Rogue Trader Ork Raiders

To go with the RTB01 Crimson Fists I'm painting up a small force of the original metal Space Orks.  I had loads of these back in the day, but sold them off when I dropped out of 40K.  I subsequently bought more of the then current plastic ranges when I ran school Warhammer clubs, hence a lot of the Orks I painted here and here.

Classic Sculpts

But there's something about the early orks, especially the Ork Raiders box RTB02, that I find missing in the more modern ones (I'm ignoring the first lot of plastic Orks, horrible).  A evilbay purchase of more modern random ork bits included one of the originals, some lucky extra purchases added to that one, and now I have close on enough for the Battle At The Farm from the original Warhammer 40 000 rulebook.

Some of these metal orks were test subjects for my paint stripping experiments starting here.

The full unit of ten

I was tempted to go full old school with these, even down to Goblin Green bases with sand texture, but I decided to use my current method of orc/ork painting, perhaps with a little more detail.  After all, I'm not painting a full army, just my small collection, and I can stop buying more off eBay any time I like, honest.

Painting

I used three different skin tones as normal.  Cloth, such as trousers were basecoated Vallejo Game Color Khaki and highlighed VGC Bonewhite.  The padded armour and belts, pouches etc was basecoated VGC Desert Yellow and highlighted VGC Khaki, and the foot wraps (is there a technical term for those?) were basecoated VGC Earth and highlighted with VGC Khaki.

The shoulder armour was painted as metal (VGC Gunmetal Metal, black wash, reset with Gunmetal)  Little details were picked out as seemed appropriate at the time.  Everything was then given a wash of 50:50 Army Painter Strongtone and Softtone.  I think there must have been some issue with the wash as once dry the result was a lot darker than I was expecting.  Still, it's on now, and I'm pretty happy with the result.

Orks after the wash

Extra Details

But I wanted to go a step further with these.  They are special to me after all - these Space Orc Raiders were the first WH40K minis I ever painted.

So I added some extra highlights to bring out the detail.  Drybrushing some of the highlight colours over the wash helped a lot, and counteracted the darker colour.  I also painted the shoulder pads to look like they were taken from fallen Crimson Fist Space Marines.  I stippled some Vallejo Model Color Dark Prussian Blue roughly on the pads.  Then a little highlighting with VGC Ultramarine.  I approximated the Crimson Fist Chapter symbol, though perhaps a little small compared to the real thing.  The scratches in the pads were painted in black, then a thin line of Chainmail Silver in the gouges.

Shoulder pads stolen from the Crimson Fists.  OK, realistically, probably taken from the fallen.

Adding a Sprig of Thyme Time

At this point I liked the result, but I felt there was something missing.  On my wife's advice I put them away for a couple of months, and recently brought them out, looked more critically at them, and decided they were quite good enough.  

So then it was a case of varnishing and basing to match the Space Marines.  I mixed up my varnishes, so they got a first coat of Satin varnish.  It's fine, but I don't know if this will affect the durability of the finish.  

I based the Crimson Fists using Geek Gaming's Patchy Plains Base Ready mix, but I've mislaid it (or more likely, I used it all up).  I mixed my own though, a combination of sieved sand, coarser gravel and some flock, and I'll use this on future Rogue Trader Orks.

Future Plans

So the first batch is done. Ten Ork Raiders. Eight are from the original RTB02 box, and I've added a couple of different poses to act as squad leaders. In the original battle, the Orks are fielded in squads of five, each led by a leader*. I've got more Space Orks to add to the collection, next up will be another ten, but including some special and heavy weapons, allowing me to field two squads of ten, each including a Heavy Bolter and a Flamer.  I'm looking for a couple of particular sculpts that would allow me to have each mini in a squad unique, but I'll make do with a few duplicates for now.

One squad of five

And another squad

* If you've read my post on card counters you can just make out the counter for the Ork squad leaders is clearly based on one of these models, so I've chosen him to lead a squad of five troopers.

The squad leader from the Battle At The Farm counters