Da Ironbullz grand designs have taken a tumble... quite literally!
After our October tournament, I began working towards an ambitious plan to finish building most of my ongoing projects for Da Ironbullz (close to 100 models!) and paint them all in one massive batch.
I was well on my way towards this goal when I broke my ankle the Friday before Thanksgiving, which required surgery to repair.
Suffice to say, the extremely limited mobility due to the injury and post-op recovery has required me to scale back these goals. Over the last few weeks, I've quickly pivoted to focusing on painting the units I had already completed, since painting supplies tend to be more portable than all the bitz and other materials needed for converting and kitbashing.
Thus, I embarked on the winter '21-'22 painting wave earlier than I had anticipated and with fewer models included:
This list totals somewhere around 49 unpainted infantry and two unpainted vehicles included in this winter's painting wave. Plenty ambitious for someone who still can't walk!
Over the last two weeks, I finished cleaning up the remaining models needed for this list. I've shared the final pre-paint photos below for the units I haven't already highlighted on the blog.
As I've outlined before, I have always been drawn to the tough, brutal aspect of Goffs Kulture the most among all Orky Klans.
Specifically, Skarboyz are a unit in Ork lore that I absolutely love. Something about a mob of ultra-tough, no-nonsense veteran Orks is hugely appealing from both a hobbying and gaming standpoint.
I was disappointed when the Skarboyz unit upgrade was left out of the new 9th edition Orks codex, but the emergence of the new Beast Snagga Boyz datasheet gave me an idea: what if I converted a unit of Skarboyz and fielded them as (counts-as) Beast Snagga Boyz? The Beast Snagga Boyz profile fits with Skarboyz—greater strength, and the 6++ save simulates them being tougher than regular boyz—so I felt like Beast Snaggas could be a suitable proxy for Skarboyz in gaming terms.
This lead to another idea: the new Beast Snagga Boyz sculpts are wonderful and dynamic, and in fact are slightly larger than regular boyz and feature many of the scars and battle damage one would want in a unit of Skarboyz! The only problem was their feral Beast Snaggas theme, which is prominently dislayed through their hides, glyphs, bones, and rudimentary weapons. I reasoned if I could get rid of those feral motifs and replace them with more hard-nosed, conventionally Orky bitz and weapons, the Beast Snagga Boyz could be a solid set of base models for a converted unit of Skarboyz.
I began by hacking and scraping off the furs and hides draped all over the beast Snagga Boyz before covering them in Orky armor plates and other combat gear (bullets, stikkbombs, etc.). For most models, I sourced heads from other kits that were generally larger (borderline Nob-sized) and more brutal in appearance. I also replaced most of the distinctive Beast Snagga weapons with more basic, fixed-blade choppas and other blunt weapons. The last step was some greenstuff work to clean up some of the messier areas from the kitbashing process and to sculpt iron caps for their boots to make them look less feral.
As I've already introduced the themes for this unit previously, I won't go into too much detail here exzcept to say that I built these models months ago for our May 2021 tournament but never got around to finishing them up. It's time for them to get some paint!
Like the Bullet Boyz above, I built this unit a while ago but never got around to finishing them. I've already featured the first four fully painted models from this mob back in March, but I haven't given a description of their themes on the blog before.
This unit exemplifies several of the overall hobbying rules I aimed to apply across the entire Ironbullz' army:
For Rotbag and his "Rippaz", who are just above Grots in Da Ironbullz klan hierarchy, this meant limited primary colors and not much armor plating. I also wanted to tie this unit together by selecting roaring, bare heads, modeling each Slugga Boy as if they are charging directly into melee, and giving each model some kind of chain axe or chainsaw as their main choppa.
Here's how they turned out:
This is a kitbash I have wanted to attempt for years! The Scions Taurox kit is simply begging to be looted into an Ork Trukk. That's exactly what I did here.
The Mudhogg is based primarily on the Taurox and Trukk kits, with plenty of bitz thrown in from the Battlewagon kit for detail. Thankfully, the dimensions of the Trukk and Taurox models are fairly well aligned, meaning this kitbash wasn't too hard to engineer. I began by building the cabin of the Taurox and carefully separating it from the bed & crew compartment, which I replaced with the flatbed transport area from the Trukk kit. I also removed the half-tracks from the Taurox and replaced them with the entirety of the frame, chassis, and wheels from the Trukk kit. With the basic structure in place, I added some plasticard armor plates, a Big Shoota turret from the Battlewagon kit, and topped the crew compartment with a burlap canopy as an homage to the Wartrukk unit from the Dawn of War I PC game.
