Foehammer's Kill Team: SpetzNob’s OrkerKommandos

As more of a modeler than a gamer, I’ve long had a love-hate relationship with Warhammer 40k. On one hand, the extremely expansive background allows almost no limit to the modeling, painting, and conversion possibilities. However, the GW approach to game design has always turned me off. You build and create a large, expensive, and sometimes pain-staking converted army, only to be hamstrung by the fact that the meta has evolved into min-maxing often a small handful of repeated unit entries to create the most competitive list, that is also zero fun to play against.

Its still set in the 40k universe, so all the modeling and converting possibilities still exist, but there are numerous advantages over 40k. Forces are small, so there is significantly less monetary and time investment in making an army. The small collection of miniatures means even more time can be spent painting and converting individual models without the intimidation factor of having hundreds of models in queue ahead of you. Lastly, the army selection requirements and varied missions appear to counter the tendency to spam single units to victory.

Additionally, it will let me play with my 9-year-old son, who has a small Tyranid force.

I decided to go with an Ork Kill Team for several reasons.

1) I am a slow painter, so would never have been able to paint/convert a horde army, so Orks have always been beyond my reach

2) They have near unlimited conversion possibilities

3) They just seem fun

The Kill Team will be from the Blood Axe Clan. For those unfamiliar, the Blood Axe Clan is the most universally mis-trusted of the Ork Clans as a result of their very un-orky organized and structured nature. They plan. They use tactics. They perform reconnaissance. They act like a structured military organization…mostly.

In appearance, they mimic other military organizations, like the Imperium. They wear uniforms and camouflage, even though that camouflage may not, in any way, match the environment in which they are fighting, and the uniforms may not be…uniform across the squad. They will decorate themselves with medals and awards, with those stolen from fallen opponents being most prized.

I’ve decided to combine this with my love of WW2, and particularly Konflikt 47, by theming individual figures to be visually similar to historical WW2 soldiers. Camo-patterns, weapon conversions, and general gear will be converted to align with the look-and-feel of German/US/Britis/Soviet/Etc WW2 forces. Not sure how it will all come together, but in the end I think it will make for a fun project.

I’ve purchased my first two boxes of Orks, so its time to get rolling. Will hopefully update shortly with progress updates.