Ishoo Wun-Oh-Ate: The Pillars of Al Bunrab.

Tis Eastertime across the land - the perfect time to build great monuments to Al Bunrab! Some of you may remember the mighty Major General Tremorden-Rederring's Colonial Wargames Site. It's long gone now, but it was a great font of madness and house rules created by a few fine fellows from Texas who started adding more and more crazy victorian sci-fi elements to their games set in colonial era Africa. One of the key factions in their epic landship battle was Al Bunrab, a tiny arabic nation which had managed to scrape together enough gold to buy an obsolete light british landship chassis and fit it with an effigy of their mighty god - El Arayrah (my spelling is probably off here...) The Great Brass Bunny! Yes - an entire nation lead by a mad sultan who worshipped the rabbit god from Watership Down. I have always loved that image, and was sadly grieved when Al Bunrab was destroyed by a well-aimed penny-farthing mounted steam driven torpedo.
What with Easter, it's quite easy to pop down to the local craft emporium and buy a bag of polystyrene bunnies, so today we shall pay tribute to the fallen by building... The Pillars of Al Bunrab!
(note: I actually did this last year, but for some reason it didn't get posted - I think I missed Easteer or something, so I'm bringing it out now as an Easter Special.)
Let us summon Grot, who has dressed in the ceremonial onsie of the High Priest of El Arayrah for the occasion!

Happy Easter Hippo Fans!
There'll be a Modelling for Hippos update in the next couple of days too - keep a weather eye out for that!

Mad Juzzy The Flutist's Bounty

Okay, so my year just keeps getting orkier...
Yesterday my esteemed flute-riddled opponent rang me up to say he'd decided he was never going to finish painting his orks, that the idea of painting filled him with no joy, and that his time would be better spent in board gaming with his tiny offspring. Not wishing to see his Orkz go to waste, he said he would give them to me. A few hours later, this lot arrived.

It's not all Orkz. His paints are in there too, as well as a small Basilean army for Kings of War and a small collection of Reaper Bones figures painted by his 8 and 4 year old children. I'll give those back - I don't think they were meant to be in there. Also there's some sort of giant Matrix exo-suit action figure.

Anyway, I went through it and found a few things. Three trukks, a bunch of part painted boyz, most of a stompa, his MaxMini Green Alliance ww2 style orks, and a whole 1st edition army.

Yes.

Really.

I didn't even know he had one - I knew he'd found a 1st ed plastic battlewagon somewhere, but I did not know about the rest of it.

I'm still sorting things out, but I have reached a vital conclussion. I no longer have an ork army. I have three.

Regular readers will know Waaagh! Snaggatoof, the army I have been working on since 8th ed came out. Mad Juzzy's modern plastic stuff will be integrated into this army.

Waaagh! Gruntblasta will be made from the 1st ed stuff from Mad Juzzy, bolstered with some of my own second edition stuff.

Still in their individual zip-lock bags, behold Waaagh! Gruntblasta! There are some things in here I always wanted back when I was playing 2nd ed, some things I have never seen before, and some things which are goofy as heck. It's 1st ed. after all...

Meganobz! They used to be sorta tiny... A few things in this army are on square bases - until 3rd ed the only round bases were the 25mm ones, and the 1st ed. rules didn't care about shape so you saw round, square and even hex bases used.

The rather silly looking old buggy (this was still current when I started 2nd ed, but the current plastic kit came out soon after. One day, GW will release a new one...), a Wartrakk (these were out of production when I was playing, so I never knew what they even looked like back in the day) and warbikes, one of which is in parts. All of these are much smaller than their modern counterparts - they would happily fit on a 40mm round base, although the buggy might just need a 50mm.

Ah, the old Snakebite warlord on cyboar. I desperately wanted this model when I was thirteen... The rest of the army is not overtly snakebite, and cyboars have long since dropped out of existance in the rules, so I'll use him as a warlord on bike.

Another thing I had never seen before - these are multipart 1st edition plastic ork boyz. It's funny, but those boring single pose plastics from 2nd ed were a step backwards, and the excitement generated by 3rd ed with it multi-pose plastics must've seemed odd to older players. These guys are all assembled, some are painted, and a lot are missing arms, but there are plenty of spares. IN fact, 2nd ed metal orks used the same arms and weapons, so I have some spare. There are about 30 of these guys.

All up, the box also contained:

• 1st ed. Dreadnaught
• A kannon
• A bag full of snots - I have not counted them.
• 5 grots
• A shokk attack gun
• A painboy
• A weird boy
• 4 orkz with heavy weapons - lootas or flashgits in modern terms
• 5 Blood bowl gobbos

I ran this through Battlescribe, and got about 1000 points. I will be bolstering this with some of my own stuff from back in the day.

Stormboyz! Ah, the old dayz when Stormboyz were young Orkz who rebelled against Orky norms by becoming very disciplined and polite. And wearing jetpacks,

Bloodaxe Commandoes - Orkz understood the letter 'c' in 2nd ed. My army was a Bloodaxe army, so I also had some blood axed characters like the chap on the left. He was not my general - I think I sold him.

This is my conversion for Kaptain Badrukk. It's a freebooter figure which has had a scratch built power klaw added among other things. 

Mad Juzzy backed the MaxMini Green Alliance kickstarter, and as a result eventually recieved a box full of interesting resin from Poland. These are ww2 US army style orkz, and very cool, but they do not fit the look of my Waaagh! Snaggatoof, so I've decided the logical thing is to paint them up in their own style and make a Bloodaxe army. I will not be painting them in US army olive drab. Bloodaxes know about camoflage, and they understand the shapes used, but they don't get why the stoopid oomies use boring colours. I'm currently thinking of going heavily into blue or purple. I'll have to think about it - I'm not intending to paint these guys for a while.

The contents of the box.

This is a Meganob I think - I wasn't paying too much attention to the kickstarter. Anyway, he'll give you an idea of the quality of these pieces, which is excellent. Everything else is in numerous pieces and I can't really be bothered to blutac anything together. Go check out MaxMini's website.

This is the big thing in the collection - an awesome Vaught F4U Corsair style dakka jet.

 Well, that lot should keep me busy for some time to come. I will also be molding and casting some of my scratch built war trakks soon, along with some bits for making more grot tanks.
And running NAZORK at Coal Creek on Easter Sunday and again at Little Wars.
Anyway, I'm all excited about painting Waaagh! Gruntblasta, so I must away!
So long hippo fans!

MFH Ishoo Twenty-For: War Trakk

The normally quiet seaside town of Monte Carlork echoes to the thunderous raw of nitro-chewin' smoke-belchin' tyre-shreddin' squig-injectin' engines and the extremely amusing squeaky squeels of any grots who get in the way. NAZORK (Nazgrub's Awesomely Zoomy Ork Racing Kars) is in town for the Monte Carlork Grandish Prix - the highlight of any Ork's calendar. Lap after lap of pulse-pounding excitement, erratic driving, wildly-aimed gunfire and, most importantly, spectacular firey crashes! So grab your oiler squig, strap into 2000 squig-power of death on wheels with a slim chance of there being a steering wheel attached somewhere, put the pedal to the metal and race for the ultimate glory of Gork or possibly Mork in the ultimate test of orkyness!

Last week I decided to run NAZORK at Little Wars 2018. A quick inventory of my collection indicated precisely three buggies and four Grot Tanks, meaning I need a few more vehicles to really run a participation 40K Ork racing game. So I figured I would build some War Trakks. And since the other thing I did on Saturday was buy casting materials (and a hot knife - more on that in future) I decided to build a set of masters which could then be cast to make a bunch of customisable War Trakks, the track units of which will also be used on Grot Tanks. 

In this ishoo, we'll have a look at building the a War Trakk. Some time soon we'll look at the moulds, cast up some duplicates, and look at making some custom War Trakks.

How easy is all this? Perchance a wandering Grot will explain?

And there you are! It's just blu-taced together at the moment, waiting to be cast. I need to do a few things, like plug all the gaps so the silicone doesn't get inside it when I pour the mold, as well as plug up the various tubes part way down.
This is actually the third and final War Trakk - I have two other bodies, two other track units, another set of wheels, some alternate gun barrels and a rokkit turret. I'm planning to build a few other turret variants and some larger wheels. Some time this week there'll be a video update showing the components and some variations on layout etc. I might also upload the NAZORK rules, although they need a bit of fiddling yet.
Until next time, hippo fans!