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Hey all, I have a quick and possibly newb question. I got a few boxes of Ork Boyz + Trukks, and I was wondering: Is it best to paint the guns and arms before assembly, or does it not matter too much? I'm going for at least table quality. I don't mind painting each bit by itself, but I'd love to hear from the forum. Thanks!

With most orks, you can assemble and then paint. I would hold off on putting the assembled model onto the base until after the model is painted and the base is fully based, but that's it. The exceptions to this are ork models where the guns cross their chest, like Big Shootas, Rokkits, Lootas, etc.

With the trukks and all vehicles with orks in I would reccomend that you leave them out and paint them seperate.

Assembly lets you fill gaps and blend paint better aswell so when ever possble assemble first if you care about the look. if you just dont want to field a grey army so your going for fast painting then it doesnt really matter.

Thanks for the replies all. I've painted my Black Reach Orks with the one arm off, but they're all Sluggas. One squad is going to be Shootas. Looking at how the models fit together, priming them black should be fine, since most of the time people won't be staring at the little crevices of the model (unlike myself, I'm stubbornly perfectionist). I know for Space Marines it's good to leave the bolters unglued so one can paint the chests properly, so for Orks it won't matter too much. I'm going with the Evil Sunz clan, so I think it'll work fine so long as I'm not sloppy with painting the smaller details.

I paint shoota boyz with the gun arm and head off. You have to be reallllllly careful when posing them though. If you put the steadying arm (rather than the one gripping the shoota too high, you won't be able to get the head on. I assemble everythin with glue apart from the arms and head, pose the arms and head with very small blobs of blu-tack (use large blobs and when you come to glue you'll find the parts don't fit together), then glue the non-gun arm in place, disassemble and paint.

The advantage is that you can paint the difficult to reach parts easily and quickly. The disadvantage is that its a pain to pose them properly so you don't have problems with gaps and fitting at the end.

I fully build ork boys and then paint but it will take longer and you'll always end up cleaning over painting but it's how I do it.

I find that partial assembly saves me time, in the long run, and a decent bit of frustration. Simply being able to reach everywhere you'll need to doesn't mean it's going to be easy to do so. If you're worried about consistency on more complex paintjobs, I'd suggest limiting yourself to a basecoat, possibly with a wash/first block highlight before assembly, allowing you to keep your lightsource consistent/account for occlusion during the more extreme highlights and potential weathering.

I just leave the heads off.