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Hey, All-

My friend recently started up a Gorkamorka campaign, so I've been converting up some Spanners for my Morker Mob.



I tried to pattern them roughly on the old metal spanners, one with a bag full of tools and the other with some kind of welding equipment, using mostly parts from the plastic Ork kits.

I decided to build the welding torch out of a bit of plastic tube and some copper wire. The business end of the torch is the hilt of a Sicarian Ruststalker sword. The wrench is from a charm bracelet.



While I like the Ork plastics, all the faces have similar snarling expressions, which a little bit underwhelming compared to some of the old Ork artwork. I wanted to go for kind of a Paul Bonner feel to my mob, so I decided (for better or for worse) that I was going to sculpt smiles onto all of my mobsters. I also decided that I'd give this guy goggles to match his buddy. As I recall, I made them by slicing up a couple different sizes of spears.



I'm quite pleased with how he came out in the end. He ended up with an even goofier expression than I was going for, which is great. He makes an excellent aspiring mad scientist.



My second spanner went through a number of iterations. I ended up ruining several heads before going with the biker head. As much as I liked the charm bracelet wrench, I wanted to keep all my Spanners looking unique, so I decided to scratch-build a pipe wrench for the next one. I started with a choppa from the Savage Ork sprue (I think), cut down the blade and added some other bits and some plasticard. The teeth on the wrench are the bottoms of two shoota magazines and the threads for adjusting it came from an Imperial Guard vox caster. The rest of the vox caster got turned into a makeshift radio that the Spanner carries around in his pack. His face took a lot less sculpting (though his arms took a fair amount of work to reposition) than the other Spanner. I added some little balls of green stuff to make the lenses of his goggles convex so that I could paint them up like the other one as well as the obligatory smile.



I think the pipe wrench came together nicely. I'm especially pleased at how good the little bit of antenna looks all painted up.

They're really cool! I like the tools, especially the fact that one came from a charm bracelet

EDC

Here's Grizwoad, the Nob of my Morker Mob.




His head is from the Warbiker Nob, which normally has huge tusks sticking out of his mouth. I almost gave up on my plan to give all my mobsters big smiles and just gave him an Iron Gob, but it didn't really fit over his tusks. In the end, I ended up carving out most of his teeth, then reinserting a few of them that came out more or less intact.



He ended up having a really goofy expression, but it kind of grew on me while I was painting him up.

I also like how the little ork skeleton at his feet turned out. Too bad his choppa kind of hides it when he's actually on the table.

Gunna be watching this for sure!

I really like that scratch-built pipe wrench. Fun project. Subscribed!

Thanks, guys!

 evildrcheese wrote:
They're really cool! I like the tools, especially the fact that one came from a charm bracelet

EDC

Yeah, a collection of funny little charms, gears, and broken electronics is starting to accumulate in my bitz box. We'll see how much of it ends up being useful. I didn't post a picture where you can really see it, but the hammer strapped on to the back of my spanner's pack is another find from the charm bracelet store.

Here's the backbone of my Morker Mob, my Big Trakk:



It's the only model in my mob so far that isn't really converted (not counting the driver, Spike, and his big grin). It's basically just a stripped down Forgeworld Halftrakk that I got on eBay. I had intended to take all the other bits and magnetize them so that I could add them later as I purchased gubbins, but I simply ran out of time. That will have to be a project for our next game.



My Mob's not going to be all that shooty, because I didn't have enough teef to spend on a mounted weapon. I spent it all getting a second vehicle:



It's a pretty straightforward trakk, as I actually quite like the design of the standard GW Ork Wartrakk. Again, I got it off eBay, so one of the handlebars was broken (those things are surprisingly delicate). Most of the conversions were just fixing it up, rather than trying to change the overall style of the model. The main problem, of course, was the crew. The ones that come included in the model are tiny compared with the current Ork Boyz, so I went about making a new driver, mostly out of an Ork Biker. The arms that come with the Warbiker Mob are actually attached to the handlebars, which isn't really a big deal, but looks a bit awkward when you have to remove the driver. Instead, I cut up one of the open handed arms from the Boyz sprue and pinned it in place so that it could rest on top of the handlebars. I was actually able to use some of the arm that I had cut off to fill the gap back in, which meant that I didn't have to completely resculpt his muscles. I also gave him a smile to match the other members of the mob.



When I rebuilt the handlebars, I made my new ones a bit bigger. They're made mostly out of some old Chaos Marauder spears with some more Sicarian Ruststalker bits for the throttle. I made sure to pin them on so that they don't get broken off the first time this thing tips over. I was probably a bit overcautious, as I think the pin runs halfway up the handlebars, but you can never be too sure.



Automatically Appended Next Post:
And here's the whole gang, getting ready for their first big battle.

Looking good!

I love those grins.

Man and if you want to see tiny compared to modern boys, the old trukk was something else.

Some lovely grins. Did you splurge out the extra teef for the dental plan?

Quick Update:

My boys had their first big scrap of the campaign. It didn't go as badly as it could have gone, but we still got stomped pretty good. We decided to ease into the campaign by starting off with a friendly cooperative scenario. All four mobs were together on a team against some unruly grots and squigs. Nice and easy. Just required a bit of cooperation...



...Ork cooperation.

Just a few turns into the game, my big trakk got rammed by Urzig's trukk. I had only run over one or two of his boyz, I don't know why he had to get all indignant about it. Unfortunately, this sudden and inevitable betrayal not only damaged my trakk, it completely immobilized it, putting it in the shop for a round and leaving me with just my little track for the second game. We managed to grab a few pieces of scrap before fleeing, but our prize was hard earned. Abby, my brash yoof Trakk driver was gunned down. Fortunately, the teef we earned that game was enough to recruit a new driver, who was promptly given the name of Abby Junior in honor of their fallen comrade.

The final game of the day was Da Big Race, which pitted my Morkers against the other three mobs in a one-lap race around a dangerous track. One of my friends added some additional realism to the track by leaving a trail of broken parts behind his truck (apparently he didn't use enough glue ).



In the end, I took second and third place, which gave me enough teef to start adding some gubbins to my big Trakk, which will hopefully improve its chances of survival. All things considered, I'm pretty happy with how things turned out.

Also, the race gave me the best shot so far of the whole campaign:



We may not have come in first, but my mob definitely had the most fun.

Looks like the boyz did good

Love the battle report - genuinely made me chuckle!

Oh, man, this is great stuff here! This blog scratches so many itches I don't know where to begin, so in no particular order.

1. Gorkamorka is awesome and I'm so excited to see someone playing a campaign with it! It had great flavor and was so much fun.

2. I'm loving your conversions! The wrench and pipe wrench are excellent. The goggles fit the theme perfectly. And the smiles are an insane (in a good way) touch. So much character oozing from these boys.

3. There are battle reports with pics, one of my favorite parts of the hobby! Keep them coming with more game photos, please!

I can't wait to see what's next. I love it so far.

Thanks for all the encouragement, guys! It's nice to see that there are still plenty of Gorkamorka fans out there.

@The Riddle of Steel - I'll make it a point to post a few more pictures next time we have a game.

I've started modeling the gubbins for my big trakk, which has proved a bit more difficult than I had originally imagined. With my winnings from the last game, I purchased a big shoota and shoutas. I also made it extra spiky. My original plan was to simply create some plasticard plates covered in spikes and simply attach them with magnets. The problem was trying to decide where to attach them to the vehicle. There aren't a lot of big flat areas on the ork halftrakk, especially a rather stripped down version like mine. There are a few flat panels by the driver and toward the back, but that's also where a lot of the details on the model are, and I didn't want to stick a magnet in the middle.

In the end, I decided that rather than stick spike plates directly to the flat panels on the trakk, I would make some bigger plates that could hook over the sides and hang down over the windows.



I used some bamboo skewers for the spikes themselves, which I sawed off in my trusty mitre box. Actually attaching them to the plasticard proved way more difficult than I had expected. Super glue wouldn't stick to the wood, wood glue wouldn't stick to the plasticard. After trying every glue I had in the house, I ended up borrowing a hot glue gun, which worked great (although it got tiny strings of glue everywhere, which was a pain to clean up). The best part is that if I accidentally broke one off, super glue would stick to both the plasticard and the blob of hot glue around the skewers, so repairs were easy.

I had similar difficulties with my big shoota. The problem wasn't just where to install a magnet, but how to get my gunner in place. Although I was quite pleased with how my converted spanner turned out, I managed to make him in the least compact pose possible. I didn't want to make a second model for my spanner when he was in the gunner's seat (since that's where I was hoping he'd spend most of his time) so I had to make a turret that was big enough for both his outstretched arms and his bulky base.

I think my final solution was appropriately ridiculous:

Orky engineering. Lovely. Can we get a shot of them mounted on the trukk?

@CommissarKhaine Here you go:



You can't tell from the picture, but the part where the big panels loop over the top are filled with green stuff moulded to the shape of the doors so that they (in theory) they won't slide around and will stay in position when the vehicle moves. I didn't have the same amount of room with the small panels, so they're just attached with copper wire.

Hopefully I'll be able to post some pictures of them painted up in the next few days...

Well thought out system, thanks for sharing .

I'm more of a welded-on-metal spikes kinda guy, but I can dig the hedgehog look!

This is so cool, man I want to play Gorkamorka with somebody now!

Looks like quite the endeavor to get those spikes on there, but that's a clever system to make them detachable using the copper wire hooks on the front ones and the shaped undersides on the rear ones. Lots of little plates and rivets helps with the look, too!

I am looking forward to seeing the finished product with them painted up.

Gorkamorka! These guys are great. How many mobs in the campaign? Are you using the expansion as well, or just orkiness?

Thanks, everyone!

@goblinpaladin There are four mobs in the campaign right now, two Morkers and two Gorkers. No oddmobs yet. We're using a lot of house rules to make the Gorkamorka rules a lot closer to 7th edition 40k, as well as incorporating a few scenarios and such that people have posted on the Internets, so this campaign has also been kind of an extended play test as we try and get the balance right so that one strategy doesn't just steamroll all the others. The oddmob rules are a bit more complicated, so we're trying to tackle those in time for the next campaign.

Anyway, I finally managed to get some pics of my painted Spiky Gubbinz:



Both my spikes and my big shoota are now painted and properly installed on my big trakk. I think the finished product ended up a lot better than my original idea of just magnetizing them and sticking them right above the tracks. This method makes the trakk look appropriately both hazardous to approach and haphazardly constructed.



Just needs some shoutas and this one is ready to go.

Nice and orky, well done

Those ramshackle spiky bits are A+. I hear what you mean about the oddmobs and weirdness. Keen to see how it all works out.

Spanner number three is done:



I call him Shifty. Instead of scratch building tools for this one, I used the wrench and backpack from the Lootas sprue and focused my time on building him a kannon. I tried a few different guns for the base, including the big shoota from the Ork Boyz sprue, but in the end, I settled on a standard shoota, since it worked better for the pose I was going for. I removed the magazine and built a new barrel out of plasticard tube.



I'm quite fond of the various packs that this guy carries around. I'm especially pleased with how the patchwork leather wrench holder turned out. I think the random bit of scrap he's standing on is from the Assault Marine sprue.



I almost gave up on giving him a smile because it was so hard to even get a file or clippers inside his helmet that I didn't want to try to do any modeling in there. I'm glad that I tried anyway, because his smirk is one of my favorite things about this model. He might even be my favorite of the three...



...though it's pretty hard to pick a favorite.

Wow, I like the Kannon. It looks like a pretty simple conversion, but it looks like something that could do a lot of damage.

I have to agree, that smirk is very nicely done, very natural. And the kannon is looking suitably impressive as well. Nice work!

Thanks guys!

I've finally finished the last bit of gubbinz for my big trakk, the shoutas:



Believe it or not, this is actually one of the more restrained ideas I had for my shoutas. At one point, I was considering going all-out Fury Road, filling the whole bed of the trakk with shoutas and then building new platforms on top of the speakers for the crew to stand on. Ultimately, I settled on one big stack of speakers with some horn loudspeakers on top. It takes up a considerable amount of space, but since my mob is fairly small, it shouldn't be a problem.

I went back and forth on the paint job for my shoutas, too. I think black speakers look a bit more industrial or military than beige ones, but I couldn't get enough contrast that you could actually make out what they were, apart from a big black obelisk of some sort in the back of the truck. In the end, I went with a lighter color both to outline the drivers and the box itself, as well as for the four horns on top. I tried to make them look appropriately grungy for Gorkamorka (though I may have gone a bit overboard in some places) so they would fit in with the rest of the trakk.



Finding the parts to build what I wanted was challenging. The box itself is just built from plasticard, but the other parts were scavenged from all over. The speakers are snaps I got from a fabric store and some ball bearings that were sold as BB gun ammo. The horns on top were little bells that I was able to remove the clappers from. I was going to have a few different sizes and shapes, but I didn't really have the space and nothing else I found really fit what I was looking for.



And with that, the mob's all ready for the next big game.

That's.. some big shoutas :p. Like the effect, I could easily tell what they are (not that easy with what's essentially a big black box irl)

One final touch before the mob goes back into battle, da Boyz arranged a fitting tribute to Abby Sr, the former driver who was the first Ork to be killed in the campaign. Never ones for symbolism when literal interpretations will due, the gang figured out a way that their fallen companion could ride on with them forever...