a pirate ork for me

i’ve been painting warhammer 40k models for a few years now and i’ve never actually played a game! it’s an astounding confession, i know, but it had to made right here at the top of my post.

first off, it’s not because i don’t want to play. it’s just i started it more as a way of reducing stress after a big day at work, and i’m not what you’d call the most social kind of animal so i never really rallied up anyone to show me the mechanics of the game. sometimes i tried, but those few friends who were either former players of the game, or considering becoming future players, all kind of wandered off back to their thing once the novelty of the idea wore off. i’m also not overly fond of the games workshop shops. they’re full of overly enthusiastic staff who just won’t stop asking you questions and customers who all need a vast amount of acne cream, deoderant and some freshly washed clothes just to pass as something a little more than subhuman. yes, i’m sure they’re terribly nice people – they’re just not very nice to stand next to.

entering a games workshop is like entering a nerd lair. you can’t see the porn, but you know it’s there. somewhere in those black cases they carry, no doubt. their sweaty greasy bodies lurch about the store bumping into you in a way which is just a little too intimate for my liking, and then you follow up the experience of walking through a nerd version of a nightclub with a sleazy shop assistant refusing to let you walk out without giving him your life story and your current painting project and then demanding you let him ask you more questions. when i go into one of these shops, i always feel much like a young girl must feel when she’s gone to a nightclub to pick up her drunken friend and has forgotten that she’s wearing a schoolgirl outfit from a costume party she’s just been to and is now pressed up against the wall by several very large old men who’ve had far too much to drink and think they’re very young men and that their greasy jowls are signs of sexual superiority and the fear and disgust in her eyes as she desperately searches for her friend, or at least an exit sign, is just her way of saying, “sure – i’d love you to take me out into the alley. bring your mates with you, too.”

nonetheless, i brave the store in a manner i hope is brisk, businesslike, and try very hard to limit myself to one syllable replies. in this way i survive the experience and emerge, shaken but unsullied, with my new painting project.

the last one i found in this way was kaptin badrukk. he’s an ork. a pirate ork. yarr, matey and let me chop your arms off. that kind of thing.

i love orks. of all the warhammer goodness i enjoy, it’s the orks i love the most. they are the most fun to put together and even more fun to paint. they are like mad max and the incredible hulk getting all muddled up in some weird alien sex-a-thon and giving birth to a hideous bogey of a child which multiplied beyond all expectations. brilliant.

now, i’m not the greatest painter, but i’m very surprised at how easy they were to start. using the paint is rather simple and getting some good effects is also quite easy. the warhammer magazine, white dwarf, has been an invaluable tool full of painting lessons and ideas, and my collection of these is also threatening to fall through the floor and kill the people who live in the apartment below. badrukk is only about the seventh boss i’ve painted, and i hardly tried on the troops. i’m more a painter than an assembly line. i tried hard to give him a look of someone who looted his way to the top of the food chain, and who is now quite comfortable in the fact that he’s the biggest, the baddest and the greenest. he doesn’t mind wearing purple.

i’ve had a lot of flak from some warhammer fans. they’ve told me my orks lack camo colours. apparently bright colours aren’t very orky. me, i just can’t see orks being very worried about fitting in with their surroundings. where would the fun be in that? besides, it’s just more fun to paint them with a sense of fun than to paint them with a sense of lore. some people take things far too seriously. i don’t care if my paintings aren’t the kind da vinci would have liked. i only care that painting chills me out at the end of a rough day. yes, take away the annoying dicers, and it’s a very relaxing hobby, really.

Tags: games, painting, warhammer 40k