Welcome to the third month of the 40k 2nd Edition Challenge Mark V! Check out the Wave 1 entrants!

The Mek had been working away in his workshop for the last couple of nights, long after the rest of the settlement had slightly quietened down from the usual chaos of the days. Vorrgash Starshokk had asked around as to what was happening in there, but had just been greeted with the standard response of “Jus’ crazy Mek stuff” 

Early one morning, the sound of a starting engine louder than most pierced the camp and a strange new vehicle rolled out of the Mek’s workshop and into the midst of a growing crowd of interested Orks. “So wot dis do?” shouted Vorrgash above the engine noise and muttering of the other interested Orks. Gaznatz Godblasta peeled his goggles from his eyes and blinked into the early morning sun, before locating Vorrgash in the crowd and replying “It’s bril’ant! It fires invisible force fields at da enemy tanks, trappin’ their weapons an’ makin’ ’em blow themselves up! I’m a geniuz!”

“Oi, genius, ‘ow d’ya know if ya ‘it ’em if da force fields are invisible?” replied Vorrgash still somewhat sceptical. “Well… I don’t, but dat’s why I’ve built da two chukkas together – can’t miss wiv dose odds, roight? …Or mebbe I’ll just miss twice as many times” a brief flash of concern crossed the Meks face, before it lit up again “But dey don’t know I’ve missed either – so dey’ll be worried eivver way, an’ dat’s ‘alf da battle, roight?” and before Vorrgash could reply, Gaznatz sunk back into his seat, revved the engine and tore away from the watching Orks at high speed. “But if da force fields are invisible… ‘ow do dey even know ya shot ‘em?” Vorrgash was left wondering more to himself than anyone else. 

Month three and I’m getting stuck into one of my two full vehicle slices for the challenge. This time around its some Evil Sunz Speed Freaks with a mix of their vehicles. Ive had the Scorcha and Wartrack kicking around for many (many) years and while my original cereal box and smartie tube Gobsmasha hasn’t survived the ravages of time, I was very happy to be able to pick up this version of the speeding battle cannon and add it to my collection! 

I was also able to get a Mekboy Bubble Chukka Speedsta from the same seller on eBay and got that painted up as a bonus model this month. The rules for this date back to the Rogue Trader weapon platform and Epic Ork vehicle – another crazy innovation from the Orks where the stream of invisible force field bubbles swamp enemy vehicles, potentially causing them to shoot themselves whenever they next fire! It was costed as the same as the Squig Catapult or Pulsa Rocket in RT – so I’ve split the difference  of those weapons in 2nd edition 40k and called each of the pair 45 points. As they will be linked, following the DM vehicle weapon rules that gives me a cost of 90 points for the Bubble Chukka’s – now I just needed the cost for the Speedsta.  Here, I considered the various existing Ork Vehicles and settled on the Trukk as being slightly more resilient than the bike based options, but still a relatively lightly armoured vehicle as its a Speedsta. Taking out the cost of the heavy bolter and adding the twin linked Bubble Chukkas gave me a final cost of 115 points for this Speedsta.  I could look to amend it slightly, with the removal of the transport option to add slightly more armour and/or speed but that  would really need some play testing to get it to the sweet spot.

Evil Sunz Gobsmasha  110 points 

Evil Sunz Scorcher  50 points 

Evil Sunz Wartrak with Lascannon 60 points

Bonus 

Evil Sunz Mekboy Bubble Chukka Speedsta  115 points 

Total points for the month  335 points 

Total models  4 models     

Anyone with any thoughts or advice about the costing of Ork vehicles – feel free to contact me @ad80_herohammer, or just head over if you fancy following along with my various Oldhammer projects!  

Wachtmeister: Alex really went all in on “red onez go fasta” this month!  I love these giant speedsters and how Alex really went all in on the bright red.  I can’t wait to see his next all vehicle month!

Hi Wow, month three already.  My genestealer cult shelf is starting to fill up.

So for month 3 I decided to break the trend and actually paint the correct chunk.

Chunk three – all macrocosm brood bretheren.

10 brood bros 60, 10 bolt pistols, power axe 27

10 brood bros 60, 8 lasguns, missile launcher, flamer 70

217

I decided to stick the flamer with the assault squad – seems to fit better with them.  

About a month ago I was buying a kickstarter that ended up being cast by the same people that make these figures – so I ordered a pair of extra figures – hence my very minor bonus for this month is a missile launcher which I’m putting with the first squad that I did in Feb.  I still have a half finished second limosine which will be finished before the end.  

Really enjoyed painting these.  They fit the cult feel so very well.  Next chunk I’ll have to break out the actual genestealers – unless I skip to chunk 5.  

Until next time!  Pic with the first squad.

Wachtmeister: This army is really shaping up well.  That is quite the blob of brood brothers, having done guard in three challenges I appreciate the slog Adrian is going through.  I can’t wait to see the limousine!

Finished very early this month even if I kind of struggled with the old Dreadnought. Maybe it’s because the waterslide transfers were 30 years old, but I really had a hard time applying them. One of them even disintegrated, and others look noticeably faded or wouldn’t align correctly. I also decided to give the guy a banner, which looks pretty silly with my terrible freehand border and scuffed decal.

Even though there’s lots of room for improvement, I’m overall pretty happy with the final result. The bright glossy colors pop and match the rest of the army, and it looks good on the table. Next month will be a bit more straightforward, and I’m throwing the rest of the Eldar transfers in the trash. See you all then!

Dreadnought with Missile Launcher – 205 points – 1 model

Wachtmeister: Craftworld Iyanden is really getting some heavy support this challenge, Niklas adding a Dreadnaught to the two Hans has already done!  Hans better hope Niklas doesn’t come after him as Niklas’ has added the D-Cannon to his.  I really like Niklas take, the colors are vibrant and I love the Yin Yang decal on the head!

Greetings fellow fungus enthusiasts! How’s the runt farm coming along? Stinking and violent? Excellent! Let’s see what has been happening with da boyz this month 😀

This time I have to say, I struggled with what I had chosen to complete. I mean, I LOVE Snakebites, but they do tend to have a lot going on when it comes to the sculpts and finding the right colour combos for everything was a bit arduous. Combining all that with some seriously battered details on a couple of the sculpts means I will be finishing three more of these next month as I was too frustrated to get them done. The rest of my bonus entries were definitely from the power of procrastination: Twenty-five snotlings over five bases for my (already previously painted) Shokk Attack Gun and three mega-armoured Bad Moon Nobz. Also you will see that the Mad Dok Cowabunga has finally been completed here as well, who is a tribute to our good friend who started this challenge. Power to you Doc!

The good news is that I have the next month planned ahead pretty well as far as models are concerned. The bad news is that I am going to get distracted by something shiny (as all good orks should be) XD Till next month!

Slice 3:

9 Snakebite boyz with bolters and one with a heavy plasma gun (103pts)

Mekboy (18pts)

Mad Dok Kowabunga (18pts)

Bonus models:

3 Nobs in Mega Armour. 2 plasma guns, one bolter and 2 power fists (153pts)

5 snotling bases (25pts)

Total: 317

Wachtmeister: I’m glad Martin pushed through.  We all have rough months but sometimes changing tack helps get through the project.  I look forward to him finishing off his remaining Snakebites, they just look so cool with the back banners.  I really feel I’ve been slacking by not having more banners, especially on my Space Marine units.  And guard tanks, And, and, and….

Installment 3… The Chaos Dreadnought! I knew this would be a hard one to complete in the given time, but in my usual distractable way I started the month by painting an old 1^st edition Space Hulk Librarian to count as a Sorcerer. Hopefully the paint scheme made him a bit more sinister. The axe was meant to be a glowing green in the style of those yellow-red hot steel effect. But didn’t really work….

So back to what I had planned the Dreadnought. This model is covered in detail compared to it’s imperial cousins, which have big flat panels where you block in your colour add a few transfers and you’re done! But the chaos version is full of trim and only small areas of flat panels. So I ended up chopping the biggest DA winged sword I could and somehow squeezed it on the front panel and somehow didn’t mess it up! 

Colour wise, I had to stick to black and silver, with red and green accent colours. Creamy bone white transfers (not sure if that is how they were or if that’s the age of them!), a few checkers and that was almost it. The left shin panel I tried to give a bit of a Knightly coat of arms looks. It’s actually got a wolf on it…

Points wise I’m ahead a fair amount already when including the sorcerer

Dreadnought (135), Twinlinked Autocannon (35), Power Claw (15), Frag Grenades (5) – 190

Chaos Sorcerer (52) Terminator Armour With Power Axe (42) and Twin bolter combi weapon (6) – 100

Next month. I should be sorting out the hobby stuff for a possible house move… So either the 3 terminators or Mulligans!

Wachtmeister: I love these two miniatures.  The Dark Angel symbol split between the panels on the Dreadnaught is particularly eye catching.  I really like the use of the Space Hulk librarian model.  Using earlier edition models helps Vectis with his theme of the Fallen Angels having earlier equipment. 

Hello All,

This month’s entry is a mighty Captian in terminator armour….

This model is one of my all time favourites and was great bringing him back to like !!  His even made me want to play a game which I haven’t done properly in a long time. 

Looking forward to seeing everyone else’s entry’s and the stuff that’s gone into the chats is amazing .

Please check out my instagram EBP minis.

Wachtmeister: This is such a terrific model, he definitely looks like a Flesh Tearers Captain.  The blond hair works really well on the figure, drawing the viewers eyes to his stern looking face.  Those of us in the chat have named him Captain Georgthough due to a spelling error, but I think it really fits him!

PygmyHippo – Month 03

You say you want aliens driving 1970s-style dune buggies? Check. And you want five of them? No problem. Sporting heavy weapons? Done and done. With 2nd edition Orks, anything goes.

This month I completed a big batch of models. My intention was to complete 5 Ork war buggies, which I did, and I had enough enthusiasm left over to add a special character plus a mob of foot troops.

Like all metal Ork vehicles of the Rogue Trader era, the war buggies required a bit of adjustment to put together, though I feel they were slightly easier to assemble than the war bikes from the first month. I think this was partly because they have four wheels and are more stable during puttying and gluing, and partly because there’s a little more room to maneuver a brush around the nooks and crannies. I mounted them on 50x75mm bases for stability, and to match the style of the other fast attack vehicles in the army. I painted them up in the same Orky automotive red I’ve used elsewhere. I really love the design of these buggies: the little smiley grill, the reckless pose of the driver, the garage-built-death-machine feel of a ’70s dune buggy. They’re great looking models.

I finished the buggies quickly enough that I had time to paint up my first ever 40k special character: Zodgrod Wortsnagga, Snakebite Runtherd extraordinaire. I realized that I didn’t have a runtherd in my army, and Zodgrod would fill that role. Unlike most of my Orks, I did my best to paint him up like his depiction in the Ork codex. I avoid matching a paintjob to a codex example since I’d be comparing my version to one painted by the ‘Eavy Metal team (which would be depressing). In this case, however, I’m happy with the result. And what’s the point of having Zodgrod without his free upgraded “Super Runts”? So I absolutely had to paint a max-size mob of 40 super-Gretchin. They were a real grind by the end. And I literally finished them on the last day, hours before the deadline. I’m never going to batch-paint 40 figures again. But I’m glad I did.

Models and Points:

Ork War Buggies (5) – 295

Zodgrod Wortsnagga – 65

Zodgrod’s Super Gretchin (40) – 200

Totals:

46 models

560 points

More photos of my miniatures can be found on Instagram @pygmyhippo and on my blog https://giantpygmy.com

Wachtmeister: Once again PygmyHippo is on a total tear.  Batch painting 40 gretchin would break most painters but assembling and painting five metal bikes and a named character on top of it is just nuts!  I love his take on Zodgrod so much I had to include the close up.  Go check out PygmyHippo’s blog, you won’t be disappointed!

Another great Wave 1, see you soon for Wave 2!

-Wachtmeister