This month’s block of models was a pleasant change from the vehicles of the last 2 months. I much prefer painting foot troops over vehicles, and the variety of models and poses this month kept me engaged the whole time. I think that’s probably just the nature of old Citadel models: they had such personality! Each time I completed a figure I would 1) stare at it for a while admiring the cool sculpt, and 2) wonder why I didn’t get off my ass years ago to paint these guys. The block I originally planned to paint this month was a mob of 15 Ork Nobz, a Mekaniak, and a Painboy.

The 15 Nobz were comprised of 5 or 6 poses, and I wanted them all to look like nobles trying to out-do one another. I made a point of using a different color combination on each guy, and tied them all together with red and a yellow accent. When I painted the Kommandos and Dreadnoughts in the previous months, I had already planned to paint all power weapons in the army using blue. So all the power fists, power axes, and power claws would be a gradient of electric blues, and almost all these ‘Eavy Armour guys had power fists (after looking at the primed figs it appeared there were more power fists than I originally thought when constructing the army list). Some of the figs had large smooth shoulder armour, so on those I painted some Blood Axe iconography. The finished mob really jumps off the shelf when I look at it, and they’re probably my favorite batch of models I’ve painted in years!

Before the nobz were finished I already knew I would want to paint something extra this month, and I hadn’t even started on the Mekaniak and Painboy. So I searched through my boxes and found 3 RT-era Hop-Splat Field Guns (Splatta Kannons in 2nd edition parlance), and some 2nd edition Gretchin crew. I quickly painted all the Gretchin faces while I was painting the Nobz’ faces. I paint all the faces and skin on models first, whenever I paint blocks of troops. Years ago I read that if you paint faces first, you’re more likely to finish the models you started because you feel guilty. Kind of the same way we ascribe human emotions to dogs when they look at us, or something like that. I decided that all Gretchin and Snotlings would wear simpler earth tones to make them more distinct as a second-tier force: Gretchin mostly earth tones with sparse bits of color, and snotlings would be solely earth tones and no other bright colors. The goofy faces on the Gretchin crew were a fun contrast to the Nobz. I treated the Hop-Splat guns similar to the Battlewagons and Dreadnoughts I painted previously, and made sure to keep those same “bone” designs as on the other vehicles to indicate they belong to the same Mekboy.

Since the Painboy and Mekaniak are characters, I chose to paint them up a little different than the other models. I embellished them a little, drilled some holes in their back plates, and made back banners out of plasticard (like the banners I made in previous months). I didn’t feel it might be obvious to an opponent what these models were representing, particularly the Mekaniak. I made a wrench from plasticard for the Mek to hold (the model was originally holding a sword), and I figured a Mek with a wrench and a Doc with limb shears was a little more intuitive. I came up with an idea for the style I want the back banners to carry for each of the characters in the army: a large icon for each guy would be more fun than a series of small Ork glyphs. I made the banners to be removeable during gameplay since I found that back banners make it difficult (or impossible) to move models through terrain (such as multi-level platforms).

With this first batch of foot troops completed, the Ork army is really coming together. Next month on the painting table is the Warboss and his retinue!