Stompy, Da Orkiest Nid

Ok… So this project is a pretty early one for me. But its probably one of the ones im most proud of… The Looted Carnifex.

This was completed as a birthday present back in 2011 according to my ancient posts a couple of wargaming forums. But it a lot earlier. And im not talking about the 7 months i spent working on the project. The guy whos birthday it was is Krakendoomcool’s founder and the guy working on the the epic wolflords. We used to spend a lot of time ogleing peoples awesome conversions online and things like the Golden Daemon winners all over the world.

He has a Deathskulls Ork army, their primary quality is looting and we also used to enjoy looking at the various “looted” things people had made. It was him who introduced me to the concept of the looted carnifex. A funny idea that a few people had executed well. We even saw one in a Warhammer World Display case. I dont remember when i decided it would be a good idea to try but it was going to be a gift and i didnt want to do a bad job of representing his army of angry green thieves.

No, but a Carnifex would look badass on my driveway.

First of all i needed some parts so i went on ebay and bought some bits to do the conversion. I got a load of ork spares (which weirdly included a whole Ghazghkull Thraka) which annoyingly he could have easily provided, unfortunately just like his much wanted opinion and expertise, i couldnt let him know. Obviously i also needed a carnifex too, and not wanting to get a new one i thought i could just grab one on ebay too and chop that up a bit. Unfortunately, cheap carnifexes are not that easy to come by reliably. Worried about time spend modelling, delivery delays and problems i found about 6 and put bids on all of them to save time, my bids maxing out pretty low.

With a humourous twist of fate i won ALL OF THEM.

Never mind, i probably would have bought more at some point. So i started carving bits up, I didn’t really have much of a plan as with most things, so it was just going to start to evolve. I did a load of work on the arms, as they seemed quite low pressure. I had access to ork heavy weapons so all i had to do was ork them onto some carnifex arms.

I remember thinking that the Burna worked well with the tubes coming out of it, and being able to sort of fit them together. The other arm i used a Big Shoota, which was trickier. I wanted it to look like a big, cool machine gun toted by a Carnifex, it seemed a bit puny on its own. Of course the gun owners normally carry ammo, and on the Burna arm was potentially delivering its own bio fuel. So inspired by the Big Shoota i saw on Gazghuul’s arm, i scratch built a twin drum ammo box and feed onto the barrels of the gun. Its size seemed a lot more appropriately this way and i looked at the other arms. Orks excel in melee so thats where i wanted this thing to end up. That meant some cool melee weapons… Crushing Claws. Not very Orky yet, but i had an idea… Conveniently oversized for the original owner and perfect for this was Ghazghkull’s other arm, his Power Klaw. So with a bit of work i managed to swap ot for the other claw by switching the angle of the carnifex arm. I also found a really cool looking piece which was like 3 axe blades pointing outward from a single shaft. So i popped that on the end of the tail as the carnifex has a tail weapon.

I think along side these things i was also working on the cabin for the driver. I wasnt sure at this stage of i wanted to put in an actual model for the driver. So i looked at what orky bits there were and like i was in Scrapheap Challenge, put together a frame from some old buggy bits. I supplimented that with some plasticard paneling and mesh, inside i put and ammo bag and some levers made out of pins.

I also worked on the base along side the other things. I stuck some rock on the base made out of some foam. A sheet of crumpled plasticard and some ork bits to have poking out from under the plasticard sheet.

Then… There was a significant amount of procrastination. I had all these parts but now i had to bite the bullet and put them all together. I put it off constantly as this involved the most irreversible part, cutting up the carnifex body. Now sure… I had spares, but i dont want to wast carnifexes on a stupid and avoidable mistake. After all the body and legs are the most valuable part with only one copy per box.

Finally though after hours of trying to hold four arms in a acceptable pose, i took a saw to the top of the Carnifex’s back to make a platform for the cabin. I got to work on the head armour then, putting the plates together, and putting in some chains running up to the cabin.

After that is was plain sailing really. I got it all glued and pinned together, did the base and pinned it to that, but so it could be removed to make painting easier. I say plain sailing but i remember that despite having 7 months, i was working on it desperately up to the last week.

My friend likes the model anyway so it was a success… Sort of. I also gave give laminated custom rules with artwork all in the style of the (then) current codex… But because i didnt have him to chat to about the rules either, it wasnt until months and months later i discovered i had written rules for some overpriced, dangerous, psycho, suicide machine. I rewrote rules since then but the orks didnt see much play that edition and he is due some 8th ed rules now. Fortunately we can discuss them now!

He has painted it a bit and has very recently taken some updated photos. Hopefully someday he will actually finish it!

Thanks for reading this guys, i hope i gave you a good idea of what the project was like to do. please get back to us with a comment if you liked it, found it useful, or feel like you have any advice that we could benefit from. Its exciting to hear from you and i look forward writing up the next one.

 

~Pandora’s Bitz Box~