Black Moon Mercenaries

Greetings vaqueros! Today we'll be looking at this unit of ork nobz in mega-armour I've painted for an up-coming gaming event.

My friends and I are getting together this month for a gaming weekend and the theme is Rogue Trader, so it seemed like the perfect opportunity to get back to my roots and paint some orks - my first 40k army, and by far my favourite. First time round my army was a mix of the late RT releases, and a lot of the 2nd ed. stuff like plastic warbikes, multipart Lootas and many, many monopose Goffs  and gretchin from two of my mates' 40k starter boxes. SO MANY gretchin. This time round I aim to make a mercenary force using a lot of Bad Moon themed miniatures, but minus all the yellow - meet the BLACK MOON MERCENARIES.

Back when I was 14yrs old and painting my first Space Orks, I listened to a lot of Metallica, and so the waft of heavy metal cheese will always hang about a project like this. When thinking about a theme and scheme for this mercenary force, the words 'black', 'heavy' and 'metal' were my main consideration. In order to make sure the spirit of 80's metal was thoroughly baked into the models, I played Master of Puppets to them while each layer dried, and thought only about guitars, leather and hair while I worked on them. The only colours allowed for this force will be green, and... well that's about it. Green. The rest is black, white and bone, and METALLICS WAAAAAAAOOOOOH!

By the time I began my adventures in 40k space, these guys were basically a footnote in ork history - quirky Kev Adams sculpts, replaced by the newer, bigger and quite bad-assed mega-armoured ork nobz in Bad Moon livery made by Alan Perry. I like those Bad Moon nobz a lot, but they lack that special something that make these older ones so great - specifically, large, marshmallow-like armour plates. SQUISHY METALLL!

Models like these reward careful painting of the details, but also, take to a quick and dirty approach as well - the character of the sculpts shines through on even with a boring monochrome scheme like this one. You could probably really weather these up and they would still look great - primary colours have their place, but orks like to get down and dirty. RUSTY METALLL!!!

This unit is the prototype for the whole force, and will be the retinue for their warboss (COMING SOON). They will likely need some heavy support and a transport vehicle of some kind... if only I could find something METALLL ENOOOOUGH. 

*raspberry noise*

And what's next? Well once you've let some big nobz into your life, you will only crave for bigger!

"Cop dis klaw up yer jacksie mate!"

Adios for now!