Kitbashing Space Orcs

I think I’ve been experiencing a bout of Covid over the past week, which has slowed me down somewhat, plus now pepperoni pizza and coffee tastes particularly bad, a change that I’m not a fan of and that hopefully doesn’t last too long!

Stuck in the house with nothing to do, I’ve been setting my mind to more Deathzap lore and background, and rewriting and revamping my own Deathzap Crunchy rules for some Selenoid Wars games.

In addition to all that I was getting nostalgic for old GW. I remember playing a lot of GorkaMorka on my bedroom floor, with a beige cloth draped over my knock-off Goosebumps books (Shivers was the series), and a bunch of the old card Necromunda and GorkaMorka terrain. Miniatures were somewhat scarce as I could only afford what my pocket money would allow (how the hell do kids afford it these days?) but I did snag a GorkaMorka starter set… on sale… in a Games Workshop store for £15 (Roughly £30 today) it included 12 Ork Boyz, 2 Trukks, 2 Trakks, and all the terrain, rulebooks and accessories you needed to play, gosh how times have changed!

Orcs or Orks looked different back then, a little less chunks and gorilla-like:

Knowing GW’s current boyz would set me back many pretty pennies (not to mention the vehicles…) just so I could experience a little nostalgia, I began looking for alternatives.

Oathmark, Kings of War, Warpath Firefight all provide cheap Orcs. This time around however I went with Warlord Games’ Orcs from their Warlords of Erewhon range. I’d had these before back when they were Wargames Factory, so I knew what I could get out of the sprues (better the orc you know). That gave me a good selection of bodies, heads and melee weapons (plus bows which are allowed in GorkaMorka), but I needed guns. Stargrave was the obvious choice. Stargrave kits give you a lot of guns! The Scavengers certainly looked good, and are definitely on my ‘to buy’ list, but they did lack in one crucial aspect and that was pistols. In GorkaMorka pistols are plentiful, so at least at the outset, I settled on a Stargrave Crew box instead.

And here are my kitbashed space orcs so far:

Starting with the Nob:

He’s pretty much entirely Orc, I’ve given him a revolver with a hand swap, a holster on his hip and a techy accessory on his other hip.

The next two were simple arm swaps with added ammo pouches:

The Stargrave arms go on these bodies decently well with a small gap around the edges of the shoulders. You can alleviate this by shaving the shoulders on the torsos down a bit, but you do still have a small gap to fill. I just tend to pipe plastic cement in there and let the gap melt shut, which is fine for gaps this small.

The guy above was a simple hand swap job, which took very little effort and I think he’s my favourite.

And finally this guy was a simple hand swap and additional holster.

All in all I’m pleased with how my little mob is growing. As stated I’ll probably have to buy the Stargrave Scavengers box so I can get some bigger guns, and then if my mojo for this project hasn’t yet fizzled I can start hounding toy and charity shops for vehicles.