Painting 40K Orks and a Bit of History

Like many gamers I played a lot of GW games. I'm old enough that they weren't my introduction to gaming though. I first played Wargames with Airfix plastic soldiers and using an old Donald Featherstone book. Not very successfully I might add.

As soon as I heard about the Minifigs Mythical Earth range I bought lots of them, along with a set of rules called Wizards and Warfare, essentially a fantasised version of Wargames Research Group Ancients rules. 

D&D came along a couple of years later, and that soon took up all my hobby time and budget.

Years later GW brought out Warhammer, followed by Warhammer 40K, both of which I played a lot of. But over the years, for various reasons, I've sold off or given away most of my GW collection. 

Recent attempts to excavate the lead and plastic pile in the loft of shame have revealed more WH40K than I thought I had. I've no interest in actually playing the game again, but some of orks were a long ago gift from my son, specifically an army set with a big vehicle (battlewagon) and some warbikes. They are generally nice kits and have a lot of sentimental value to me. What they don't have is a decent paint job, so I decided it was time to paint up a few and sell or give away the rest. 

The eight ork troops, sadly not enough for a unit in WH40K, but never mind.

So here are the first few orks. I thought I'd found 10, but once I started there were only 9. Closer inspection showed one was so badly built with caked on layers of paint that he was rejected, so just 8, which seems to be a good number of minis for me to paint.

All the orks were already built and had a black base coat. Some had some flesh painted on in a heavy overbrush and a few details, but I started afresh. I used the same techniques as my Kings of War Orcs, as seen starting here. I chose slightly different colours. I've no intention of sticking to the official schemes of clans with associated colours, I wanted my orks to look a bit more generic. That said, given that there will be some vehicles in the force eventually, I made sure each ork has some red on it somewhere.

Four of the Orks, if I need a leader form this lot, I'll choose the guy with the bright yellow topknot 

I've left the back plates blank.  I may eventually paint a symbol on them, but I haven't yet decided what

The black cloth started with VEO Charcoal, washed with black and then highlighted with a Charcoal VGC Cold Grey mix. I also tried a darker red, basecoated with VGC Terracotta and highlighted with VGC Gory Red. I wasn't sure about this while I was painting, but now it's finished I really like the result. 

For the various straps I tried something a bit different.  I read this technique somewhere, so I can't claim any originality, but I think it works pretty well.  Firstly I painted all the straps with VGC Scorched Brown, this gives a good dark shade to the sides of each strap. Then I painted the upper surface of each strap with VGC Leather Brown.  Finally I painted a broad stripe of the Scorched Brown in the centre of each strap, much easier than trying to edge highlight with the Leather Brown.  Once the minis have been given a wash of 50:50 Soft and Strong Tone Army Painter Wash I think it looks fine.  I'll probably be using this technique again in future.

The other four orks

After the usual varnishing I used Patchy Plains Base Ready mix from Luke's APS. I've used this stuff before, but couldn't find my bottle of the recommended glue. I used Mod Podge instead, and it seems to have done the job. I felt the result was a bit monotone, so I gave it a thin wash of VGC Sepia wash, then after gluing on some grass tufts, a wash of thinned down Mod Podge to seal everything in. A final touch up of the base rim with VGC Burnt Umber and done.

This is another mini project that I really enjoyed. I've already sorted out another 8 Orks, this time the ones with pistol and close combat weapon. 

I said at the start that I've no intention of actually playing WH40K, but these will work with Galactic Heroes. I've also been looking at Grimdark Future, one of the One Page Rules sets. I've heard good things about it, but I'm not sure I really want to paint two armies of the size required.