40K Ork Apocalypse army / Spring clean challenge / how i'm beating the boredom of the Covid 19 lock down...

So before I begin a small editorial note. Firstly this project has been on the go (officially) since October 2018 and has been an on and off again project ever since (mostly off if im honest). I did paint a few models at the 40K hobby weekender in 2019 at the BOW HQ but even then it was only a few Grots. It is fair to say that the real guts of the project have been done during the Covid lock down although I have finished about 5 weeks of painting before even thinking about starting this project blog and I didn’t take many pictures as I went. So if the time line of painted images sometimes seems off, that’s why…

So my first big detachment done was my Tin Eads detachment. The new Saga of the Beast book from GW added a whole load of stuff for the Orks and one of the cool new detachments was the Tin Eads one which gives Dreads, Kans etc all +1 to hit in melee. Not bad.

Prior to the book, most of the Ork walkers were needing 3’s or 5’s to hit but now they are boosted to 2’s and 4’s they are much more viable. Before the update they were quite a few points and didn’t have many attacks, hopefully this small boost will rectify that.

Now, I know that with an unlimited free hand like I have now, they would be better as Goffs and have them near to Ghazagkull. This way a Deff Dread would go from the normal 3+ to hit, to a 2+ to hit… re rolling 1’s… and any roll of a 6 adds an extra attack.

This is waaaay better then being Tin Eads alone which just gives them a 2+ to hit and none of the other stuff. The catch being that in order to get these benefits, the models have to be within 6″ of Ghaz and there is no way they are all going to fit.

Besides, this part of the army is mostly just for fun and an entire detachment of Tin Eads sounds cool.

So, now that we have covered my decision behind which “faction” to make the detachment, lets look at the colour scheme. I decided that the main colour was going to be black. A it suits the look very nicely and B I can always put individual models back into Goff clans (the Goff’s favorite colour is black).

I had a load of Deff Dreads still on sprues from all the start collecting boxes I bought in Orktober 2018 (more on this in another post) and also from the Ork Apocalypse box GW released at Christmas 2019, I had more Dreads and some Killa kans. All I needed to back them up was a Gorkanaut* and a Stompa.

*The Gorkanaut would actually come after this detachment was painted, i had trouble sourcing one before the Covid lock down.

So, time to break out the snippers and glue, open a fresh case of cold beer and get cracking. Some 8 hours later I emerged from my hobby room, blinking in the sunlight and scraping the dried glue from off my fingers. The build phase was complete.

My next step was to work out a way of painting the models to a good standard but wasn’t going to take weeks. So I turned to my old friend, the Aerosol.

I’m sure the more dedicated modelers reading this just spat their Earl grey over the computer screens… Aerosol! not an Airbrush! Well no. While I do have an Airbush setup and I do use it from time to time on certain jobs, I find it a slow process of set up, cleaning etc, and when you have a large area to cover like this, it will take a long time.

The first coat was with trusty Halfords Matt Black. For those of you over seas or are perhaps afraid of motor factors, Halfords is a big auto parts accessory store. Whenever my wife finds an excuse to drag me to the shops to look for cushions or other such things that don’t interest me, I make my excuses and head to Halfords. Power tools and wrenches beats soft furnishings!

Anyway, Halford Matt Black I have found to be an excellent base coat. Its quite cheap, comes in a large can drys very well without streaks or pools. Once dry I decided to try something new. Whilst rummaging around a craft store I came across PlastiKote rust effect in a can. I was a little dubious at first but I test sprayed an old model of no consequence and BOOM! Totally spot on.

It drys a perfect dark brown rust colour with a slight texture to it that doesn’t detract from the natural features of the model your working on. I would recommend this paint to any one working on a similar project.

Not including drying time I had all the models more or less 50% painted in around 1 hour. Not bad going… But the next steps took a lot longer.

First thing to do was build a master. I take my time on the master and generally don’t count it towards the total time taken per detachment, mostly because i’m rummaging through my paint box looking for an illusive colour, or scrolling through Google images for inspiration.

Once I have settled on a process for each model, I line the paints up and batch them one at a time. I did break up the detachment a bit more so as to break up the tedium of painting the same models over and over.

So I painted 2  Deff Dreads, then 3 Kans, 2 more Dreads, the Mega Dread, then 3 Kans, the final 2 Dreads, then the final 3 Kans.

In the end It was taking me about an hour to do 2 Dreads / 3 Kans, plus a bit for the Mega dread and the spray painting for a rough total of 8 hours. So two working days to build and paint 6 Dreads, 9 Kans, a Mega Dread and a Stompa*, Pretty chuffed with that.

*The Stompa was actually painted separately and took an additional  4 hours to paint. As a large center piece model, It deserved a little more attention.

The paint process after spray was:

• Abaddon black the hulls and armour plating
• Dry brush the whole model with LeadBelcher concentrating more on the arms and weapons.
• Detail with Khorne Red, WraithBone, LeadBelcher and Rust paint.

Job done and first big detachment out the way