These little fellas have been on the go since 2005. They were part of the Ork Combat Patrol force that I was working on when my brother passed away, which got boxed away until last year when I was ready to start working on them again – which almost all of these WAAAAGH! series posts are. I’m very happy to have finally finished them off over the past few days, which included rebasing all of them. These figures aren’t “proper” gretchin, in fact (as the post title has already told you) “Snotz” from GorkaMorka in 1999. Which means I started painting them only about 6 years after buying them, which for me is actually pretty good.
They’re based on little 20mm round bases. While rebasing them from their original GorkaMorka “football” grot bases, I did briefly try one out on a regular 25mm base, but it looked absolutely ridiculous, but fine on a 20mm base. I did have to order some more of them, as I only had a few from a Red Box Games order a couple of years ago. I’m sure they’re legal enough in the current version of 40k, as GW doesn’t seem too fussed about base size anymore.
I do recall when I showed the WIP versions of these models many years ago (must have been on DA-WAAGH forums) one guy told me that I had them on illegal bases, and then another guy chimed in stating that GW had said that any model could always be used on either the bases they came with, a larger base than that, or whatever the current base size was. Clearly a way to grandfather in things like the Rogue Trader-era terminators, or Abaddon the Despoiler, who originally came on a 25mm base. (I should really paint one of mine!)
Now one thing that’s hard to miss is just how bloody luminous they are. Something that was a part of older Orc/Ork fluff was that essentially, the bigger and tougher an Ork was, the darker their skin became. Obviously the pinnacle of this sort of thing were Warbosses in 40k, and Black Orcs in Fantasy. On the other end of this spectrum was that goblins/gretchin tended to be lighter and brighter, and obviously snotlings are even moreso.
Why so many photos of the 4 sculpts x4? Because look at them! They’re snotlings! No-one is ever going to look at them as much as a few people online have just looked at them right here right now. Certainly not on the table when there’s other big and eye-catching stuff there, but at the same time there’s a lot of work here. This is their brief moment in the sun. At some point I’ll get onto the “proper” gretchin models that I have from Rogue Trader and 2nd Edition, as well as the tidy collection of GorkaKorka gretchin, vehicles and of course Da Red Gobbo.
In the meantime, here they are with their Runtherd, also from the GorkaMorka range. Having completed these models, I’m left with only one more figure from that original warband – the Warboss. He’s been on the painting table again for the last few days, so my hope is to finish him off in the next few days and then get him posted up here. varnishing him is going to be a problem with the current UK weather that has somehow made its way down here to Australia (actually, today’s downpour and cold comes from Antarctica). Wish me luck!
Azazel's Bitz Box. 
Bloody adorable mate hehe. I didn’t know that about the darker or lighter the skin. Interesting. I know nothing about laws of the game either so I have no opinion on the matter. However I would say that a small model on a large base would, as you say, look ridiculous hehe
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Yeah, that’s some old lore so not sure if they’ve kept it up or just quietly forgotten about it by now – but it works for me a lot more than the “fungus people” stuff, so I’ll just take what I like and ignore what I don’t. Let’s face it – these guys still look small on these 20mm bases, so they were ridiculous on the 25s!
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These are great, and such lovely models too.
Your output at the moment is bewildering, well done.
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That’s one of the advantages of neglected models, I guess. Often it doesn’t take nearly as much work to get them to the finish line, and there’s a nice case of the warm fuzzies when you finally complete them.
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Those are so cool! I prefer them over the current plastics. I dig the intensity of that green!
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Thanks mate! When I get to the “proper” gretchin they’ll be a bit less bright than these ones, but there’s a bit of other stuff to get to before those.
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Those are lovely models! I still remember them, and the Gretchin Revolutionaries from around the same time, with much fondness!
Excellent painting, once again, but oh boy are they neon-green! 😉
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It’s to draw the eye and by extension – enemy fire!
It’s also why the Runtherd needs to wear those goggle-shades!
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😉
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Love the luminous flare, dey are awesome!
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Cheers mate, they don’t (and won’t) get much brighter than that!
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I always did like the correlation between Orkoid size and brightness. Helps add more variation to the wall of green, and makes it easier to figure out where you put the Nobz and such in the mass of Boyz. These little guys are pretty adorable!
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Thanks Alexis, they’re pretty cool little models. I found a little baggie of Rogue Trader Gretchin today while looking for an errant squig. Just a couple of models, but they’ll have to make it into the queue soon.
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Ditto that, great goblins palette! Lots of pop!
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And as a bonus, they light the way for Da Boyz at night!
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Sort of like Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer, but green. And smaller. And more violent.
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All of those things work for me. 🙂
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Lovely to see you’ve got so many of these painted. I love the acid green you use for the skin.
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Thank you. It’s now time to get cracking on some other, much larger Orky pieces!
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Love these figures and love the lurid skin colour! 😉
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Cheers Warburton. I think we’re done with models quite this lurid for awhile. Until I get round to fantasy Snotlings, anyway!
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Awww, blesss – them’s some cute greenskinz mate! Nicely done 🙂
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Cheers Alex. That’s something i really like about them. They’re so cute while still having a delightfully impish and malicious undertone to them.
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Really like how those turned out. The snot green obviously works well with those guys and generally speaking I have a tender spot for Gremlins, mini mushroom men and poor abused Orc servants.
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Heh, thanks! These particular ones have a lot of character sculpted into them.
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Great figures and great work on them. I find the discussion about bases hilarious. A rule system that gets wrapped up in a size issue like that is not one that I think would be worth wasting my time on. If a gamer had an issue with that, well, not worth dignifying!
I really like the green skin!
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Yeah, I’m glad that Warhammer has moved past that for the most part – though to be fair it’s a big game with tournaments and such, and smaller base sizes can offer an advantage in melee as things are worked out by individual models and the distances between them, so you can see where unscrupulous individuals can (and do) attempt to model for advantage rather than playing by the spirit of the rules, which then forces the devs to be drawn in to clarify things like this.
So I see it mostly as a hand that was forced by over-competitive players, known variously as WAAC (Win At All Costs) and “that guy”.
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Oh, so that’s where the bad weather’s gone and the reason I can finally varnish something to make it into Neglected Model May! I really do like the luminescent look, gives the small guys quite a presence!
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Yeah, you’re welcome to it back anytime – l quite like being able to spray anytime I like and also not be cold all the time. I guess I’ll grudgingly let you have some nice weather if it helps you get more models painted..I wonder if they’ll have enough presence for opponents to go out of their way to target them? I bet if I’d painted them pink or blue they would…
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Well I didn’t know there was some actual fluff to the skin tones. It’s funny, because I would debate over colors of green to use for Goblins/Orcs, and go with what I had seen previously. Though I’ve seen some Blood Bowl Trolls painted blue. Is that the traditional GW color?
I also laughed at your comment about how this is their one chance to shine. Reminds me a of a dungeon crawler we used to play and there was one monster that you basically just swept away. They couldn’t pose much of a threat, so it was just slaughter time, and then they were gone.
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Yeah, it’s fairly old and I’m not sure how canon or forgotten it is these days. I imagine we’re still a ways off the 8th edition Ork Codex, unfortunately, and I never bothered to read the previous one as I wasn’t playing at the time.
Blue trolls have been the traditional “stone troll” colour for a couple of decades now. Here’s one I prepared earlier:
https://azazelx.com/2015/09/13/citadel-stone-troll-with-axe-1992/
before that they were pretty much any colour you liked,
https://azazelx.com/2015/09/01/citadel-blood-bowl-trolls-1988-and-a-big-oldhammer-unit/
but 4th edition fantasy battle was when they really started to codify most of their lines and put models into specific lanes that have largely stayed on ever since.
And yep, that’s pretty much exactly it on their one chance to shine. Look at that photo of them with the runtherd. Now if you were to stop and look at that unit, which model is going to take most of your attention? Then apply that across an entire army. Hopefully this weekend you’ll see what I mean there!
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Thanks for the reply! Growing up on D&D, Trolls were green. Sometimes grey in other stories. I guess I had also seen some pics from GW, back when trolls were ‘any color’, and whatever green ones I saw, probably reinforced my “Trolls are green” stereotype.
Not too far back I had started to take notice of Blue Trolls. Maybe the computer game, definitely on some models. They look a bit comical in that color, but on the other hand I kind of like it. Mainly because it changes things up from having an all green skin team.
What color blue did you use for the Stone Troll? Sounds like he was a pretty easy one to finish off, makes me want to start on mine!
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Yeah, GW’s also had green trolls and everything else at different times. When they codified them, Stone Trolls became Blue and Swamp Trolls became Green. In my pre-Warhammer, early RPG days (Tunnels and Trolls!) trolls were also green, but looked nothing like the doofuses that GW produce as Liz Danforth’s artwork was so different to the stuff that GW produced later.
http://www.flyingbuffalo.com/tandt.htm
The main blue(s) I used for the base colour was Vallejo Ultramarine, highlighted and shaded with various things, and a mix of Vallejo Electric and Glacier blues for the “underbelly” and inner arms, etc.
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We never played Tunnels & Trolls, but I did hear about it. Thanks for the tips on the blue paints.
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Heh, turns out that I still have Vallejo Ultramarine. I think it was one of the first Vallejo paints I ever bought! I think I tried it on a Human Blood Bowl team or something, and it turned out way brighter than I wanted. So it got put away and never used again. I’m guessing I probably didn’t know about thinning paint back then either, so that was probably another factor.
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Yeah, it’s a pretty bright colour – that’s why my trolls are so luminous. When I got back and revisited them a couple of years ago to rebase and clean them up (as needed) I was unsure about them, but then decided to just suck it up and embrace the skittles.
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