The Old Rules

Unless you're one of those players who buys a new codex and army, plays it in tournaments, then sells everything on ebay as soon as the next codex/army comes out, you probably have multiple editions of GW rulebooks and codices on your shelf.  (If you're a person who plays mostly in hobby stores or in tournaments against strangers, then this post doesn't apply to you)

Ork Land Battleship, Part 16

I'll tell you one thing.  Riveting isn't.

Port-forward track

Starboard-forward track

Port-aft track

Starboard-aft track

These pictures just shows the exteriors of the tracks--I had to do a bunch of riveting on the lower parts of the interiors of the tracks.  I estimate there is something like 1,300 individual rivets on these pieces.  The work isn't hard, it's just very tedious.  In the end I think it's worth it, as the rivets add a lot to the model and make it look ten times better than if all the rivets were not there.

Ork Land Battleship, Part 15

Ok, an Ork Battleship needs gunz. Lots of 'em. So here we go.  Six supa-gatlers. 

These guns are mounted underneath the bow of the battleship, facing forward.  You don't want to be facing them.

Next step I'm working on the forward assault ramp, and lots of riveting.  More to come.

Ork Land Battleship, Part 14

Just a quick update as I got some more structure done. Soon I need to start working on detailing, which is going to take forever...  Here's a (admittedly bad) picture of part of the superstructure, with some detailing on the after part:

The reason being is that I'm mounting another section on top of it--it will be visibile through the trusswork, so I need to put in detailing now.

Adding on the bridge section and another deck leads us to here:

And finally the top of the bridge:

Next post will have some detail work, as I've begun that now.

Ork Land Battleship, Part 13

When I first posted this as a "mystery project", it seemed to generate some interest in figuring out what it might be.  Responding to that, I attempted to do what I could to provide little hints, but without revealing the whole project.  Well, I'm sick of that now--I might as well just start posting progress.

So this post is a sequence of pictures as I assemble the various parts of the Land Battleship from the bottom up.

All of the pieces I'm adding will remain removable in the final product, so I can add detail in each stage, and the various Ork krew will be able to fit inside.

Starting to get big...  I still have some superstructure left to go, mostly in the after section.  Once all that's in place, I'll start detailing everything up!

Ork Land Battleship, Part 12

This will be a relatively small update, showing some of the parts of the superstructure I'm making. Lots of these pieces are material intensive, so I'm finding that I've been using up my stocks of plasticard at an alarming rate.

With the lack of large materials, I suppose I could start on the detail work, but I really want to finish the main structure first, then start on the details from the bottom up.  Here's some pictures of some of my progress:

This is part of the superstructure that will contain a turret and aft of it, a control room.

Same thing, but with the turret ring in place.

An after section, which will go on top of the above section.

And finally, the bridge section.  More to come soon.

Ork Land Battleship, Part 11

"It's not big enuff."
"Wot?"

"I can't fit all da boyz in da front part."
"Da bow."
"Da bow?"
"Da front part."
"Whaddeva.  It's not big enuff."
"I already extended it once for you."
"You wot?"
"Made it bigga."
"Well make it bigga again, ya git."
"All right."

"Gotta give it some supports, like."

"See, 'dere you go.  It's bigga."
"What's wit da...hole thing?"

"Da wot?"
"Da two parts don't touch.  You cocked it up, ya git!"
"Yeah, well, my foreman messed up with his measuring tape with the first hull extension, and one side was too long."
"Wot about da foreman?"
"I killed him."
"Good."

 "See?  All fixed."

Ork Land Battleship (formerly Mystery Project), Part 10

This weekend I will heading off to the land of James T. Kirk's birth visiting family, so I'll be away for a little while.  But I figured I would post some pictures before I left.

The commenters have guessed it...it's an Ork Battleship.  Sort of...  More like an Ork Land Battleship.

You know that when something requires trusswork that it's going to be big. 

Here's a picture of one of the engine room control panels.

And a picture of the engine room--still a work very much in progress.

And finally, here's an early picture of a cargo bay.

"What, it doesn't look big to me..." (no, I didn't photoshop this picture)

Mystery Project 1, Part 9

Well, I finally broke, and am posting something that's going to give away lots of information.

And finally, this last shot gives a clue as to what army this might belong to:

Mystery Project 1, Part 8

Another part showing some of the complexity--this mechanism won't be visible on the completed model, but it shows some of what will end up being moving parts.

Mystery Project 1, Part 7

Here's a zoom-in of part of the model...showing a couple of in-progress structures that have some kind of function or another...

Mystery Project 1, Part 6

Here's a new part I'm working on. Here's a hint, which may or may not help. There will be two of them.

Mystery Project 1, Part 5

Getting away from the tracks, I figured I'd focus on another aspect of the project.  Playing the StarCraft II Betahas pulled me away from working on this for a while, but now that the beta's over I have some time to work on it again.  The next thing that threatens to slow me down is running out of plasticard...I need to replenish my supply soon.

Mystery Project 1, Part 4

It should be obvious what these are now. But what are they for?

Mystery Project 1, Part 3

Here's another picture. This one might give a better clue as to what's going on.

Mystery Project 1, Part 2

Next up was making 136 of these things. Talk about tedious.

Mystery Project 1, Part One

For this project I'm just going to post progress, without talking too much about what I'm working on.  With time what I'm working on will start to take shape.

Part 1: 88 little cylinders.

Inspired by Art

Every so often I see a picture in a Codex or White Dwarf and I think, "That's really cool. I want a model that looks like that," and I feel inspired to try to duplicate it.

This first one is of a Tau Commander, the art coming from the original Codex Tau (I believe the same picture is in the current Codex: Tau Empire as well. It required a minimum of converting--I just had to trim off the lower legs at the knee joint and reattach them to make them bend more.

I always thought that this picture of Commander Farsight looked pretty cool, so I felt inspired to duplicate it. This one also required a minimum of conversion, I think it was just bending the knee a bit like with the Tau Commander.

Next is an assault sergeant from the new Blood Angels Codex--I thought that the Blood Angels marine with the pair of Lightning Claws looked particularly cool. This one required some more converting. I used one Lightning Claw from the Space Wolves Grey Hunters set (generously donated by Badelaire), while the other is from the Space Marine Commander's box set. I had to chop them off at the elbows and rotate them to get the angles right.  To match the breastplate, I used a normal tactical marine breastplate and filed off the skull, replacing it with a blood drop from the Death Company sprue.  The pauldrons (er...shoulder pads) are from the Death Company sprue and the Sanguinary Guard sprues.  For the legs I hacked off the right leg at the hip, and replaced it with another assault marine right leg (so now both legs are the ones from the assault marine sprue that are more bent at the knee).  I'm still working on the conversion (I have to greenstuff some power cables), so this is still a work in progress.

This last one is a model that Badelaire did, based on the picture of a particularly mean looking nob in Codex Orks. The arms and lower legs are from the Warhammer Fantasy Black Orcs sprue, while the choppa is converted using normal Ork Boyz bitz. The rest of the bitz are standard ork nobz bits.