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Hey Dakka,

I've been playing DoW II: Retribution a lot recently, and I fell in love with the idea of Freeboota Pirate Orks. Now, I'm building an Ork army anyway, so it's not an on-a-whim project, but more of a direction to take my army in.
As far as I see it, these are the pros and cons of each:

Freebootas
Pros: Unique army, Awesome modelling opportunities, epic end results, lot's of DIY fluff opportunities, Makes allying with other armies more viable
Cons: More expensive, longer build time (my friend's armies are growing very quickly), Use of 3rd bitz (Difficulty in GW stores)

Regular Orks
Pros: Easier, Cheaper (somewhat ), Faster, all GW (no issues in stores)
Cons: Less fun, "fits the norm"

So guys...do you think it's worth it?

Thanks

If you actually enjoy modelling then its totally worth it for the fun and the challenge. If you're just after a quick fix to play against your mates then go with the simpler option. Of course thereis nothing to stop you starting with normal units and gradually converting them over time.

I love modelling, it's my favourite part of the hobby But that does sound like an Idea, I mean, for basic Boyz it's really gonna be a headswap and little else, so I could always just pop their heads and replace them I suppose.

just have an army of boyz without heads attached.

i had 20-30 boyz for the longest time (albeit not painted at all but you could paint them) and 15 lootas all running around headless.


Still struggling to get my first 500 points of freebooters painted, the converting takes a bit and if you aren't feeling inspired (or have your eye on other projects) it may prove difficult.

I can tell you that orks do not get a hard look because their are so many of them. I think you will be ok if you want to do that army with 3rd party bits.

just have an army of boyz without heads attached.

i had 20-30 boyz for the longest time (albeit not painted at all but you could paint them) and 15 lootas all running around headless.


Still struggling to get my first 500 points of freebooters painted, the converting takes a bit and if you aren't feeling inspired (or have your eye on other projects) it may prove difficult.

Ah, I've seen your thread, and I love it! I'm willing to put the effort in, the main things stopping me are the Cost and the Time, which is slowly becoming irrelevant.
Did you use the Spellcrow heads? How were they?
I would use greenstuff, but I never have before.

I can tell you that orks do not get a hard look because their are so many of them. I think you will be ok if you want to do that army with 3rd party bits.

Thats helpful, I mean, the only 3rd party bitz I'm using would be Heads anyway, the rest will be kitbashes/plasticard, so it shouldn't be too bad.

 TheFatElf wrote:

just have an army of boyz without heads attached.

i had 20-30 boyz for the longest time (albeit not painted at all but you could paint them) and 15 lootas all running around headless.


Still struggling to get my first 500 points of freebooters painted, the converting takes a bit and if you aren't feeling inspired (or have your eye on other projects) it may prove difficult.

Ah, I've seen your thread, and I love it! I'm willing to put the effort in, the main things stopping me are the Cost and the Time, which is slowly becoming irrelevant.
Did you use the Spellcrow heads? How were they?
I would use greenstuff, but I never have before.

I can tell you that orks do not get a hard look because their are so many of them. I think you will be ok if you want to do that army with 3rd party bits.

Thats helpful, I mean, the only 3rd party bitz I'm using would be Heads anyway, the rest will be kitbashes/plasticard, so it shouldn't be too bad.

Then you meet the req! You

surely you wont get crap if you are useing heads from other orks? would you?

 TheFatElf wrote:

just have an army of boyz without heads attached.

i had 20-30 boyz for the longest time (albeit not painted at all but you could paint them) and 15 lootas all running around headless.


Still struggling to get my first 500 points of freebooters painted, the converting takes a bit and if you aren't feeling inspired (or have your eye on other projects) it may prove difficult.

Ah, I've seen your thread, and I love it! I'm willing to put the effort in, the main things stopping me are the Cost and the Time, which is slowly becoming irrelevant.
Did you use the Spellcrow heads? How were they?
I would use greenstuff, but I never have before.

I can tell you that orks do not get a hard look because their are so many of them. I think you will be ok if you want to do that army with 3rd party bits.

Thats helpful, I mean, the only 3rd party bitz I'm using would be Heads anyway, the rest will be kitbashes/plasticard, so it shouldn't be too bad.

mate if anyone at a gW store tells you to get out for having spellcrow or god dang it theres another one... what is it. maxmini! yeah, ask them what % a head swap constitutes? I think you only need 50-60% GW parts to be legal for their old tournies. maybe 75% in cases but.... still.. head swap aint gonna account for 25% of the model.



I used spell crow and maxmini, both are really nice. You can make the pirate hats and bandannas easily enough using greenstuff, some good tutorials around I can dig up if you haven't seen em before.

I'm hoping to convert my first 3 nob bikers into land ships in the next 2 weeks (have to have them built and painted by the 1st).. finish da land lubba... and finish painting 9 boyz and a nob. crap I gotta paint da bosses landship too. (I have a feeling that i will fail to meet my goal for the painted stuff in league this month)

In any event, best of luck if you decide to go that route. Hope to see your progress!

skyfi wrote:

 TheFatElf wrote:

just have an army of boyz without heads attached.

i had 20-30 boyz for the longest time (albeit not painted at all but you could paint them) and 15 lootas all running around headless.


Still struggling to get my first 500 points of freebooters painted, the converting takes a bit and if you aren't feeling inspired (or have your eye on other projects) it may prove difficult.

Ah, I've seen your thread, and I love it! I'm willing to put the effort in, the main things stopping me are the Cost and the Time, which is slowly becoming irrelevant.
Did you use the Spellcrow heads? How were they?
I would use greenstuff, but I never have before.

I can tell you that orks do not get a hard look because their are so many of them. I think you will be ok if you want to do that army with 3rd party bits.

Thats helpful, I mean, the only 3rd party bitz I'm using would be Heads anyway, the rest will be kitbashes/plasticard, so it shouldn't be too bad.

mate if anyone at a gW store tells you to get out for having spellcrow or god dang it theres another one... what is it. maxmini! yeah, ask them what % a head swap constitutes? I think you only need 50-60% GW parts to be legal for their old tournies. maybe 75% in cases but.... still.. head swap aint gonna account for 25% of the model.



I used spell crow and maxmini, both are really nice. You can make the pirate hats and bandannas easily enough using greenstuff, some good tutorials around I can dig up if you haven't seen em before.

I'm hoping to convert my first 3 nob bikers into land ships in the next 2 weeks (have to have them built and painted by the 1st).. finish da land lubba... and finish painting 9 boyz and a nob. crap I gotta paint da bosses landship too. (I have a feeling that i will fail to meet my goal for the painted stuff in league this month)

In any event, best of luck if you decide to go that route. Hope to see your progress!

Ahaha, well I've known some managers to be right , so I wouldn't be surprised, but I'm sure it'll be fine.

I planned to use maxmini, it's great to hear that they're decent, thanks I'd be interested to give that a go too, I'll look up some tutorials.

I saw your Warboss Bike-boat, that was so cool! I might have to try it myslef

You Sir, owe it to yourself to try it... especially since you like modeling... I actually just recently came up with a scheme for myself that would be less time consuming (I have an extremely busy schedule)... but you should definitely try it... shoot, you could even just go the basic route and paint all the generic boys to have striped paints, then put more focus into your "Capn' Bludflag" and special characters...

Yeah again, the maxmini and spellcrow are both good. they are different scales a little bit. (even the ones for nobs)

the maxmini are just a little smaller scale (more in line with proportions of GW while the spellcrow ones were a bit bigger/cartoonier in comparison (imho)

i like to mix em up though, and making the hats from greenstuff was daunting to me at first, and my first half a dozen didn't come out so hot. but I got better over time and still ain't good. at least i'm not leaving finger prints in their hats anymore

thanks for the kind words mate. would love to see it if you do!

I found that I can get things on maxmini cheaper, and I think I prefer the sculpts, but I may well mix the two.

Well I'm convinced, I'm definitely giving this a go! I'll more than likely be blogging it here on dakka too.

ARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!

Ahaha, I'm really excited about this now, this'll be fun

Which reminds me, if anyone has any cheap Orks, please sling me a PM

I'm doing Freebooter orks as well, but it takes more than a headswap for an ork to go from boy to bukkaneer. You need to give them a lot of character, so adding hats and vests (maybe a pegleg or two!) is what'll make them pop! Plus, don't forget to add a squad of Flash Gits! They may suck, but they're the Freebooteriest!

I plan to do more Characterful conversions for the more prominent models in my force (Warboss, Nobz, Meks etc.), but I suppose the odd peg-leg/hook wouldn't hurt in the rank-and-file

Yes! I don't care how much they suck, fluff-wise they'd be perfect, and a ton of fun to model

peg legs and hook hands are definite things to add! (drunk orks as well!)

can scratch build those easily enough as well, and even with a hook hand peg leg and head swap... you still looking at a 75% gw model probably.

I personally don't include flash gits, just make the rest of my gits flashier

parrot-squigs are another thing that would be neat




also, if anyone finds a way to make killa kans more freebootery (besides giant pirate hats) I'm all ears. Same for kaptain badruk.. ha. I envision him with a mast/flag/crows nest attached to him with grots with big shootas galore... thinking count as ghazgull

Yeah, I'd be willing to give those a go!

Parrot-squigs would be so cool...Damn, I really need to start using greenstuff

You could paint them as if they were wooden? Just a thought. Or cover them in Sea Creatures like squid and limpets

Kans will only be Freebootier by making them SHINY. It's all about the paintjob. Also, I'd advise a good read of Deff Skwadron. It shows that Orks do more than just stomp and krump.

 Deunstephe wrote:
Kans will only be Freebootier by making them SHINY. It's all about the paintjob. Also, I'd advise a good read of Deff Skwadron. It shows that Orks do more than just stomp and krump.

This is true...Gold/Platinum plated Kans anyone?

B...bu...where's da fun in dat?

Most vehicles can't be made Freebootier unless you're kitbashing them. Trukks can, but It's kind of hard to make a battlewagon better than it is without extensive plasticard work and kitbashing. A landraider is 75 dollars, as is a battlewagon, plus a leman russ which is 49.50, and a trukk which is 37.50, you'll be spending 200+ dollars to make a better lookin' battlewagon. Or maybe that's just me and I like to convert too much. The trukk kit is quite versatile really, but the Battlewagon is not since it's so angular.

 Deunstephe wrote:
I'm doing Freebooter orks as well, but it takes more than a headswap for an ork to go from boy to bukkaneer. You need to give them a lot of character, so adding hats and vests (maybe a pegleg or two!) is what'll make them pop! Plus, don't forget to add a squad of Flash Gits! They may suck, but they're the Freebooteriest!

Suck? Expensive maybe, but definately not suck. Whenever I use them, they usually manage to wipe enitire squads in one go (get that ap2 roll on top of their ignore cover rule) plus resilient. but expensive to be good at what they do.

I feel like freebooter orks are on the rise, So I'm keepin ma Orks "da way dez ment ta be." that and I never felt space pirates wore buccaneer hats.

I gotta say.. You can build a freebooter bw for not much over cost of kit. Mine is gonna take 8$ worth of plasticard and maybe 2$ worth of plastic I beams and rods. Just lots of plastic card work like you said. Freebooters are on the rise, but simply cause we da best!

In all fairness badrukk has a pirate hat, the new flash gita kit rumored might have pirate hats? Curious if was dakka gutsmek will too!

Not that the hats make sense.... Neither does most of the ork fluff. I mean these guys can come from fungus bein reproduced asexually and all they want is to fight? I figure pirate hats, wood clad tanks etc the hats inspire fear. They believe sails help go faster, and that the wooden atyle of their landships somehow provide protection against futuristic weaponry. It fits right into the idea. Just my 2 cents though


edit spelling errors, didn't have my morning coffee yet

I just love the idea of Freebooters! That's one of the reasons I love Orks...it doesn't need to make sense I'm trying not to go too nautical with mine though...where sails etc. are cool, I'm trying to limit this.

I would love to follow your progress with this... In fact, in doing so you will inspire to share my progress with my (hopefully) unique ork army design.

WAAAAAAAAAAGGGGGGHHHHH!!!!

We're building up a bit of a community here What unique design would that be?

unless Im mistaken... I havent seen 'murikan orkz yet... They are red skinned orks wearing blue shirts with white stars on them... vehicles will be olive drab with lots of 'murikan iconography... big guns, fast trucks, and bravado makes this army ideal lol

http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/470624.page


not to burst your bubble or kill your creativity. I'd love to see your orks come to fruition. This fellow has a pretty similar army though. (or so it seems)

even with all that inspiration, I still have a few ideas he hadnt thought of it seems... Im not worried though, I figured there had to be another like minded individual... working on the nobs right now along with Ghazkull, or should Gore Washingtork lol