Guys, the Ork Warbuggy is not a great model.
I think it’s from somewhere in the late 90’s; it’s kind of hard to make out from the 3E Ork codex. I’d have guessed it was done in Gorkamorka, but that doesn’t seem to be the case. The point is, it’s a so-so model that’s kind of dang expensive ($30).
So, I decided to convert something up. Through some poking, I found a Willys Jeep (?) from Warlord that I thought looked promising: it’s pretty cheap, and I should be able to Ork it up without too much trouble. So, I ordered one (smart move; more on that) to see how well it would work out before ordering another two (since I’ll want to run three).
Shipping took forever. As it turns out, that’s ’cause it was coming from overseas! I’d thought Warlord was a UK (or Australian?) company, but couldn’t find evidence of it when placing this order. C’est la vie.
IMPORTANT: Don’t order one of these to convert to anything. I’ll get into why tomorrow, but I don’t want anyone thinking this model was a good idea.
While waiting for it to show up, I discovered the Warpath Marauder Raptors. Despite being dissatisfied with the Mantic minis I have (something I still need to articulate in its own post), they’re cheap, stocked by The War Store, and still better than the GW Warbuggies. So, I ordered one to check it out.
My preference would have been to grab a regular old Raptor, but The War Store is inexplicably not discounting it, charging the same amount as the other Raptor flavors. So, instead, I grabbed the Raptor Quad because it cost me the same.
Finally, while waiting for that to show up, it occurred to me that I should just say, “Screw it,” and run all three buggies as different models, maybe picking up the homely GW model for the hell of it; then I remembered that Casey had talked me into picking up some random discontinued kit that GPC had on its shelves to use in a Dreadnought conversion (that never really came to fruition) that might work. After some digging in the closet, I found it: it’s a Helix Robogear, and I paid probably twice what it’s going for on Amazon (because, hey, GPC).
(Seriously, those Helix kits are insanely good deals. Less than $6 on Amazon!)
Tomorrow, I’ll get into what I did with them (and why the Warlord jeep was a mistake!).