74 - Ork Boyz Mob #1! Waaagh!

Well, here's my production for Day 1 of my 365 day project of painting 1 miniature a day for a year. Apologies for posting it so late, but I honestly had finished these guys before the end of Sunday but could only find the time to take pictures of them and then post them really late at night. The picture to the left shows 20 Ork Boyz led by a Nob along with a Big Shoota and a Rokkit Launcha. They are my first complete Mob of which I have 2 more to go. 7 of the miniatures had already been painted months back. The remaining 13 were in various stages of completion, although most required just an ink wash and some minor highlighting. Thus I will consider the 13 new members of this mob as 1 miniature for the purposes of my 365 miniatures in 365 days project.

As you can hopefully tell, these Boyz are from the Snakebite clan. They have been mostly painted in 3 uniform colors (two shades of Brown, Red, and the occassional Yellow). Their skin does not vary much in hue - mostly Hunter Green although some have starker Light Green highlights than others. Their weapons are also predominantly Dolphin Gray with smatterings of Red, Yellow, and Black mixed in. Their bases have all been decorated with various supplies I've picked up at Michael's over the past year. I highly recommend using standard craft supplies to base miniatures. The money you save by avoiding the hobby specific basing material is enormous and, in my opinion, the effect is practically the same. By the way, I used Games Workshop's ink washes for the shading, which I also highly recommend. Their line of ink washes are priced reasonably but the quality of those washes have never let me down.

To the right is a more detailed view of the Nob which leads this mob. The keen eyed among you will notice that he's a different Nob than the first one I painted up for this mob. The original Nob has been officially promoted to full Nob-hood and has joined one of my Elite Nob units. (In fact, I've made him the bearer of the Waaagh! banner!) This Nob is more humble. All of the bits above his waist are standard Nob bits (except for his close combat weapon arm, which comes from a Black Orc kit), but his legs are merely those of a lowly Ork Boy. I figured that Nobs tasked with leading the Boyz are probably the smaller Nobs. The truly monstrous Nobs would be more effective grouped together as shock troops. After taking the pictures, I noticed to my chagrin that I forgot to paint the skull I glued to his base.

To the left is a picture of two of the Boyz from this mob. The Ork to the left is a standard Boy from the Ork Boyz kit but I armed him with a chain from the Warbikers kit. The Boy on the right, however, was given bits from the Warhammer Fantasy Orc Boyz kit - a shield strapped to his back and the head and torso of a fantasy Orc. Seeing as the Snakebite Orks are a bit more old-fashioned, I reasoned that they'd look more like their forebearers from millenia past. I think the kit bash was pretty effective as it gives what could have been a pretty monotonous parade of similar looking Ork Boyz a bit of character and uniqueness.

Well, that's Day 1! Yes, I haven't yet painted up a miniature from gray plastic to highlighting and basing, but that day will come (very likely by Tuesday at the earliest). Tomorrow, I'm going to finish off 4 Blood Ravens Space Marines that I also had laying around my painting station and treat them as a single miniature for Day 2.