Orkoid Dreadfuls in Detail for Mr. Papafakis

symphonicpoet

Moderator
I recently posted some terrain and an AAR on my blog. Included in the art with little fanfare were two converted dreadnaughts from several years back. The pair have been mentioned here and elsewhere several times in the past, but I've not given them the special attention that they perhaps deserve. At the very least I haven't described them in terribly much detail, which is what I will attempt to do here, per Papafakis's rather firm request. Without further ado, I give you the two more scavenged of The Delightful Dreadlies.

These two dreadnaughts owe their existence to a happy coincidence. The GW book Freebooterz, my own copy of which seems to have taken an undocumented leave of absence, made mention of a piratical unit called a "dreadmob." In this particular case a rogue orc physician (Doc Hobble) teams up with an outcast mechanic (Mr. Burn). The two of them together have a special skill for pairing up battlefield debris with ambiguously willing grots to create tenuously functional and possibly dangerous mecha. A dreadmob was comprised of the above two orc/ks and any number of dreadnaughts you could lay hands on. Being fond of topheavy army lists (I did, after all, start out with marines) I HAD to have one. But dreadnaughts are so expensive on a college budget, thus the second part of the happy coincidence . . . a box of orcs with some piracy in the bottom. When I started buying into the whole art of being green I'd long ago decided second hand was the way to go. A dollar each for plastic miniatures was FAR too much money when used could be had for a fraction of the price. (Ah, happy days. A dollar a figure? From Citadel? New?) Thus a deal was done out of the back of some disreputable looking car that left me the proud owner of orcs priced by the pound, more or less. In the bottom of this half examined box were some very questionable imperial miniatures. They were horribly miscast blobs pockmarked from trapped air pockets and sporting molding fins large enough to do a '54 Ford Fairlane proud. In short, they just weren't up to imperial standard. But their material deficiencies wouldn't bother orcs any and I'm not one to waste good material. Or even bad material. There was a certain poetry to making these evergreen bad boys into pirate dreadnaughts.

The first convert made use of the blasted remains of an Ultramarines machine. This one is both conceptually easier and technically more difficult. Suffice it to say it came first. The pilot is the standard grot of the era from a bone-fide orc miniature. The right weapon is an epic chaos conversion beamer of forgotten origin. Apart from carving the face off the original miniature and performing an arm swap and an exhaust pipe removal this was mostly just a fill in the gaps and paint 'er up job.

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Dreadly two was easier to execute but required more creativity. First, it involved sawing the dreadnaight torso in half. Second, I flipped it around and used it backwards, crudley cutting a square hole through the engine and completely filing down the original face. The pilot in this case is a standard orc head. (From the days when orcs did not themselves stoop to piloting such devices.) By hacking off hair and ears the head was made to seem smaller and fit inside the new vent. The new rear (former face) was covered up with a spare hatch from another standard orc dreadnaught. Leftover parts from a Honda motorcycle provided a shoulder. Another chaos weapon gave me an exhaust stack. Half a keyfob became the right gun. An epic titan power fist became the left arm. Battletech mech legs gave him locomotion. And voila, a former Blood Angels dreadnaught donated its existence to the orcoid cause. (Well, generic imperial, really. I supplied the chapters. Conveniently, they were chapters that friends and rivals once played. Note: no Space Wolves or Crimson Dragons were harmed in the execution of this piratical conversion . . . because I played those.)

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So hopefully that answers your questions Mr. Papafakis. I am honored that such august modelers might deign to ask.
 
Yeah!!!! Kitbashing at its finest :grin:

Thanks for going to the effort of describing these builds. Love them even more now that I know their backstory too.

Super :grin: :mrgreen:
 

symphonicpoet

Moderator
Daddyorchips and Orjetax,

Thank you both. I had fun with them. It's endlessly amazing what bits and bobs work for ork equipment.
 
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