Thursday 15 September 2011

From The Chopping Board - Cheap Ork Shoota Boyz!

They're cheap 6 point models, you probably want about 90 of them. You go to the shop. Can I have 90 Ork boys please? Sure, that's £162 please.

Suddenly not so cheap.

Black Reach provides Slugga Boys for us all but what about the Shoota Boys? They need love too!

Here's how you can cheaply, easily and effectively do Ork boys with Shootas for half that price.
You will need:
The Internet, plastic glue, razor/jewel/fine  saw,
hobby knife, file/sandpaper

Step One - The Internet (Shopping)
The standard blogger setup
We all know that we can get Black Reach Ork boys for not much money. A little patience and a good search on eBay will bag you some of these for £2-£3. Bits sites like bits&kits do them for about £5 if you're impatient but eBay will be cheaper, especially when you buy 90 of them.

Your standard Black Reach boys.
Next go searching for Shoota arms. These again are cheaper on eBay, about £2-3 for 10 seems average or about 50p each (£5 for 10) on the bits sites. 

Shopping done. You now have the parts for 10 shoota boys for as little as £5. That's going to be £45 for the 90 of them, saving you almost £120!!

Step Two - The Docs Klinic 



Get your saw of choice. I used a junior hack saw but thinner bladed ones are available and would be more accurate. Use a surface that IS NOT YOUR/YOUR WIVES/YOUR MUMS KITCHEN. An old bit of wood, old chopping board...anything that doesn't matter when you saw a groove out of it. 

Discard the separate arm piece. Now chop the attached arm off all your boys (carefully). Simple. Take your time though, a saw does a lot of damage if you go a little too far.


 It's worth noting that two of the Black Reach bodies have a shoulder pad over the right arm. There's two choices with this - either cut straight through and trim it down to be rough and Orky or, as I did in the picture below, use a couple of angled cuts and leave it in place then hollow it out. If you do hollow it out it's hard to get the arm in perfectly but a little green stuff will hide any gap left behind.

You can see where I've started to cut
space or the arm to fit beneath the pad

Snip off the locating peg from the 'empty' shoulder so you're left with the legs and torso with flat sides. Give them a sand or a file to smooth them off then select your shoota arms of choice (make sure they're a matching pair) and attach!
Note gaps at the shoulders. These are both the
above mentioned shoulder pad bodies. 
Step Three - Finishing Up

On the back of the Black Reach Ork heads there's a small locating peg. Snip that off, add a little plastic cement to the neck and add the head on. With the Shoota in the way there's not room for the head in it's intended location, it needs too be 1mm-2mm higher so losing the peg frees up that option.

Finally glue the Ork to his base and you're good to go!

Spot the difference: right - black reach conversion
left - standard Ork boy
Step Four - Optional Touches

Everyone likes drilled out gun barrels. It's up too you if you want to do it 90 times. I will be on all my guys, either a 2mm or 3mm drill bit for a nice chunky calibre. Also base them before you spray the undercoat - I've learned that the hard way before. 
Nice new Black Reach shoota boys! A few standard
shoota boys mixed in to show hw thy all match up
Next to each other you can't tell the difference, size and shape are pretty much identical and, of course, they all have the same style guns. 

I hope this was useful to all you budding Warlords and Big Meks out there!
blog comments powered by Disqus
Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...