+ inload: Great Gargant musings and Deathskulls in Battle for Armageddon +

+ Great Gargant WIPs +

+ The playtesting for Bloodsong ticks along, and what excuse is really needed to paint up tiny Titans? In this case, it's an Ork Great Gargant that's had a little work done. +

Progress is minimal – this is behind my squat Kill Team in the painting queue – but since it's looking like the Legions Imperialis game planned for a few weeks time might be derailed, I thought I'd slap a little bit of paint on this Great Gargant, which has sat with uncharacteristic patience since Lucifer216 gave it to me.

The scheme's a bit of an experiment. A brown undercoat was followed up by directional spraying of dark green, khaki and finally off-white (GW's Wraithbone) to create a slightly spotty, textural feel like the cast iron of WWII tanks.

I've then gone in with some exploratory washes on the head, and picked out a few details with various blacks and browns. My taste for orks is to make them look a bit patchwork, so I've jumped from place to place. The plan is essentially to work gradually down the Gargant and then back up, getting things loosely in place on the first way down, and then tightening and refining things on the way up.

Back in the dim and distant days of 014.M3, I spooled out an inload on painting faces [+noosphericinloadlink embedded+], and since then I've often found myself working up the focal area of a model to give me the enthusiasm and 'oomph' to carry on.

Nowhere do I find this principle more useful than painting Titans and similar giant war engines like this Great Gargant. I find the wealth of structures and textures and odd bits and bobs across such a big model can feel intimidating – but giving the piece some character really helps to inspire the rest. Here, I went for a lop-sided approach to the eyes, having fun painting a swirly green eye alongside a simple orange one. 

I'm tempted to try developing the orange eye a bit further and building up a reflection of Armageddon's burning hives as I did on the Salamanders' Thunderhawk below:

I do like the retro sci-fi look of clean bulbous round glass, but I shall have a think while I work down and back up the War Engine.

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+ What clan? +

Indecision on this is a big part of why I've prevaricated on painting the thing, and the colour scheme is still very up in the air. For the moment, I'm content to keep it 'battle green', as that's a suitably generic colour for all orks, and reminds me of the Gargants from a battle report in White Dwarf 136 – one of the earliest issues I read, and formative in how I picture ork armies.

Killboss, pictured above, is a Smasher Great Gargant with a head turret. Commanded by none other than Warlord Burzuruk himself, it's a Goff Gargant – but not the all-black we'd probably expect today.

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+ Talking of Orks +

Back to Armageddon Prime [+noosphericinloadlink embedded+]: I've drawn the tokens up to match the originals as closely as possible, so they're all planned to be 25mm/1in square.

Ghazghkull's sent two forces into Armageddon Prime – the Blood Axes and Snakebites, while he led the Goffs, Evil Suns and Bad Moons through the jungle into Secundus. The Chaos Attack expansion had a  number of 'what if?' scenarios, one of gave you the option of swapping out the tribes. Supplied with that expansion were 18 Snakebite units and 18 Blood Axe units.  The service I'm planning to use can do sheets of 42 counters, which brings up a nice opportunity to include some Death Skulls.

While it's not quite enough to fit all three on one sheet, I thought it'd be fun to work up the idea:

Still WIP, but it finally brings the Deathskulls into the party. Conspicuously absent from the original – likely because what makes their faction identity special didn't really lend itself easily to this scale of warfare – I tried to iterate from what was there. I therefore started with the seemingly standard five ork hordes of two different qualities; two Nobz, three gretchin and one Madobyz token.

To that I added a fourth Gretchin stand (in the Epic ork army list from White Dwarf 128, it notes that the Deathskull's penchant for looting attracts lots of mischievous gretchin), and then added a couple of tokens that appear in more than one of the other clans: Battlewagons and Bike boyz.

The others are innovations that are intended to evoke what's special about the Deathskulls. The Looted Tanks were a halfway house between the 'oomie vehicles of the Blood Axes and the Battlewagons of the other orks in terms of stats; while the three Lootaz counters use a mechanic from the daemons in Chaos Attack (rolling to determine their Attack and Defence values at random) to represent their rather temperamental/random reliability.

You'll note that the Deathskulls, like the Blood Axes and Snakebites, don't have Gargants. That was partially for symmetry with the other expansion forces, and also the lootas have plenty of potential to punch above their weight. Generally, they'll be around as effective as the Snakebites' squiggoths, and I didn't want to also give them a reliable heavy-hitter.

I'd love to hear your thoughts on the Deathskulls – and if you get a chance to playtest them (or Gargants for Bloodsong!), please do let me know the fallout.

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