Custom Ork Ruzzbot Gorkanaut
With the release of the 7th ed Ork codex Games Workshop introduced the Gorkanaut. I thought it'd be fun to give it a shot on the tabletop but I found the kit they produced for it to be both too expensive and too poorly designed to be worth it. Fortunately in the days of yesteryear the Orks were known to have something called a Ruzzbot. Traditionally they were built using the looted wreckage of Imperial Leman Russ tanks. They were part tank, part walker and filled the slot between a Dreadnaut and a full on Stompa. GW in their infinite wisdom (stupidity) decided to ignore this bit of traditional orkiness. Being a proppa Ork Mek I think it's the perfect excuse to correct their oversight and teach the yoofs some history.
Of course I had to start with a Leman Russ. I've had most of one sitting around for a while now that I got from I don't know where. Step one was to remove the center portion, raise up a torso and widen the tread sections to accept Landraider treads.
With the basic shape together I could better visualize the scale of the thing overall and work out the armament. For the Klaw arm I intended to modify a Defiler claw and a plastic glue container from my bits bin seemed to make a good base for the Deffstorm Mega-shoota.
For some reason no one can figure out GW gave the 'naut a transport capacity. It's only 6 guys and not being an assault vehicle or fast it's kinda pointless but it meant I had to add a crew hold. I bulked out the front into a belly hold with part of a battlewagon ram becoming the access ramp. I also built out a shoulder for the klaw arm and stuck a battlewagon turret on top as the basis for the head.
For the upper portion of the klaw arm I used a combination of styrene and resin cast parts including a Ghostbusters resistor, Baneblade wheel and Leman Russ drive wheel. I also added a twin-linked big shoota to the Russ's hull mount weapon slot and added the opposite shoulder.
Next I built the face out of styrene and resin parts. I also started work on the rear engine details with part of a defiler body.
For the Deffstorm Mega-shoota I made the same upper arm then kitbashed a bunch of detail onto the glue container lid.
For the engine I pulled parts from all over the place including a Zoids kit, an RC car, a Leopard tank and a Chevelle.
With the structural parts done it was time to work on details. I added a skorcha turret over the assault ramp and started paneling the body.
To finish it off I built shoulder pads to cover the upper arms and mounted the rokkit launchas to them. The final twin-linked big shootas were mounted to the klaw arm along with some more detail bits and a spotter was added to the turret coupla. I then spent a few days adding rivets to everything.
Painting was tough as I never know what to do with large flat areas. I think it turned out pretty good in the end.
Overall it's not that much larger then a normal Gorkanaut and looks way better.
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