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Tuesday, July 21, 2009

I am sitting in my basement, staring at my ping-pong table full of paint, models, badly crafted terrain and enough photos to fill about 50 large albums, and I am excited. Excited for what, you may ask? Tomorrow I am planning to go over to my FLGS and buy AoBR for the second time. My ideas are overflowing my pea-sized brain, but the anticipation for this set is even greater because of the conversion to come…
The story goes as follows: my little brother seriously needs to bulk out his orks, as he has little to no force in his army, it is mainly toys, no boyz. Myself, I could use another 5 termies and 10 more tactical marines won’t do any harm. 20 boyz, 5 nobz, 3 deffkoptas, a Warboss, captain, 10 space marines, dreadnought and five terminators for the price of 20 boyz seems like a good deal to me. However, there was one problem. Several of the models, such as the captain, Warboss, dreadnought and one of the deffkoptas will be useless to us. So, I was flipping through the rule book and codices to try to get some ideas at how to use up these unwanted models when a thought struck me. I hate dreads in my army because of the other elites I would much rather take, but my brother loves them. I checked the stats for a deff dread and soon enough my little brother had drawn up his choice of weapons and I started on some preliminary sketches


-A quick break here. I have a very haphazard internet system going on, and so this is prewritten before I post it. Any pictures I manage to post are very rare, and so please don’t crucify me for talking a lot with little to show. I will try my best to post pics, but they may not work, and so it may take me a while. Pray for my success, it is quite frustrating.-

The sketches show a slightly repositioned dreadnought with the suitable orky bits attached here and there, but there are a few main differences. The first thing you have to know is that we have chosen this particular dread to have grot riggers, a skorcha and 3 close combat weapons (this makes it a neat 100 pts). The close combat weapons are going to be poles with spiky things sticking out, as we do have a shortage of cash and the bitz selection is not the greatest, but I think it could look quite orky if I do it just right. There will be two of those, one for each shoulder the dread comes with, but that still leaves the grot riggers, skorcha, and one more close combat weapon.
Then my brother comes in and says that he’d like the skorcha to be in the mouth. What mouth? I say, but an idea is forming already. I toyed with the idea of a flamer end poking out of a gaping jaw, ready to ignite the enemy at a second’s notice, but then my dear little brother shows his evil nature once again and glances at my sketch, saying “But I want the flames to be coming right out of his mouth!” Personally, I think that the flame effect can be cool, but it is often overused and unless painted brilliantly, can look very stupid. I am not a brilliant painter, I know I never will be, but the boy’s word is law, and so this dread will be spewing green stuff flames from the depths of its internal system, breathing hot death on any foolish fire warrior passing by. So, flames coming out of the mouth. That leaves grot riggers, which I confess I still have no clue what to do about, and the final CCW. The final CCW, in order to keep some symmetry in this off-balance model, will be the mouth itself, filled with jagged bits of blade and scrap metal. I can imagine the fear one would feel staring at a monstrous metal mouth, which first toasts its victims and then crunches down hard on their carcasses, to make sure that they’re really dead and not just pretending.
Of course, for the more sharp witted among you all, you will notice that I haven’t said anything about what the deffkopta, Warboss, and captain are going to turn into, but I will leave that as a surprise for now. I am sure at least part of the deffkopta will end up on the deff dread, or The Grim Leaper as it is now being called, but you shall have to wait and see what transformations the others undertake as the days progress



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My apologies for the dull sketches, I don't have very good lighting.

Off I go...I will have Black Reach in 1-2 hours!

any suggestions so far? Anyone?

its a neat idea
after your done i might make my own

give him a wreckin ball like the trukk one.

that would look sweet.

Just bought the set...I don't recall it costing 101 dollars, but whatever.
hopefully I can find my camera again, if not I'll send some pics as soon as possible. I actually have a wrecking ball handy, I'm just not sure about where I would put it.



Automatically Appended Next Post:
but thanks for the thought, I will look into it...

I have a problem. The dread's legs are slanted. I had foreseen it, but now I have the model in front of me I can see more clearly the extent. Do you think I would be better to add greenstuff to the leg to even out this slant, and have very thick shins, or should I cut the supports and then shorten the longer ones to make it even?


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woops, my apologies for the pic. It dwnloads in a fraction of a second, don't worry

Update:
Sorry, I had way more pictures but this is all that will load.
I stink at painting, my apologies. More close ups to come, hopefully tomorrow.
I have nowhere to put the wrecking ball, except maybe as a tail?
C&C welcome!

By the way, here's my sad excuse for plasticard. It actually works all right, but it snaps too easily and can go shooting across the room, bounce back and get stuck in your foot if you're not careful.

My two arms.
The right arm I am counting as a sort of mechanical 'Urty syringe, counts as grot riggers plus close combat weapon. The left arm is just 4 choppas attached to the dread arm, counts as a close combat weapon. The mouth is the third close combat weapon, with its sharp teef thingies. The scorcha is in the mouth, I'm working on it.