Da Green Horde

During my recent painting sessions I also found time to paint a conversion that I built a while ago, inspired by the classic (and very rare) Squig Racers as well as the kitbashes from Squig Wrangling . The grot is an old Gorkamorka sculpt and was part of the amazing Rebel Grot faction, a group of grots that started an uprising againts their ork oppressors (for those that are interested, the name of the miniature is Big Lugga Grot Crank Crew 1 ). The squig was once attached to the arm of an ork warboss, the old metal version of the Ork Warboss with Attack Squig to be precise. The cart was made by combining a piece of a chopstick with two old Citadel shields (looted from some dwarf rangers). This is also my second and final entry for IRO 's Orktober challenge. Together with Nazgrub and friends , this leads to a total of 5 points. Nothing compared to IRO and Wudugast , who painted an astonishing amount of minis this month. Be sure to check out Dave Stone's orks as well, he als...

  After a short hobby break I'm back with a few greenskins just in time for Orktober . I'm still planning to complete the #mortalcitizens challenge for this year, so here's my entry for August (even though it's already October). The theme for August was Smith/Industry/Chemist/Alchemist and as I already painted a Smith in March, I decided to go in a different direction. Nazgrub wanders around the realms, always on the search for realmstones. He sells Bones of Amber to Wurrgog Prophets and Chamonite to orruk smiths, who feed it to their Gruntas to create pig-iron with special properties. He's always accompanied (more or less voluntarily) by Pik the snotling and Pak the grot. While Pik's job is to crawl into crevices that are too small for Nazgrub, Pak has the "honour" of carrying the stones they found. The orruk is actually a special character from Gorkamorka known as Nazgrub Wurrzag, Scrap Prospector . It's another one of those models tha...

 July's theme of #mortalcitizens was Farmer/Agriculture/Animal Husbandry . Runtgrod is responsible for handling the snotlings and squigs of his tribe. He is proud of his critters and enjoys training them, even though he already lost an eye in the process. For this conversion I used three kits:  The body and the arm with squig belong to the Runtherd from the 40k Ork Gretchin kit.  The arm with the whip is from the WHFB Orc Boar Chariot. The head is from an Ironjawz Gore-Grunta.    

Bolgof da Lightnin' Lad claims to be a real Stormcast sent by "Sigmork 'imself". In reality he got his gear by annihilating an Annihilator. A few months ago I got the AoS Dominion box for cheap and thought it would be a fun project to convert an ogor into a Stormcast Eternal or rather an ogor Maneater (mercenary) who got hired by the warriors of Sigmar at some point. The base of the conversion is a standard ogor body, the helmet is from the Mournfang Rider kit and the hammer and shield are from a Stormcast Annihilator. Bolgof's gutplate was originally a Vindictor shield.

June's theme of #mortalcitizens is Scholar/Librarian/Historian , which is a bit of a difficult subject for greenskins. Orruks and grots normally don't really care about science and knowledge in general. They do however have have a simple written language based on glyphs as well as something similar to cuneiform script according to old Ork codices. The members of greenskin society that are most similar to scholars of other civilizations are their shamans. So I decided to paint up an orruk shaman, who funnily enough also has a snotling assistant carrying a tome. Gultuff has been the shaman of his tribe for a long time and is becoming more and more forgetful. Fortunately his unusually intelligent snotling assistant Scribble keeps track of all recipes in his tome. The model I used is an Orc Ancient Shaman from Knightmare Miniatures, which I acquired in one of their recent Kickstarter campaigns. I really like the miniature, there are a lot of small things to discover. Fun fact: ...

Here's my entry for May's #mortalcitizens challenge, took me a bit longer than expected to finish this miniature. The theme for this month is Explorer and I think I found a very fitting model in my collection. Skarkrak is an orruk explorer who's always on the move, delving into the ruins and caves of the mortal realms to find "shiny fings".     The model in question is an "Orc Raider with Torch", which was a Mail Order exclusive miniature released nearly 15 years ago. This description is from the 2009 Citadel Available to Order catalogue: When Orcs aren’t fighting the enemy, they’re usually fighting each other. When they’re not fighting at all, they’re probably making off with the enemy’s loot or ransacking their villages. This metal model is another classic from the talented hands of Seb Perbet.

The theme for April's #mortalcitizens challenge is Trader/Merchant , and I decided it's the perfect opportunity for painting a model I ordered 15+ years ago from the Mail Order. The miniature in question is a Gretchin with Oil Squig from 2nd edition Warhammer 40k, which was sculpted in 1994. Ripoff is a grot squig trader, who wanders from greenskin village to village and sells various squiggly beasts including oil squigs, hair squigs and gob squigs. Other orruks and grots accuse him of charging too much teef for his squigs, hence he became known as Ripoff.  

My entry for March's #mortalcitizens (Quartermaster/Logistics) as well as my last entry for Swordmaster's #MonsterMarch6 challenge is an Orruk Brute that has been converted to a smith. Gofbash is a skillful smith, whose job it is to forge weapons and armor for his fellow orruks. He's using his fists to shape the hot metal as it's the tradition of the Ironjawz. The base model is an Orruk Brute, the arms are from the Ork Nobz kit and the anvil is made from greenstuff. For painting the hot metal I followed this tutorial and I'm quite happy with the result. The inspiration for this conversion came from the Battletome: Ironjawz, where it is mentioned that Ironjawz are able to shape metal with their bare hands.

My next entry for Swordmaster's #MonsterMarch6 challenge is a conversion based on the Incredible Hulk miniature from Marvel Crisis Protocol. The model represents Megaboss Gorgrim Bloodjaw, the leader of my Destruction army.  I started with a simple head swap (taken from a Black Reach Nob), gave him a club from the Ironguts kit and then added different pieces of armor. One of his shoulder pads is actually the backplate of an Ironjaw Brute, the other one is an Ogor gutplate. On his back he wears a large Kruleboy Skareshield taken from the Killaboss on Gnashtoof kit. I tried to incorporate bits from different armies of Destruction to emphasize him being the boss of all my orruks, ogors and grots.  His elbow pads were originally orc and Blood Bowl ogre shoulder pads, while the armor on his club-swinging hand is an Ardboy shield. Surprisingly all those bits fit the Hulk model really well, there wasn't a lot of trimming necessary. Even the fleeing peasant (aka Johann Strehn) had th...

 My first entry for Swordmaster's #MonsterMarch6 painting challenge is a warbeast for my boglars (swamp goblins). The model was originally a toy tortoise that I converted by sculpting a bigger jaw out of greenstuff and buidling a howdah using chopsticks. I actually built it around Christmas 2019 if I remember correctly, but didn't finish painting it. As the theme of the challenge is based around monstrous models, I decided now's the perfect time to complete the project. The project was heavily influenced by Thantsants' War Tortoise , who also used a turtle as a mount for his swamp goblins. I tried to paint the model similar to the World of Warcraft Steeljaw Snapper , which was the pet of my orc hunter ages ago. Lorewise, I see it as some kind of tortoise-squig, which was tamed by the Boglars and named Dursquiggo . I tried to give the base a swampy look by adding some swamp tufts by Army Painter, lichen from my garden and Agrax Earthshade Gloss.  The bits on the howdah ...