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Finally got round to registering on a forum as after years of playing and messing around, started to take my conversions a little more seriously (although as a lot are orks, that's a contradiction in terms surely.).

Normally i forget to take any pics whatsoever, but for the first time i have decided to actually take shots as i go, starting with the little guy below.

I'd seen the warboss on a bike model from Forgeworld and liked the idea until the jet engine. sorry just not to my tastes. i imagined the boss on more of a huge chopper/harley style bike. i also decided to try to make this thing up with just what i had in my bits box (wanted a challenge and was ordered by the mrs to have a clear out :p)

Step one: find the biggest engine i could find. well i'd already butchered half a wartrukk but left it's shiny big block unmolested. he'll do for a start. as for the front end, warbike seemed the only real way to go, but the forks were too stubby, so out comes some 2mm plastic rod, drilling a hole into the bike parts to sink it in nice and solid. As for a seat, well the other half of the warbike was going to get used for something, and actually fits quite well (with a little trimming) on the transmission box of the engine. Throw on the truck pipes on the side of the engine and a warbike exhaust, first bit done



Step 2: how to make the back end. toyed with a few ideas (even using parts from the old metal dethkopta) before settling on a simple boxy mudgard out of plasticard. For the wheel, i had wanted to use a battlewagon wheel (overkill i know) but couldn't get hold of one from any of my fellow converters and had used all mine up in other stuff again, so a wartrukk wheel will fill in, and actually looks proportional. The wheelmounts were made using a spare lascannon turret from the marine predator. cut off the tips of the lascannon, cut the individual guns off the turret and mounted them, using some of the 2mm plastic rod from earlier as an axle, perfect fir for the wheel hub, and a little more to brace the wheel to the mudguard. the ends of the lascannon were tiipped with soime exhausts from (i think) killa kan spares.



Next stop, warboss. when i can finally find the cable to attache the camera to the pc and upload the pics..... curse having desks covered with random bits...

Right got more pics transferred. Starting with size comparisons. I realised it was a bit big, so checked it agains a normal warbike:





Soooo...... a bit big then. Bigger than I had planned. Ah well, a warboss always wants the biggest.

Speaking of, now i broke my own plans. Wanted to make it a pure bitsbox build..... but the biggest rider i had was normal legs and a nob torso. Tried them on the model and it looked like a normal ork had nicked it and gone for a joyride. So I gave in and started a hunt for a bigger model, in the end deciding to use a full size warboss. A quick trawl of ebay found a black reach boss (reasonable pose and plastic so easier to hack) and got hacking, removing his tabbard/loincloth thing, sllicing him in half at waist level, removing the gun, removing the hand at the wrist. some more plastic rod acted as a spacer from the hand to the wrist so i could putty in a smoother bit of flesh rather than the offcut hand edges, put the torso on a better seated pose, connected the shoulder. Looking at it, the claw still looked.... puny. too ordinary. a couple of ork bow chainswords fixed that up for a nice and violenc chainfist style claw.



Yes. he is resting on a spare pare of ork boy legs, they are a temporary bike stand until he is balanced and based up.


At this point i also looked to the firepower. I still wanted to stick with the usual twin big shootas, but using the bike ones ones made them look too much like normal warbike guns, the warboss would want the biggest he could. Also, I had used all my warbike guns up on other stuff. Then i realised in making a horde of burna boys there were plenty of nice big loota weapons left, including a double barrelled one. Perfect, bigger but not too big.. To attach it to the bikei found a spare power box from the previously butchererd lpredator turret (think it's supposed to be the lascannon batteries)



Now was quite simple, fill in the gaps at the wrist, shoulder and his back where he had been cut in half and reposed, add a head (with an iron gob for nostalgia), random gubbins to cover boring empty space, and undercoat.



Great. apart from being impossible to balance. I decided to make him a base similar to the actual GW bases, long with rounded ends. i started with a strip of plasticard 130mm long bt 40mm wide. next, slice a 40mm base from a spare terminator in hald for the rounded raised ends, spare sprue sides to keep it the same vague shape as a normal base, then fill the gaps with putty. texture him up and spray, one huuuuuge bike base and warboss to go on it. now just to add paint....







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Oh and actually got to use him in a couple of games last night. If he makes it to combat he smashes anything and everything in sight, from tanks to character. 6 attacks at strength 10 means he is a very fast can opener. The downside to him being as long as the body of a leman russ with a claw that size iis he is the biggest bullet magnet i have ever seen.

Also forgot to add this in the previous post to show the back end:

Perfectly WAAAAGH!

Minor tweek - can you lower the bottom claw a little to open up the Fist a bit more? Looks to be at 90 degrees or 3 oclock right now. Drop it another 45 degrees to about 430 on the clock.

I agree whole-heartedly my friend. It's an inspirational warboss to see to any kos WAAAAGH! I've gotta agreww with kaiser on the claw thing though. I think it would look more dynamic with it a bit more opened. Still, fantastic work though.

Pretty cool, waiting for the paint job

Yeah that's where things take a turn for the worst :p I need to spend a fair bit of time on hiim to get him right, think I will be practicing while i paint the rest of the warbikes. All 42 of them..... I kinda went overkill...

Cheers for the comments so far though guys

the army is growing, just bought another 6 warbikes.... aiming for over 30 as a themed army

Try Amazon.com for good rates on Bikers, in the US they have them for around 40-50% off.

Looks awesome

Looks very dangerous, good job.

chowderhead13 wrote:Try Amazon.com for good rates on Bikers, in the US they have them for around 40-50% off.

i'll give them a go, normally i use ebay, you'd be amazed the amount of ork gear on there. those 6 bikes cost me £12 including delivery, less than $20 (i think) for 2 boxes worth