This will serve as a sort of bookend to the mass of progress I've been making on my backlog in the first part of 2022. I had planned to keep on chipping away at it across the entire year, but various Adepticon announcements mean that my hobby plans may well be veering wildly off into the weeds very soon. Unfortunate, but at least I'll be doing it with a massively reduced backlog!
Enough waffling though, here's the rest of what I've been up to recently:
That's a pair of mounted and fully magnetised Warbosses to lead my Deathskulls. The one on the looted Vyper is Mognutz, but I still need to come up with a name for the other one.
They started out when I bought the Wartrike a few months back, but as I was building it I quickly realised I also wanted a Warboss on Bike to lead my Kult of Speed. I didn't really want to buy the Forge World one, due to my self imposed hobby embargo, so my Orky mind went to work. A few hours and a rummage in my hobby cupboard later and I'd come up with the idea for a 'counts as' Biker Boss, an ambitious Flyboy with a Vyper he'd 'nicked off da pointy ears'.
Mognutz was an Ork of simple ambition: ever since he was a Yoof, all he wanted to do was fly. Unfortunately his enthusiasm far outweighed his abilities and after several rambunctious test flights, the last of which ended up in the demolition of Warboss Gazza's hut, he was unceremoniously exiled from his tribe.
After a few years of kicking around the Ash Wastes of Tinus Minoris, Mognutz fell in with a mob of local Speed Freeks, where he continued his attempts to get and, more importantly, stay airborne, steadily climbing the hierarchy of the mob until after another unfortunate series of Deffkopta accidents, he decided to stick to firmer ground for a while, leading a group of Warbikers.
Then one day his fortunes took a distinct uptick. Tearing ahead of the main Speed Mob, his bikes were suddenly ambushed by a trio of Eldar skimmers. Seizing the initiative, Mognutz threw himself from the saddle of his bike onto the lead vehicle as it flew overhead, headbutting the gunner unconscious and tearing the driver clear out his seat and flinging him aside. Cackling maniacally even as the skimmer started dipping towards the ground, Mognutz slewed the strange looking weapon on the back around and shot the other two vehicles clean out the sky. The whoops of his fellow Speed Freeks filled his ears even as the Vyper crunched into the dust of the desert.
After cracking a few heads to silence the derision which followed, Mognutz ordered his mob to drag the wrecked speeder back to the nearest settlement, where he paid every toof he had, plus a few more unwillingly donated, to Big Mek Bozrog to rebuild it into what he called 'Da Ded Shiny Speeda'. Wisely he decided to delegate actually piloting the thing to a succession of Grot 'volunteers'.
Since that day, Mognutz' star has been on the rise. He struck out on his own across the Wastes with his lads, slowly gathering a great Speed Mob of his own around him and hiring himself out to the highest bidder. Usually this took the form of ambitious Meks who wanted some protection against their rivals, whilst not having to worry about being replaced in leadership by their supposed hired muscle. All Mognutz cared about by then was speed. The ladz who chose to follow him just made it easier to go wherever he liked.
That is how most recently Mognutz has ended up in the employ of Big Mek Bozrog, whom Mognutz has a curious fondness for, having been the builder of his mechanical steed. Mognutz is content to take orders from the upstart Mek Boss, so long his bikes and wagons keep getting repaired, he has plenty of gits to krump and he can keep going fast to get to them.
As if that wasn't a mad enough idea, I then decided to squeeze the maximum amount of flexibility I could out of him and magnetised him to be usable on foot too. Then my real Orky mind kicked in and decided not to stop there. Why not make him able to swap mounts whenever I want? A bit of tweaking and careful application of some magnets and it was done!
There's no real use to doing so, apart from cosmetic appearances, but I wouldn't be a proper Greenskin player if I didn't use the biggest and meanest Ork as my Warlord at all times!
It was pretty fun to paint them up too, but I'm also glad they're done, as it took a lot of work to get them up to the standard I wanted. You wouldn't think it'd be that difficult to paint things which are mostly made of scrap, but I actually would argue to takes even longer to do well that painting things cleanly!
So that's me caught up. Next on my plate for my Orks will probably be a bunch of bikes. I'll have to fit them in around something else which has suddenly appeared slap bang in the middle of my hobby goals though. As I mentioned briefly earlier, the Heresy announcement at Adepticon has gotten me ridiculously excited for 30k again, so I've got a funny feeling that's where my hobby output will be firmly aimed in the near future. I've already started sprucing up my mate's Night Lords for him:
In theory, this shouldnt take me too long to do. It's just cleaning up his work from a few years back and adding a few more shades. The real fun will be when the plastic MK6 launches and I'm up to my ears in Emperor’s Children again!
There's fun times ahead though. Its great to be excited for Heresy again. We'll just have to see what the new edition brings.
That's all for today though. Until next time, happy hobbying!
