Man, these guys are kind of a hassle to build.  They were kind of BS in 5E, but I’m now much more sympathetic to folks who ran them ’cause, dang: kind of a pain.

Wound allocation’s not quite as BS anymore, so there’s not a lot of motivation to build every Nob differently.  I’m liking Big Choppas on them a lot: for +2S for 5 points seems like a solid default choice.  After a few test games, it’s clear I definitely need to run at least one Power Klaw.  A Bosspole seems always worthwhile, and the Waagh! Banner looks really good for price.

Unfortunately, there’s only one Nob Torso in the bike kit, and only one Big Choppa.  A Waagh! Banner is woefully absent from the Warbiker kit, nevermind Painboy bitz.

So, I bitz-ordered some Nob Big Choppas.  Unfortunatey, the two-handed ones… didn’t line up too terribly well with the Nob Biker torso.  Vexing.  So, pinning and green-stuffing happened.

I only got so many of them, though, and had to make use of the Warbike Big Choppa.  I didn’t want the models to look identical, though.  So, sawing, clipping, pinning, and green-stuffing happened.

Similarly, the Painboy: sawed the dude in half, and then (you guessed it): sawing, clipping, pinning, green-stuffing.  the usual.  I clipped off a needle, thinking it was flash (Finecast, etc), so I replaced it with some paperclip.

The Waagh! Banner is from the WHFB Orc Warboss kit.  It seemed like a dang impressive banner that would look cool on a space motorcycle.  Well, it turns out the Orc Warboss is a little weedier than a Nob Biker, because getting the arms to line up on the Nob Biker torso was not easy.  LOTS of pinning, clipping and sculpting.

I ended up pinning and reposing the banner to the pole so it’d flow in the right direction.

The left arm… looks a little weird.  I’ve mitigated that a little bit, I think/hope/pray by widening the pauldron over it.  This’d be easier with a Space Marine, I think.  I don’t think it’ll be too bad when it’s painted.

So, those are the Nob Bikers.  But that’s not all: I knocked out two Dakkajets (one while waiting on election results) with, like, zero trouble.

All in all, it took me about three weeks to knock these guys out.  That sounds much, much worse than it really is, though: there was a lot of time in there that I couldn’t paint, a lot of time waiting to pick up new paints, etc.  They actually sat varnished but unbased for a week, because I couldn’t decide how I wanted to base them: Dark, mid, light grey like my Dark Angels? Cryx Base, Cryx Highlight, Khaki like my Skaven (the best most awesome color set in the world)?

In the end, I decided to go with a Martian, red clay base, which didn’t come out perfect… but came out okay enough.

Teeth

In an effort to take my own (and others’) advice, I decided to paint a one-off just-for-the-heck-of-it mini to help get out of the rut I’m in. After some fishing around my sprue bins, I settled on an Assault on Black Reach Ork. Like almost everyone else, I’ve got a few, and I haven’t really done much with them.

For the record, I’m extremely happy with the way I paint green flesh. I’d love to do an Ork army, and probably would… if there were fewer models involved. (How I’m going to reconcile that with the Orcs and Goblins I’m getting from the Mantic Kickstarter, I have no idea.)

So, I sat down and started on him. Then it occurred to me that I could/should give him to a coworker of mine (who we’ll call “Just Belligerent”) that I’ve worked with for a very long time that’s constantly harping on me to give them a painted “figurine.”

(As an aside: I get this… not infrequently. I always take it as a polite expression of interest in my hobby. “Would you give me a painted mini?” is how someone not involved in the hobby says that there’s value to what you do, that you’re probably good at it, and they don’t think you’re a thirty year-old manchild… and that they don’t really grok the cost or time investment this hobby sometimes demands.)

Anyway, that seemed like a nice idea. Then, it occurred to me that I shouldn’t just paint this guy as a standard Ork Boy. Given that JB is one of those folks who’s utterly obnoxious about their Hokie Pride… I could do better than black, checks, and dags.

Obviously, I did the guy up in Hokie colors, which unfortunately makes him a Horkie. I suppose there’s an unintended insult in there (your school’s fans are eternally belligerent fungoid football hooligans), but it is unintended, and I don’t think JB’d catch it anyway.

I’m fairly pleased with how the colors came out. Bright, but still the right tones.

Of course, there are a couple of goofs on here that I’d fix, but I was pretty committed to getting this guy done in less than a day: the sloppy rivet above, a lack of color in his mouth, and I never did figure out the right way to fit 9-11-2010 into the model somewhere. I’m more disappointed about that than anything else.

This HDR shot kinda sucks: I couldn’t get the camera to focus correctly. Still, I like taking them, so here it is.