Yearly Archives: 2017

WAAAAGH! Pt.4: GorkaMorka Slaver a.k.a. Ork Runtherd (1998)

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Citadel GorkaMorka Slaver, 40k Ork Runtherd, Brian Nelson (1998)

A bit of a slow week this last couple of weeks for posts as I had exhausted my backlog of recently-painted-but-unshown models, and to be blunt had a bit of the old blogging-burnout. I’ll slowly catch up on people’s posts and keep on painting here to get more new models finished. Still, I do have something today – one of the models I’d planned to complete a couple of weekends ago but only managed to do during the week. This guy is from the GorkaMorka range, which was a side game of GW’s (now known as “Specialist Games”) and the sort-of successor and replacement for Necromunda in their release schedule. GM never took off like Necromunda did, and my group never actually played it at all, which I felt was a shame, since it looked like a fair bit of fun. I did, however pick up a ton of GM kits, which I guess might start to be assembled and painted now that I’m resurrecting the Orks.

Citadel GorkaMorka Slaver, 40k Ork Runtherd, Brian Nelson (1998)

Palette-wise, I kept him fairly simple and muted. A robe that started as off-white before being dirtied up quite a bit, some leather gubbins and the old Pilot’s cap all in browns finished him off.

Of course, Bruce Spence’s iconic character of the Gyro Captain is a visible inspiration for this figure’s look – not to mention several other Orks through the years. Of course, Mad Max 2 has been a huge influence over much of popular culture in general and 40k in particular – and especially so for Orks. I mean Just Look Anywhere.

Citadel GorkaMorka Slaver, 40k Ork Runtherd, Brian Nelson (1998)

Ork Slavers are generally also called Runtherds, and have been so since the RT days. One thing that is for sure is this figure was called “Ork Slaver” for it’s GM release. So this means there’s something missing here!

Citadel GorkaMorka Slaver, 40k Ork Runtherd, Brian Nelson (1998)

Now at this stage I don’t have any runts ready for this guy to herd …yet. But rest assured, when they get sorted out, this guy will make an appropriate reappearance here on the blog.

Citadel GorkaMorka Slaver, 40k Ork Runtherd, Brian Nelson (1998)

He’s comin’ ta getcha!

Minotaurs Space Marines – Apothecary Heliodorus (2e, 1995)

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Citadel Space Marine Minotaurs Apothecary 40k2e Oldhammer

I’d planned to finish three specific models this past weekend, but as it happens I got distracted by cleaning the house, sorting miniatures, mowing the lawn and watching the Mae Young Classic with Marouda, so in the end I only managed to complete a single figure – this Apothecary. Despite buying this model (and all of his contemporaries) on release back in the mid-1990’s, this is the first post-RT apothecary that I’ve painted, and boy, is he one fiddly model! I thought the Dark Angels Veteran Sergeant that I finished a couple of weeks ago was saturated in detail, but this guy puts him to shame.

The model itself is an Apothecary circa 1995 or so, with a metal arm with power sword from the 3rd edition Death Company box from 1999 pinned on. Not the first of the contents of that box that have popped up in my other units… The shoulder pad is a Forge World Minotaurs pad with a cloth draped down the arm, which looks good on one hand, but obscures a bit more detail than I’d like on the other hand.

“Clean” white is a notoriously tricky colour to get right. I can see why painting dirty white (Death Guard) and weathered white (World Eaters) is so popular. Still, I thought it best to keep his armour to the traditional white and keep the accents to red with a touch of gold and silver – keeping him tied in fairly strongly with the rest of the Minotaurs.

His Narthecium was a right bloody pain in the backside to paint. There are a lot of fiddly elements on it, and wanting to achieve a neat and clean look to it while picking out all of the distinct parts took a toll on my patience.

Similarly, all of the vials on his belt (and those on his backpack) also added to the over-fiddlyness. I chose to paint his spotlight lamp in silver tones to represent it being unlit, rather than the more commonly seen bright yellow. Between the vials and lenses all over this model and the wreath on his shin and the bluish tinge of the power sword there are already quite a few colours on him and I want to avoid the “skittles” look that Space Marines (particularly HQ specialists) can sometimes start to have. That’s also why I kept the vials on his belt and backpack to a couple of tones of red with a little yellow for the sole variation. We don’t need blue and green on the vials as well.

In the end, I’m very happy with the final product, and I’m aware that I need to sort out an Apothecary for the Dark Angels as well, but I’m not massively enthused by the thought of doing another one of these guys particularly soon. I might have to give the DAs one of the Forge World sculpts instead to keep it interesting…