Grooving in Green

A few weeks back I was lucky enough to be sent parcels from friends for my birthday. I'm really stoked to have so many friends who skate and either used to, or have an active interest in little men. By some strange quirk of fate, two of these packages included classic Ork kits and models; more specifically 90's Kev Adams Bad Moon sculpts. I've always had a soft spot for the early aesthetic of Games Workshop Orks, particularly through the medium of Paul Bonner's wonderful artwork and Kev Adam's characterful modelling. Although GW fluff makes it clear from the start that Orks are brutal killers, there is something childishly naive and charming about the Ork background during this period.

All getting along together then

Paul Bonner's artwork was everywhere at one point and he had an excellent style that could portray any of the Warhammer 40000 races with accuracy and personality. His work on the Deathwing expansion in particular is excellent. However, it is his Orks that his work really shines through. It would be hard to reconcile the rather 2D characterisation of the present Orks with these creatively comical fellas. Bonner captures the naturalism of Orkish nature as a tumbling, bumbling dangerously out-of-control boulder of a force that crashes from one planet to another in a never-ending pursuit of war - because that's what they do. There is no over-arching, galactic political motive, no honourable quest, just Orks fucking things up. And that's beautiful in it's simplicity.

Awesome.

Anyway. Back to the miniatures. Having no (urgent) projects on the go, I've decided to put together a little Ork army to try and capture the spirit of Bonner's illustrations. Using only Kev Adam's sculpts (which should be easy as he sculpted nearly 99% of all the Orks until 1994) I'm hoping to get the majority of the force done before Christmas. This may seem a little optimistic at first glance, but I've just discovered that painting green is actually really, really good fun.

I'm serious, it's such a good colour.

Since I can't seem to get away from painting yellow and that I've ended up with several specifically Bad Moon figures, it's going to be a pure fluff Bad Moon gathering. Thankfully I don't need to be as nearly as precise or as clean with the colour as I was with the Alaitoc Eldar, so that should save on many agonising hours of holding my breath attempting not to ruin or smudge yellow areas!

The boyz.

So far I'm planning to keep the war band really small and simple. Thankfully I've not needed to spend much on additional bits as I've had a few models kicking around for awhile now. The only additional purchases have been some vanilla boyz and a Shokk Attack Gun with Snotlings. I'll probably add a few character figures in due course, but here is what the first phase looks like,..

Warboss Azzbutt

10 x Ork boyz

1 x Battlewagon

1 x Dreadnought

1 x Shokk Attack Gun

4 x Snotling bases

20 x Gretchin

The Gretchin are going to be mostly made up of the smaller proto-Gretchin 'Runt' figures as they have so much more character than the later models. Plus, it makes more sense in my head to have a rabble of badly armed little guys running around trying to impress the Orks. Obviously this list is not meant for play, but I imagine if I did play them, it would be a hell for leather 'ere we go, all guns blazing not hitting anything tactic - because that's well Orky. So far I've the Warlord painted along with a few Gretchin and some boyz - shall do a proper photo-drop when there's more to show!

Azzbutt.

The painting style is going to be as close as I can to the RT greens, but pretty rough and ready for everything else. I'm really looking forward to modelling and weathering the original Battlewagon, which in itself is an amazing kit for the time - thanks to Pob and The Melon for being so rad and sending me more rad old stuff to paint, you guys are the bestest.