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I've been playing 40k since 1989 and currently have 12 armies on my shelf. Today I made a decision to take a step I have never done with one of my armies: I'm going to retire my Space Orks. They were literally first army and I bought the first models for it in the summer of 1989. So as you imagine it has a bit of sentimental attatchment for me. This means that I won't be selling them or otherwise getting rid of them. They are just going back in the box for good.

This does not mean that I'm done playing Orks. Far from it. They are one of my favorite armies. What i am going to do is mothball the old ones and paint up a new Ork force. I'm doing so for the folliowing reasons:
-This was my first army, and it looks it. I was just starting out painting in 1989 and had not dicovered things like primers and shading. I've done some "touch up" work over the years, but it still looks like hell. This is esepcially the case when compared to my recent work, wich is always well regarded. The basing is also awful. I rebased it in recent years, but the style I used is also out of date. Bottom line is that the army looks like .
-Once again, it's almost a 25 year old army and is starting to show a bit of wear. Pieces have been lost and broken and it's starting to look "battered"....even for an Ork army.
-Most of my rank and file Ork Boyz are made up of the original multi-piece plastic Space Orks. Unlike many of the older figures, these simply have not stood up well. Check them out for yourself:

The bottom line is that while much of the character section of the current Ork line lacks the "character" and "charm" of the older figures, the rank and file troops are simply better than the older plastics. Yes, make sure you mark your calenders here, folks. Trenchie just did actually say that!

My plan at this point is to retain a certain number of my old personality figures. In particular my armoured nobs hold up well and will be stripped and repainted. (they can be based on a taller base to help hide the fact that they are small figures by today's standards) Likewise my "Deff Dreds" will be stripped and repainted as I prefer the old "egg body" dreadnaughts to the can shaped ones. But I plan on building the majority of the army from new figures. The core of the army is about 120 "boyz" models. These I plan on doing about a 50-50% mixture of the AOBR "slugga" models and "shootas" from the squad box. This will allow me to utilize the bulk of the army for either shoota or slugga units by simpl;y placing the correctly armed models in the front ranks as is often done in WFB.

I'm also looking forward to buying some of the after-market replacement heads for my new Orks. I saw some in German helmets and M-43 caps that look fun. I've always played my army as "Blood Axe" clan Orks, so this will be a good fit.

So am I out of my mind, or has anyone else out there done a similar "retire the old figures and paint new ones" project? In any event this is very "un-TR" like!

TR

Oh, and if anyone has any AOBR Orks lying about gathering dust that they want to just get rid of, I'll gladly take donations for the project!

While not on a full army scale, I'm doing something similar.

In my company, there are 6 tactical squads. 2 composed of RT beakie marines, 2 of 2nd edition "ridged attention" marines, and 2 of the nice 3rd ed multipart plastics from the starter box.

I really hate those 2nd ed guys. My workbench has finally cleared of real projects, so I'm painting up the squad from the Battle of Maccrag box to replace one of them. I will probably strip them down and paint them as statues, either marble or tarnished bronze. That would do some justice to their pose.

While I don't have any AoBR orks, I do have a partialy assembled box of those old orks kicking around...

I'm in a similar situation. I started playing in the late 90s with the introduction of 3rd. I, like so many others, started with Space Marines. Those poor marines got repainted numerous times (poorly, I might add) as I was trying out different chapters. I eventually settled on the Dark Angels.

When I got back into the hobby in the past year, looking at those models showed just how abused they had been. I tried to strip their globby multi-coat of paint, but with limited success, so they've officially been retired. I have the Dark Vengeance box set plus the recent Space Marine megaforce standing by to re-start the Dark Angels once their new codex is released.

I really hate those 2nd ed guys

I'm with you there.
All of the figures from the 2nd edition box set were bad, even by the standards of the day. The RTB1001 "beakies" were much better than those and were about five years older. Likewise, I complain above about how the old multi-piece Orks look. They were worlds better than the rigid pose axe and pistol guys from the box set. Hell, even the Space Crusade blunderbus armed Gretchin were better than the ones in the 2nd ed. box.

TR

I did it three years ago, for the very same reasons.

My models were mostly the old 2nd ed. monopose starter set goffs, who were even uglier than the RT ones. Can't say I'm sorry for having mothballed them.

I had many of the older RT Eldar. I sold them years ago and always wondered if I would regret letting them go. I really don't, which has surprised me since I'm a very sentimental guy.

I just took my Orks OUT of retirement. I started with AoBR and stuck with Orks. Unfortunately I built them and the majority of my later purchases before I had a codex, so I had no clue how to kit them out. Im in the process of re-gearing/repainting them.

Oh to think I just started collecting 40k armies a little over a year ago. I'm such a youngin.

I have done exactly the same with my 3rd edition dark eldar and 2nd edition eldar armies. I have effectively bought newer versions of the same armies as the new models do simply look better and the others look too dated now.

I actually sold my old Ork army that was half and half of 1st/2nd edition stuff and 3rd edition stuff. I kept a few sentimental pieces, like my very first painted plastic Ork, and some of the old metals that are just cool. I also kept my 3rd edition Warboss because the model was so brilliant and I was really happy with the paint job. Finally, I kept my old version of Ghazkull, just for sentimental reasons.

When I was putting together all my marines to see what I needed to start a new army for my return to 40K with 6th edition, I actually kept the 2nd edition boxed set marines that I had accumulated over the years. What I've done is kind of space them out across several tactical and devestator squads, so they don't stick out to much. Just a cost efficient way to fill out those "unglamorous" units

After making a few sales in the early part of last decade that I later regreted (notably selling off my first Nurgle Chaos Renegade army) my practice now is to never sell armies that are full of RT figures.

TR

A whole army of them? I wanna see pics! I wanna see pics! I wanna see pics!
It'll give a good idea of how my noble ancestors fought.

 CuddlySquig wrote:
A whole army of them? I wanna see pics! I wanna see pics! I wanna see pics!
It'll give a good idea of how my noble ancestors fought.

Dude, I used to brag that the last time I bought nything for my Space ork army was about 1996 or so. Well, that's not STRICLTY true...more like I have not bought anything for it that was MADE after 1996!
Anyway, as I said the army is not very well painted by my current standards and I can't take a decent photo to save my life. But I might need to snap a series of "in memorium" type pics of the army!

TR

RT models are pretty lacking in appearance by today's standard so I don't think a bad paint job will show up as much.
I have 2 of those old one-piece plastic gretchen with the huge guns, who spent 12 years lying around the house, outliving the bitz box they were kept in and my brother's interest in warhammer, before making their way into my army. Even though I painted them up nicely, they still look plain alongside my ork army, which is almost totally made of new stuff.

I think the older models have a certain amount of charm. Don't sell them on the off chance you'll regret losing the hideously ugly chunks of plastic.

I still keep most of the grots and boys, and all the metals. The only models I sold were a bunch of MkI rhinos (yes, orks could take rhinos at that time). In retrospect, that was a bad idea.

RT models are pretty lacking in appearance by today's standard

I strongly disagree with that statement. Just as is the case today there were good and bad figures in the RT era. It differeed from line to line and from sculpt to sculpt. There was some trash and there were some real gems. Recall that GW had some of the best miniature scupltors in the world working for them circa 1990. I'm talking about folks like the Morrisons, Kev Adams, Jes Goodwin, and the Perry boys. yes, some of the early stuff, like the multi-piece Ork models pictured above have not aged well. But on the other end of the spectrum we have things like Jes Goodwin's Eldar range which stand up favorably to the current Eldar stuff...and were head and shoulders better than the 3rd edition Eldar figures.

Likewise much of the Kev Adams scuplted Space Ork line was, and is, very good. The problem is that the majority of my current army is both poorly painted and consists of the lower end of that line as far as quality goes.

TR