This past week brought some good, some bad, and some ugly for Da Ironbullz. Let's cover the ugly and bad first.
As I had hoped in my last post, I finally finished painting my January wave of Orks for our 2021 Hobbying Sprint. Overall, I was happy with how they turned out, especially given that I batch-painted them all in one shot.
But while the models themselves weren't ugly, the varnishing step was. I discovered the hard way that my six-year-old Liquitex Matte Varnish had apparently expired since painting Da Ironbullz' Nob with Waaagh Banner last year and was no longer leaving the models with a matte finish. The same was not true with my gloss varnish, which I always apply as a first coat when varnishing models, so this process left my painstakingly painted orks looking glossy and wet even after two coats of matte varnish!
Suffice to say, no pictures are needed of these until I get my varnish straightened out, which brings me to...
After doing some research online, it looks like the average shelf life for Liquitex Varnish is about 5-7 years, so it stands to reason that I was due for new bottles of varnish anyway.
I ordered a couple new bottles from Amazon, but to my chagrin they won't arrive in time for me to finish varnishing the January wave Orks before I head out of town for the weekend and next week.
After two months of hard work, I was eager to see the final finished product of this new wave of reinforcements for Da Ironbullz. But alas, it seems like I won't be able to introduce them on this blog until the week of March 15th, as I'm away through the weekend of the 13th and don't anticipate making much progress on hobbying in the meantime.
Despite the varnish troubles, not all was lost!
Instead of spending time varnishing & photographing my January build wave, I continued working on "Armor Month", which meant kitbashing the first of the vehicles I have planned for Da Ironbullz.
In the most recent version of the 750 point Ork list I'm planning on taking to our round-robin tournament in May, I've opted to give my Warboss and his Nobz some added protection and mobility in the form of a beefy Big Trakk transport.
While the Forgeworld Big Trakk model is a great sculpt, I couldn't pass up this opportunity to get creative with some major kitbashing!
For those unfamiliar with the Ork army list, Big Trakks fill a strategic niche between a cheap Trukk transport and a heavy Battlewagon tank, and can be taken in one of three configurations:
In the era of blast-weapon dominance in 9th edition, the Supa-Kannon is simply vicious: a Heavy 2D6 Blast weapon with 60" range, S8, AP-2, and 3 damage. Talk about evaporating large units of pesky Primaris Marines!
While I planned to use my Big Trakk mostly as a transport, I also wanted to keep my options open if I wanted to field it as a fire support tank in a larger future list.
This decision guided the basis for this kitbash, which ended up fusing the front half (cabin & engine) of the Ork Trukk kit with the (modified) back half of the Imperial Guard Basilisk kit.
These two vehicles were surprisingly straightforward to kitbash, because their dimensions (specifically their widths) were nearly a perfect match. It was easy enough to remove the crew compartment from the Basilisk and fuse the large flatbed to the front half of the Trukk model.
To keep the equipment options flexible, I magnetized two points in the Basilisk flatbed and built two different attachments: one as a sawed-off Basilisk Earthshaker Cannon (which is still a work-in-progress) and the other depicting a transport bay where embarked Orks could cram onto the vehicle.
I'm not quite finished with this build yet, but here's where it stood as of last night:
