Ork Warboss
Here's what went into making my old warboss back in 2005. I started out by picking wargear. He's got pretty much the standard stuff for a 4th ed warboss not in mega-armor. Here's the list:
- Heavy Armor
- Bionic Bonce
- Cybork Body
- Bionic Arm
- Iron Gob
- Choppa
- Slugga with shootier/more dakka upgrades
- Ammo Runt
The right leg was removed to be replaced with a bionic leg. The left leg was removed and re-pinned lower in order to raise the stance of the model and make him taller. It just doesn't do to have a short warboss.
The bionic leg was made from the original foot, plasticard, bits from my bin, and green stuff.
Once he had a leg to stand on, I started working on the head. It always bugs me that the majority of warboss out there have one of three heads, the standard warboss, a black orc head, or the black orc standard. While these are all cool heads, I wanted something more unique so I decided to sculpt my own. I started with an ogryn head and cut off the jaw and nose. In place of the jaw I glued a pewter tab as a sculpting base.
After sculpting the jaw and mouth I extended the ear, sculpted the nose, and added the bionic bonce and iron gob.
In between sculpting the head, I worked on attaching the new leg to the body. A power unit was made from a heavy flamer and some sprue. Power and hydraulic cables were made out of guitar string. An armor plate was added to the left leg to satisfy heavy armor and extra ammo and pouches were added to increase bulk. The neck was extended to raise the head and increase the overall height of the model even more.
I started the left arm by making an armature out of a paper clip and slowly adding musculature with greenstuff.
Here's a test fit of the parts so far. The last picture is for a scale comparison. As you can see this guy's gonna be big.
This was my first attempt at sculpting a hand. I think the talons came out good but the fingers are a little disproportioned. This shouldn't be a problem though since I'll be adding some armor plating to the arm and back of the hand.
The right arm is a combination of plasticard, GW parts, and bits from my bin. The buzzsaw is made from a brass clock gear.
Once I had the basic structure made I messed with the positioning. After about an hour of fiddling with blue tac I finally picked a position I liked.
Then came the detailing.
With the Bionic arm done I moved on to armoring the left arm and finishing all the little details. The gun is a combination of an ork shoota, an ogryn ripper gun, and some plastic tube.
For painting I started with a basecoat of black spraypaint. The metal areas were drybrushed with boltgun metal and the skin was painted with dark angels green.
The skin was given a wash with green ink, then drybrushed with snot green and highlighted with goblin green. The cloth parts were painted as either brown or black leather. The metal was weathered with chestnut and black inks. Then began the tedious process of touching up details and painting on glyphs, checks, and dakka.
For the base I wanted to do something special. Fortunately a friend of mine has a Salamanders Space Marine army and Salamanders are a traditional enemy of the orks. I dug through my spare marine bits and copied my friend's paint scheme. Since my warboss has a buzzsaw I wanted the marine to be cut almost in half so I took a jewelers saw to the poor soldier.
Using a pin vise I drilled holes in the warboss's feet and sunk corresponding holes through the foam rock and the space marine. The Warboss was then pinned into place with a paperclip and everything was glued down with five minute epoxy. Once dry the whole thing was given a coat of Testors clear coat.
The final thing to do was to paint up his ammo runt. This is a classic grot with oil squig I've had sitting around forever.
He's still more or less playable with the 5th ed codex, though he mostly sits out these days. The biker and mega-armor warbosses are currently more useful.
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