn't spend a long time on them but I'm happy enough with the results.

I love the nobz and the skinhead mek,lol.

Cheers, I liked the old shock attack so much I've got another one ordered.

It's been a while since I've posted anything but I had a spare half hour while the undercoat of my next batch dries so I thought I'd get a few photos of the army so far.
Unfortunately I can't find my camera and had to make do with my phone and out of all I took their was only a couple worth posting.
So they'll have to do until I find the camera again maybe in six months time....
Anyway here they are as usual comments and criticism are appreciated.
My weirdboy:

Some redskinz:

Welcome back in bussiness. I really like the weirdboy, that colour makes him look really... weird :-)

Ok I'm going for yet another revival of this old thread, partly because I want to contribute a bit more instead of just lurking about and partly because I've a renewed interest in taking photos. Thanks to reading Vent's tutorial on Macro photography and miniatures I've had fun trying out a new light tent and tripod so here's a few of the results.
Firstly despite still never actually playing a game and getting a bit bored with painting all those boyz I'm working my way through my ork army, a few examples can be seen here:




Automatically Appended Next Post:
As I said I've been a bit tired of painting ork boy after ork boy so I've been looking around for other things to paint preferably for something I can persuade Mrs Mu to join in with. So far we've enjoyed playing the old board game Dungeonquest so they were my first foray into both non-orks and white under coat (scary stuff!):


Meanwhile I have also got her interested in some of the Malifaux range which is a game that really has really caught my eye, so I've started on a couple of Death Marshals, again white undercoats this time:

And finally, I'm speed painting my way through a copy of the D&D board game I found in a charity shop a couple of months ago we will have our first game once I've painted enough monsters to play the first two scenarios which means goblins so more greenskins for me.

I like all of this - orks have always been boring just green - I especially like the yellow and red ones. The random dungeon and malifaux minis are great too as we rarely get to see the rare and unusual