Space Ork Super-attack Onslaughter Dreadnought

I've been very slowly building up a small Rogue Trader era Space Ork force, you can see the first ten painted minis here.

I'm not really collecting them for any reason, other than the sheer joy of revisiting my younger days, and I've no real goals. But one thing I really wanted was one of the original Ork Dreadnoughts. There's something so impractical about the design that I find really appealing, I mean, how does it even walk? It must need to swing from side to side, making accurate shooting nearly impossible. Mind you, these are Orks (though the BS of the Dreadnaught is surprisingly high).

They do crop up occasionally on evilbay, but always at a much higher price than I can justify.  I've seen some that I swear must have been built around a Faberge egg, so I had accepted that there would be a Dreadnaught shaped hole in my Space Ork force.

A Lucky find

But when recently browsing the FLGS (the same one where I got the Space Marine bits shown here) I saw this on the rack 

This is the Dreadnaught with the expansion kit added. It comes with a Heavy Flamer and a Heavy Plasma Gun, because in those days, orks used the same weaponry as the Imperium. It is missing a few bits though, the Gretchin pilot, the banner pole, and most significantly, one of the weapon mount arms.

Dreadnought - Seeks arm

Still, I bought it, hoping to cobble something together for the missing arm.

Then next day I found this on eBay, and for a reasonable price too (£3.50 plus postage*).

Not one but two weapon mount arms, and a lascannon

Now I have a complete enough Dreadnaught to build and paint, and a spare Lascannon. I might even magnetise the weapons so that I can swap them out.

Now this wasn't as cheap as when originally released (£3.50 for the basic Dreadnaught and another £2.50 for the expansion pack), but I consider it a good purchase, and, perhaps, a little reward for clearing out so much stuff recently.

Painting it (eventually)

I need to strip the new arm and the lascannon, and, as I mentioned, I'll look at making the weapons swapable.  I may even extend this to the one Ork with Heavy Weapon, in his case, a Missile Launcher.  I'm not sure what colour scheme to go for though.  The original models, both in White Dwarf etc and, IIRC my own, tneded to wards bright reds an similar.  It might be nice, given the khaki on my ten Raiders, to go for a similar sort of colour, it being Armour after all.  If you've any suggestions, please leave a comment.

I don't seem to be doing much painting at the moment, various other things, both hobby and otherwise, are taking up my time, but I'd like to get this done fairly soon. There are a few more infantry I'll paint first though, as I have a vague plan for my Space Orks.

*I'm baffled by this. Individual arm mounts sell for upwards of £8, and I've seen Lascannon fetch over £10. It does all seem to be genuine stuff.

More Crimson Fists

When I painted the first squad of Crimson Fists I mentioned that I was hunting for the missile launcher in the 'loft of shame '. Well there's been no sign of any more marines up there, so I was pretty much resigned to never completing them. They are available on evilbay, but they command very high prices, far above what I can currently justify.  So it looked like this project was at a dead end.

Discovery

Recently I was browsing a box of second hand minis in my FLGS* and found the following;

Three more partial RTB01 marines, including a missile launcher and a flamer (originally glued on to the arm of the newer metal marine bottom right). I've got plenty of the bits needed to complete them, so now I can assemble enough Crimson Fists for The Battle at the Farm. But I'll strip them first.

Stripping Plastic Minis

If you read my posts on stripping, I'm using Dettol as its far kinder to plastic.  Unlike the earlier trials I'm leaving the minis in the Dettol for several days, before dunking in washing up liquid for a day or two longer, then after scrubbing clean (and it gets the paint off very nicely), in Isopropanol, to make sure that all the Dettol etc is gone. 

I have heard that methylated spirit is also a good solution, but I've yet to try it. For now I'll stick to what I know.

Not More Marines?

Given my previous post discussing selling off minis, it may seem ironic talking about getting more. Well I have a double defence. I'll be sorting through Warhammer 40K stuff soon, and that means getting rid of a lot of the more modern Space Marines. Also this post was actually started some while ago, so the purchase of the above was long before the current cull and they are all stripped and cleaned up ready for assembly and painting.

These original RTB01 Space Marines are definite keepers for me, or at least, a tactical squad of them are. I may well sell off any surplus, though they are such fun to paint.

*Actually, one of three in Huddersfield, though it's my favourite.

The Joy of Slimming (the Minis Collection)

I realise that it's been weeks since I last posted. I've not been idle, but I've done very little painting. In fact, I've finally got round to seriously addressing the minis pile, a job that I've tentatively been toying with for quite a while.

Can you have too many minis?

Like many gamers I've bought far more minis over the years than I've painted, (I've boxes of RPG stuff that's never seen a paintbrush, and don't even mention Trident Realm) and of the painted stuff there's a fair bit that I know I'll never need again. I'm not great at keeping my stuff well stored, so it's always been easier to just shove stuff to the back of the loft of shame, but I'm determined to finally sort this out.

I've recently come to realise that having all this stuff is actually harmful. It's a psychological burden that can take the joy out of the hobby. I've had episodes over the past few years where I the thought of painting minis filled me with dread. Very much a first world problem, I know.

I want to bring the joy back into my hobby and dealing with the horde of stuff is my best first step. 

What to thin 

I'm going through everything. I'm deciding what use I can get out of it, and if the answer is little or none, it goes.

As an example, I've collected minis for D&D for decades. As a result I have many different types of the same creature. I have kobolds from the early days (Minifigs), official kobolds from TSR,  prepainted WotC kobolds of several different styles and sizes, and at least three different styles of Reaper kobolds. Witness my efforts to find the perfect orc for another example. The same applies to practically all the humanoid races, undead, beasts etc, and even dragons.

I only need one style of kobold, orc, etc, so I have a lot of spare minis that I need to ge rid of.

How to thin 

I've started with the RPG stuff, collecting together as much as I can find then sorting by type. These go into ziplock bags, such as a goblin bag or a zombie bag. These are then stored in Really Useful Boxes by type, so a box of undead or a box of fiends.

Next I decide what I don't need/want. This is a very rough sorting, the intention is to further sort once everything has been looked through once. As an example, I'm hanging on to a lot of the WotC prepainted minis as they cover creatures that just aren't available elsewhere, such as decent Displacer Beasts, but a lot of humanoids and PCs/NPCs are much better in Reaper Bones. 

The actual disposal of surplus stuff is mostly through eBay or specialist Facebook sales groups. I might not get top prices, but so far just about everything has sold.

As of the end of January I've sold on over 400 of the D&D prepainted minis and over 100 Reaper minis that don't fit in my collection any more. I've also cleared a few boxes of minis games, such as Bluebird Toys' Havok, oddments of GW bits, such as the old plastic WH40K trees and far more Heroclix minis than I thought I had.

What's next?

I've plenty more of course. I've just started on wargames stuff. Here I'm going to have to make some difficult choices. I know that just keeping a few of something will lead eventually to regret (if only I'd kept that one particular mini or unit I'd have a great army). It's going to have to be "lots or none at all", as Bilbo might say.

As an example, I've loads of Forge Fathers, originally I got them for Deadzone, then I added a lot of the then new plastics when Firefight came out. Now I'd still like to play Firefight, but I've got plenty of Marauders and Enforcers, so all the Forge Fathers will go. Keeping a few, for, say, a Deadzone team, will just lead to me regretting selling the rest off and/or me buying more.

Lord of the Rings minis are next for sorting, and I have a plan for what to keep. Then hard choices over what Kings of War armies I want to concentrate on.

If all this sounds a bit 'anti hobby' it's not meant that way. I've been doing a lot of work on the online D&D campaign, and I've even done a little bit of painting. However, I hope that once the exercise is complete I'll be a lot happier with the hobby.