I figured it was time to do a formal introduction of my orks, Kaptain Klaw’s Freebootas. The collection is getting out of hand, vastly out pacing the rate I can paint at. So, it’s only going to get worse from here.

The theme behind the army is freebootas, aka ork space pirates. Who doesn’t love that? I wanted to do freebootas just so I could have a really varied collection. It also opened up a few conversion possibilities. The biggest problem I had was trying to tie the army together while still representing them as pirates. I came up with the red stripped pants.

Overall the paint scheme is very bright and I like it. The only complaints I have are the eyes and the number of colors I put into each ork. I can’t paint eyes well at all. I can paint lenses, but I can’t paint eyes. If anyone has a tip on painting eyes that looks good and doesn’t require me to break out a single hair brush, I am all ears. I also went with a too varied color scheme. It ends up taking me 20+ colors to finish a single boy. Which is fine for a space marine army that may have only 30 tactical marines. But I have over 200 boys…

In terms of conversions, I did a few simple ones and one or two complex ones. My nobs were pretty simple, just some head swaps to pirate heads. The heads are a little small proportionately, but they work otherwise. As a side note, I am a magnetizing fiend. All the arms on my nobs are magnetized, so I can switch out weapon options. I also have some larger guns for them so they can double as flash gitz.

Up next was the original Kaptain Klaw. He is a kit bashed mess, but was such a blast. He is based off a black reach warboss (because what ork collector doesn’t have half a dozen of those). An arm swap to the nob biker big choppa and a bunch of hacking and chopping until I can throw a killa kan klaw on pretty much finished him out. After I painted him up, I managed to get my hands on a hawk from the brettonian set, so the Kaptain got his parrot.

The next conversion was the kaptain with a big freakin gun. A campaign game put on by one of our own basically called for each army to have a sniper character. Take another black reach warboss, chop up his gun and add a fusion blaster, a big shoota, and a missile launcher scope, then cover up the mutilated arm with a green stuff bandana.

The last conversion I have painted up is the big kaptain klaw in power armor. I got my hands on a metal ghazzghul. I prefer metal to finecast. I repositioned his arm, left off the big metal jaw and tusks. Then I made a green stuff great coat. Pretty simple stuff overall, but it works.

I have another battlewagon and dakka jet painted up that aren’t pictured. My orks are probably my closest army to the mythical 2000 point painted army (a level I can’t seem to break in 40k). I have close to 8000 points of orks, and their numbers keep growing. I keep finding deals, or taking some off a friends hands, or finding that model I wanted, etc.

The army will keep growing. I hear rumors that there will be a new book around June. I am sure with a new book will come new models, so there I will go, buying more orks. I still have a few gaps in my collection, mainly storm boys. And I could always use more trukks. And maybe some meganobz. And I really like that forgeworld mega dread.