Deffkopta

Continuing on in the black reach set. I worked these with the same color scheme of the boyz and nobz.

Painting Warhammer 40K Ork Nobz

I am sitting and watching basketball as the temp is 27 below outside, so I thought I would post the next group of Ork models I painted. These were the Nobz out of the Assault on Black Reach set. Of note, after a week of 40 below and colder, I realize that it is a strange world where you get excited when it warms up to 20 below.

Anyway, here are the Orks I painted, sticking to the color scheme that my daughter picked out. I followed the same general process as the last post with the addition of adding some brass and more detail items.

Here are my 5 Space Ork Nobz in the red accent paint scheme. I wasn't sure how what to do with the spy glass, so just painted it brass and used badab black wach to dirty it up some.

the back view of the Nobz.

At least I remembered to paint the Nobz fingernails this go round.

I washed the metal, but did much less in the way of blood splatter on the weapons. I completely missed the lip ring on the right side model, but my daughter spotted it.

I do like the way the models include the small details like metal rings, teeth, etc. Makes painting much more interesting, but there always seems to be something you miss.

Painting Ork Boyz

I had nothing to do but wait. And wait. And wait. Then I discovered painting. I figured that the big pile of Orks and Marines would be a good place to practice. I had no idea where to start, so I did what any red blooded American father would do. I googled how to paint orks and found a bunch of Canadian painters doing “How-to” videos.

I don’t know why the two main sites I found were Canadian, I don’t think it has anything to do with being in Alaska, but who knows. Anyway, the two most educational sites I found were obsidian painting and miniwargaming.com. There I found the basics. I picked up some brushes from Army Painter and then went to the best person for advice on what kind of color scheme I should use for my orks. She picked the colors and I got to painting.

I found it very relaxing after a hectic day, and I found myself in my comfy leather chair each evening painting whilst the wife and kids watched whatever bit of television suited their fancy. And to be honest, I am a bit obsessive and I spent the next couple of Saturdays neglecting my usual chores to finish up painting.

I started with three ork boyz to test the waters. Please do understand that my color choices were not only picked by my daughter, but were somewhat limited by what was available at the local store-so I may not match up with any approved plan-but isn’t that part of the fun. Overall my daughter wanted leather clothes with red accents for the orks (because according to her, the marines will be blue, so the orks have to be red). I couldn’t argue with that logic!

My first three painted orks

I first base coated the whole model with Citadel Foundation Knarloc Green thinned with a little bit of water. I followed this by a wash with Thraka Green to all the exposed skin. After that I dry brushed with successive greens from dark to light.

I tried to get depth in the skin, but I now notice I forgot the fingernails on this one. Ah well. One day I will get to the bases.

Next I did all the clothing with scorched brown to look like leather. Then I base coated all the metal parts and belts black. The weapons, boot toes, belt buckles etc got boltgun metal.

I didn't think to do a badab black wash until I started to do the Nobz later, so the metal stayed fairly bright despite a brush with the gore red.

Next all the accents, boots, bags and gun labels were done with gore red. I also tried to splatter all the metal with the gore red to try to look like blood splatters. Last I added gold to the jewelry and red to the eyes. And there you have it. My first feeble attempt at painting Ork Boyz.

Next I went back and did the other 17 in an assembly line style with the two with the big shootaz being the exceptions needing the backpacks and ammo getting special attention. Below is my (or really my daughter’s) squads of boyz. I still have not decided what kind of basing to do. I am thinking sand with some browning moss. Suggestions are welcome.

20 Ork Boyz ready to play against my son's space marines.

two ork boyz with big shoota in tow.

Pick a Warhammer 40k Army...or two

The next real step was to read-read-read (and pick the armies we wanted to work on). What we knew was that the marines and orks we had been playing with were not capturing the imagination in a way that made us want to collect them.

So how do you pick your army. That was the 10,000 dollar question. We went to the games workshop website, the web and eventually to the descriptions in the back of the rule book. Last we read as much of the codex’s as we could, particularly the histories. And, of course, which models looked cool to us played more than a little in the decision.

So when it came down to it, my son was captivated by the story line of the Necrontyr and the reanimation protocol. He liked the story of the battle between the immortals and the jealousy of the short lived Necrontyr leading to their ultimate demise as they became enslaved to the power they thought they could harness to serve them. He also just thought they were cool looking figures and he loves to amass firepower and standoff at midrange which works well for the Necrons.

Similarly, I was captivated by the story of the Dark Eldar. Not just because of the similarities between their story and the multiple falls of empires in our Earthly history, but the individual story lines, the juxtaposition to the Eldar who seemingly escaped the same fate, but are now trapped in their own worlds as well. I enjoyed all the complexity and maneuvering of the different classes within the Commorragh. Also the idea of hit and run tactics and to kill from afar lends itself to the style I play in many of the other games I have played.

The next thing we did was hit the auction sites and looked for armies that people were getting rid of. Ultimately we found a last generation 4000 point Necron army for him and I piecemealed a combination of new and old figures to challenge him with. Then all we had to do was wait for them all to arrive…

Let the games begin!

Our first game was not a massive affair. The mini rule book says to start our small and I highly recommend that. We agreed to fight just the 20 ork boyz vs. his 10 tactical marines. We would then progress to adding the terminators and the nobz and then vehicles. We figured that we could learn the rules for each of the different parts this way. We also agreed not to worry about points during these games as we still didn’t have the skill to even figure out that part yet. We just went strait from what is in the quick start guide.

The first game was played on our round kitchen table which is 4 feet in diameter. We used our freshly primed figures. The picture below shows the awesome scenery we had (not). This was a good start, we practiced “move, shoot, assault” following along in the quick start guide-which is very good. It lasted about four turns-maybe an hour and a half-primarily looking up rules and reading. Mostly my orks slowly moving across the table as his marines killed them with his rocket launcher. Then I made the mistake of assaulting. His flamer made quick work of my orks.

Not a lot going on, but I highly recommend a newcomer play a few very simmple battles like this to start out.

Ork Newbie Lesson #1: spacing is critical.

Ork Newbie Lesson #2: flamers kill orks-but BBQ ork is good eating.

What we learned was the very basics of the game and more importantly that we enjoyed the game and for the first time in a while spent some quality time together. The boy smiled and said he couldn’t wait to play again.

Over the Christmas holidays we then played two more games on the kitchen table adding the terminators, captain, warboss and Nobz. We decided to wait on the vehicles until we were very comfortable with the infantry. I actually won (barely) the next game, but we then realized that we had missed an important rule…The biggest issue we had was that with the third game we added the Armor Piercing rule and realized that bolters kill orks like a flyswatter does flies. Quick, painful and in large numbers. I quickly learned that between bolters and flamers my orks were ork-burgers. Until we add vehicles, I didn’t have a chance. At this point it was boy 4, dad 1.

Ork Newbie Lesson #3: Terminators have a huge save and ork shooting stinks. Seems obvious but made my orks completely useless.

Ork Newbie Lesson #4: Ork Armor saves are worthless.

Almost done with the back ground. Next we add vehicles, pick armies, start collecting add scenery and get into painting. Then we will be up to date and ready to move forward.

Then we opened the box

So we got the box home and it took about 5 seconds to get it open. Inside we saw two books, some green template looking things, a couple of red sticks, 7 dice and a whole bunch of plastic pieces on sprues.

Not from black reach, but an example of a sprue

So we pulled out the books and closed the rest up. I quickly read the quick start guide and realized I had bitten off a lot more work than I thought. While my son read the full rule book, I started to pull the pieces of their sprue and quickly realized that I needed my first piece of additional equipment-a good pair of plastic cutters. I looked through my woodshop and just couldn’t find anything that met the mark, so I stopped by the game store on my way out to eat that night with the family and picked up an overpriced pair and some superglue. At this point I realized that the financial investment was going to be well beyond the initial 79 dollars we spent. So my first piece of advice is that there if you get into this hobby, you need to consider it just that. A hobby. It is not a game like monopoly, but requires an investment of both time and money. This is not saying to stay away, but go in with your eyes open.

 Next, as my son continued to read the rules, I put together all the pieces of the two armies. On the Space Marine side: a captain, a dreadnaught, 10 tactical marines, and 5 terminators. On the Ork side: a warboss, 20 ork boyz, 5 ork nobz and 3 deffkoptas. Of course, I had no clue what any of these were, but I put them together and glued them to their bases.

The figures assembled and glued to the bases

Now, my son finished the rulebook and I got to reading. I also realized I needed to paint these figures and so I figured I would start priming them while I was reading the rule book. We agreed that we would play our first game the next weekend, which gave us a week to learn how to play while the pieces were being primed (and I had work and he school).

A pile of primed figures

To prime the figures, I took an old cardboard box and turned it on its side in the garage. I set the figures in the box and spray primed them black with the Army Painter black primer. It is more expensive, but for my first run I went with what the store owner recommended. I will try others in the future. I recommend highly against doing any spray painting in a closed garage, however at 30 below, I did not feel like opening the garage. Besides, I am not sure how the figures would react to the cold. I went in very short bursts, on side at a time, sitting the models on their bases, spraying one side and leaving them to dry and the room to air.

*Newbie mistake: When priming, make sure you look at the model from all directions. I found a lot of missed spots, particularly when looking up at the models from underneath.

*Newbie mistake #2: Really look at the model before assembly and priming and decide if an arm or weapon etc is going to get in the way of painting. If it is, consider painting them first and then putting it together.

Not the safest option, but fairly clean and I opened the garage to air it once done

The plan was to start the Christmas holidays with a bang-the orks vs. marines variety. My son picked the marines, leaving me the orks. I had a feeling that it wasn't going to be a merry ork Christmas.

How it all started

So, there we were. A father and son, walking into the only “game” store in Fairbanks, Alaska. We were there to look for a game to play together over the Christmas break. I was hoping for a Dungeon’s and Dragons type of game that I remembered from my childhood. I wanted to share what I remembered as some great fun and imaginative adventures with him. He had a different idea. We walked around the store for over an hour-which is quite a feat in any store here in Fairbanks. Anyway, after a lot of wandering, discussing and choking on the cost of most of the board style games, we walked over to a wall of models.

I had looked briefly and dismissed the games that required building, painting and a lot of work before you play. My son, after dismissing everything else we had discussed, he looked up and said “I have heard of Warhammer, let’s go with that.” He said he wanted to go with the future option, not the fantasy variety. While he loves the Lord of the Rings and fantasy movies, he had no desire for any D&D style game.

The next step was to get a salesman to explain what the heck all of this was. He gave us a quick rundown of it, went over some of the options and then recommended the Assault on Black Reach Set. It looked like a plan to us. It came with two small armies, a mini rule book, some dice and the templates. Everything we needed to test the waters. So we forked out 79 bucks and walked out of the store, ready to read the rules and crush each others armies. (inserted the picture from the games workshop website for the kit-not my picture)

That was about a month ago. We have read books, picked our armies, played some practice games and are hooked.

This blog will chronicle the life and times of a couple of newbies to Warhammer 40k. We will talk the fun, progress, mistakes, pitfalls and details of what it is like to just start out. Maybe others will learn from our mistakes and maybe a few dad’s can take heart that they can connect with their sons through whatever means are available.