# Warhammer Beginners Guide: Ork Modelling and Buying Guide.



## buckythefly (Mar 16, 2009)

Warhammer 40k is fun, but Warhammer 40k is expensive. This guide is to help budding warbosses and warbossessess (female warbosses?) Because in these economic times, its not easy to justify tiny spacemen, its important to get the most for your money. I don't pretend to know everything, I just want to offer some tips I've gathered while building my own personal waaagh.

First and foremost "The Boyz"

Any ork army worth its salt will contain a mess of boyz.

They can be bought in boxes of 10 from Games Workshop, and most hobby stores that carry 40k miniatures. I've seen prices on these kits ranging from $17 to $21 (US) and at 20 dollars, that's 2 dollars an ork! Space marines and most infantry for other races costs about the same, but the problem is, Ork squads are most effective in numbers of 20 to 30. Which is $40 to $60 per unit that's quite a bit of money. Your going to be buying a lot of these boxes, one way or the other, but to get you started I cannot recommend enough the Black Reach starter. 

This kit contains 500 point armies of both space marines and Orks along with some other things for 60 bucks. We don't care about the 'Umies, but we do care that the kit contains:
Warboss with a power klaw, 20 Slugga/Choppa Boyz, and 3 Deffcoptas.
I personally don't use the Deffcoptas for much, but if you think of it this way.
Warboss (15 Dollars) + Boyz (17 x 2) = Roughly 49 dollars worth of orks, plus however much the deffcoptas are, and the trade value of the space marines. Is a pretty spankin' good deal. You also get a rule book and templates and a few dice, all which just make your life easier.

Next is "Da Elites"
This is where GW really bites us ork players in the ass, they charge quite a bundle for kits that contain only five models. Kommandos, Stormboyz, Lootas or Burnas, all of these are fun to play, and they really shape the strategy behind your army. Here are some tips to get the most out of these kits.

First, The Loota/Burna kit comes with enough weapons for 5 lootas and 5 burnas, but only enough ork bodies for 5, If you buy two packages of Loota/Burnas and a box of boyz (told you you'd need a lot of these) with no conversion at all, you can have 10 Lootas and 10 Burnas. Not too shabby.

Also, the "Nob Box" as exalted by many a heresy ork player has a TON of spare parts, If your a bit creative you can make a mess of kommandos out of it, Or hell, the fuel tanks for Burna Boyz can be converted into Stormboy Jetpacks. The sky is the limit and since all ork infantry are plastic practically all you need is an exacto knife a cutting mat and some glue.

"Da Wheels"

This is the hardest part of an ork army to fudge and cut costs, Your most likely going to end up buying a trukk kit for each trukk, and a battle wagon for each battle wagon, But one of the few tips I can give, is don't underestimate your own ability to use other kits, Orks can get away with it. I wanted a deff dread model, but I couldn't afford it, so I did a pretty quick conversion of a space marine dreadnought. These kind of jobs can give your army a great deal of personality, and also save some cash, Although now their is a plastic dread model that looks damn phenomenal, and is quite a bit cheaper then the old metal one. If you feel your up to it, I've seen some amazing conversions out of non-warhammer models, most WW2 model tanks and trucks cost a lot less then GW mini's and if your up to it you can make some really sweet models.


Alright, my head has rattled enough, I hope I've given you an idea or two you haven't thought of. But I'll leave you with a list of a few rules of thumb, or thumbs, that I've had a lot of luck with to cut some costs.

1. Save Everything, if your buddy who plays space marines is throwing away his bits, have him save them for you, save all your extra bits from your squads and anything else you can get your hands on! You never know when you might have the perfect bits to make a weirdboy or a big mek.

2. Don't be afraid to convert, I know when looking on the net alot of ork conversions look way beyond anything you could pull off, but that doesn't mean you can't change a few small things here or there. I've seen all kinds of nifty conversions, making lootas out of normal orks using ingenuity and a lot of shoota bitz. Just about anything is possible, and for the orks, it doesn't have to be perfect to be viable, hell the rougher the better. (still no excuse to slather your models in super glue though)

and
3. Have Fun, this is a game after all, and you can always shop around and get a deal, or get your friends to let you proxy some things to break the monotony. If they won't let you, their dicks and you shouldn't play with them. 

I hope this guide gave you some helpful hints, I am by no means an authority on anything, but if you need help post up on heresy I've had tons of help with modeling, and rules from the community, and I can guarantee you'll pretty much always get the help your looking for.


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