Mad Max made me do it - or - How to do GorkaMorka the Oldhammer way

Like, I'm sure, many of you have done over the past week or so I went to see Mad Max : Fury Road last week, and like any true gamer, I came away wanting to play a game that reflected it's hi-octane mayhem and 'splosions. However I don't have a cupboard full of toy cars (well, i do, but my son may be a bit annoyed if I start gluing guns to them and putting them in daddies cupboard!) so i've spent the time since trying to figure out the best way of playing vroom, vroom, dakka dakka. I've got a load of the copplestone future wars scavengers and I thought about painting them and building a load of cars using various model kits. I spent a couple of family food shopping trips disappearing down the toy aisle looking for 'convertible' toy cars and a couple of hours looking for 1:56 scale models/ cars and squinting in an effort to figure out if they'd really scale correctly to 28mm figures. I've discounted Dark Future as another money-pit that I should avoid especially as I've already got 28's I could use and thought about building some charabanc for my scavvies and painting up some diggas as warboys.

And then it me. I had decided to use the Gorkamorka rules as I had so much fun playing a version of it at last years BOYL, why not just play the game itself! Genius!

Gorkamorka was one of these games that I missed. Not 'missed' as in, "aw I really miss him, I wish he'd come back" but 'missed' as in "I turn my back on you, juvenile hobby, I have cheap alcohol to drink, cool records to buy and women to fail to attract". When I stopped the hobby it was still Rogue Trader and 3rd edition Warhammer. When Linz lured me back in about 10 years ago, I was shocked to find that 40K was in it's 4th edition! Only as I delved further into what had been going on in the mean time did I find out that I missed out on Mordhiem, Battlefleet Gothic, Necromunda, Inquisitor and of course Gorkamorka.

So upon deciding that I want to play I went digging around for stuff that I could use, luckily, the army that I'd gathered during 4th Edition was an Orky one. Unluckily I hadn't really looked after them since my one game of 5th or no games of 6th. They were in bits all over the place.

This truck is the new design, I bought it when it first came out but never even finished building it. It was in two bits and i'd scavenged the front wheels for something else so I had glue it back together and give it new wheels, a heavy shooter and new arm for the driver. Still lots of painting to do but at least my mob has its first trukk.

I also have these two buggies which I had converted at some point to carry the larger plastic orks rather than the skinny little runts that came with the kits. One of them had lost a weapon so I glued a 'Eavy Shooter on. The driver of one needs a weapon of some sort and the shooter needs painting but the are ready go pretty much.

I also have a couple of the current bike kits. Again bought when they came out but I've lost the third one as well as the driver for the second one. I'll figure something out.

I also found a load of old bikes and most of wartrakk. I'll get round to these at some point.

But now on to the really good stuff!

This is the armourcast version of the original ork battlewagon. I can't remember how I came about this but I've had it for a while. It differs quite a bit from the plastic one in that the engine block is a different shape, the wheels are solid and the passenger area is quite a different shape. It's a bit dull at the moment so I may add bits and bobs to give it a bit of a rougher finish. Maybe armour plates to protect the passengers and a shooter and some other gubbins.

This however is the real deal. This is one of the old Plastic Space Ork Battlewagons. This one, as you can see, is in a sorry old state. I used to have two when I was a kid but I reckon my mum threw them out when I went to Uni. This is not one of mine. I actually only have a foggy notion of how I came about this one.

The glue has not been kind to this classic model. You can see where a loy of parts have been snapped off leaving the melted patches behind.

Part of the engine block is missing and the banner pole is snapped off and a crappy paint job has been splashed over parts of the model.

However I do have these. Some of the original sprues with lots of the bits still attached.

And more bits and pieces dug out of random boxes.

So my mission is try and nurse this dilapidated war machine back to life. New axles, new gubbins, added style and we'll have a cracking truck for hammering around the desert.

The added bonus is that I've got extra bits. I've got an engine, rear wheels, bottom of cockpit, top hatch, rear of passenger compartment, chimney an a front wheel. In order to make a second model (a fairly stripped down one admittedly) all I need is a chassis and another front wheel (plus the armour plates to cover them). Of course anybody that has a chassis is likely to be hoping for the other parts to come their way but I can always hope!

So far so easy. But I have another dilemma.

Wether to use my orks from my 4th edition that are already painted and fit with the figures on the buggies and bikes or finally getting round to painting my old classic RT orks and then replace all the bikes and buggies with the old school equivalent.

Hmm.

It comes down to that old question doesn't it.

Is oldhammer about the figures you use or that attitude you use them with?

I think you'll know by now what my answer is going to be.....