Since finishing up my
warphead model, I've been quietly lamenting over the fact that warpheads and weirdboys are somewhat difficult to fit into normal lists. Despite that, I usually try cramming both that and a Shokk Attack Gun into my casual game lists, because I find the randomness of both to be unremittingly hilarious. After a fair bit of playtesting it attached to different squads, I feel that Shoota Boyz are probably in the best position to get the most use out of the Warphead's presence, though fluff-wise I have no doubt a warphead's normal rabble would tend more towards the slugga side. Shoota boyz have the advantage of moderate range, meaning that if my warphead suddenly decides he wants to use his deepstrike power (courtesy of a hapless
D6 roll) they can still get a good volley of pain off at their target of choice. If no good infantry targets present themselves, you can always try for a deepstrike behind rear armor of an enemy's vehicle so that you can unleash a rokkit salvo. This adaptability beats something like slugga boys pretty solidly, and they're cheap enough to be a good 'psychic buffer' for the Warphead's leadership rolls via Mob Rule.
With that said, I turned to the idea of what the orks that hang around with a Warphead must look like. I figured that they might adopt Wurrzag's tendencies by taking up crude wooden masks of their own and adorning themselves in strange fetishes.
So, a while back, in anticipation of this very project, I entreated my good buddy, Nozeminer from The-Waaagh.com, to help me out by making a set of wooden voodoo masks that would fit on boyz, yet match the overall 'theme' of Wurrzag's. After talking a bit of design with him, he was nice enough to sculpt up some greens for me:
These masks have since been sent off to
D6 Hobbies, where they have been cast and
may be purchased, should anyone be interested.
Anyway, with these masks made, it was just down to the simple task of casting them up and putting them on. Given that they're mostly flat, fitting them onto an ork face poses a bit of a challenge if you don't first hack the front of their gobs down a bit. However, with a little bit of knife and filework, you can glue them right on. I'm also trying to keep other details mostly consistent across the models - all of them have loincloth-type lower bodies, and where possible (meaning, as many as I had) I used shirtless or relatively bare upper torsos. These are the sorts of details that'll stand out more on the painted models, but don't really show well on gray plastic, so I didn't bother wasting a lot of time photographing each individual boy. However, I did snap a couple shots of the group I have done so far.
There's one boy with a Rokkit lurking among that squad's numbers, and by the time I hit 20 I expect there to be a second. I find there to be nothing funnier than a Warphead deepstriking a bunch of gitz with rokkits behind enemy armor. Suck on that, Leman Russes!
Once I hit the 12th boy in the squad, I felt like making a Nob. This was mostly just because it's the right size squad to get crammed in a Trukk, and for no other reason. Still, I had to scratch my head a bit because I had a bunch of pretty good options available to me as far as the 'savage boyz' nob went.
After struggling with choosing a proper Nob body for a while, I stumbled upon the plastic runtherd body from the new(ish) grots kit, and I really liked him. The only problem I had with the body was that while larger than your average boy, he's not quite nob-stature. However, the tried-and-tested solution of plasticard spacers under the feet helps give him a little bit of extra height over his surrounding boyz, and his extra-big-and-impressive-but-not-quite-as-big-as-the-warphead's-mask helps clearly set him apart as 'da git in charge'.
Scale comparison with a boy from the squad:
I obviously wanted to give my Nob a power klaw, but I thought the image of a vicious, iron-gobbed squig fit the 'savage/feral' profile of this squad a bit more thematically than some electric snippy bitz. Hopefully the average Warhammer
40k player won't give me too much guff about using a barely-restrained snappy squig as a counts-as power klaw!
A last point to make is that the Nob'z banner actually has a bit of wood grain texture carved into it, but that's not entirely evident from these pictures due to the difficulty of getting white-on-white details to photograph nicely. I have a feeling paint will make this whole squad look a lot snappier.
6 more gitz to go, and then I'll probably try and get a bit of time in with my air brush on these guys before I have to head back to school.
(8% painted)
(99% painted)
(82% painted)
I probably wouldn't, myself.
The difference between commitment and involvement is like eggs and ham; the ckicken was "involved", the pig was "comitted". 
. the voodoo tribe now no one is safe, even in the jngle 
*evil voice on* HaHaHaHaHaHaHa!!!! *evil voice off* So Seriously they look mean, if i was playing them i'd be scared 
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