Wayback Machine : Da Beach Boyz

One of the reasons I decided to do this was to consolidate all my hobby / gaming content in one place.  I realized that in the years I've been in the miniature gaming hobby, I've done some - well I find them fun and interesting, and I've got seven plagues, 3 glasses, 4 flasks and 4 certificates (plus there have been a few that all I got was more plastic crack, and no trophy) that can, I guess, qualify them as award winning armies.  (Oh yeah, my avatar is another award, for winning the first Dayton Confrontation tournament).

So the wayback machine is a chance for me to revisit some of these old projects - take new pictures (when I started the digital camera was able to take a whopping 640x480 pictures (no, megapixel count was not yet a thing then) on 3 1/2" floppy disks).  Now my phone has a significant better camera, and I now have both a Foldio and Foldio2 (which just arrived this past weekend) which give me affordable light boxes to get, I hope, much improved pictures.  While I plan on updating my web site (of course you regularly check the irregularly updated http://puggimer.net, don't you?), I figured this was also a good forum to show off, and talk a bit about them as well.

So Sherman, for our first foray back into history, how about we visit the second orc & goblin army I made for Warhammer?  Set the wayback machine to

Da Beech Boyz

The entire army, it all it's glory

I'm often asked what inspires my crazy armies.  The idea for this one came about quite by accident.  Jon Cash is a great Warhammer player (and all around good guy) in Indianapolis, who not only kicks my butt playing the game, but also routinely beats my painting and best army votes as well.  At one point he was thinking of doing a pirate themed orc & goblin army, so put forth a query on a local forum asking for ideas for his squig hoppers that fit his theme.   As soon as I saw his question, the idea of night goblins jumping the shark - literally - popped into my head.  He didn't go for it, and I don't think he ever actually did the army, but like so many other projects, this quickly took on a life all on it's own, with ideas for units popping up left and right.  Yes, I already had an orc & goblin army (The United Greenskin Postal Service, but they are another trip in the Wayback machine), but it didn't seem to be a problem for me to make a new one.  I'd use many different units - figuring armored black orcs didn't fit the water / beach theme I was coming up with - but savage orcs who were already half naked did.  They new arachnarok spider kit had just come out, and I really wanted to use it.  Of course I needed squig hoppers jumping the shark.  Spider riders naturally became crab riders, and the savage orc boar boyz - well what would anyone be riding at the beach but jet skis?

I love giants.  I have five of them for three armies, and am working on a sixth (to maybe add to my Mantic goblins - using the fantastic Nightmare Whiskey Golem model from Wyrd).  Of course I needed a giant in the army.  It didn't take long for my demented imagination to come up with the image of Ariel, the Little Mermaid, in her pose pushing herself up on the rocks, with the water splashing behind her at the climax of her song.  You know the one.

Everybody loves the little mermaid.  Until now :-)

I like giants, and GW came out with a really great giant kit a few years back.  Very flexible - though not quite enough for what I needed.  I actually bought a little mermaid 'barbie' doll for the tail section.  I sculpted the tail fin from thin plasticard and greenstuff.  I connected the tail to the body with greenstuff - and used a silver chain belt to help hide the join.  The boobs are extra thorax sections of the spider riders (it took 2 spiders to make one crab, cutting off the thorax then putting the abdomens and legs together).  I picked up a big bag of assorted sea shells, so finding a couple for the bra was easy.  The hair was all green-stuffed as well.  I didn't have a rock, but did find a big sea shell for her to push up against.  The arms were cut and re-positioned, and extra chain was used for the rest of the bikini top (since she needed something to hold it on due to the 'size').

Don't hate me because I'm beautiful

The giant comes with the huge stomach - having it sit on the seashell just went to push this conversion to 11.  I did not intend to make her look pregnant (the rest is intentional).  After painting I added a few piercings made from single chain links.  The make up scheme was based on Tammy Faye Bakker (wow, I had not seen pictures of her while suffering with cancer - and I thought she was scary before!) - there was no subtlety to be had here.  As a little 'easter egg', I added a tattoo of Flounder

Is it a tattoo, or did Flounder get crushed by her belly?

 One of my favorite parts was putting a tramp stamp on her as well.  I wish I could say I painted this, but it is actually a pattern I found online and printed out as a decal.

You can thank me for the wonderful dreams you will be having about her later.

The other big centerpiece model was the arachnarok spider.  I wanted to include this, so it naturally became a lobster.  I kept the howda and forest goblins pretty much intact,  The claws were basically made of greenstuff, the antenae are just wires.  The bands on the claws are simply blue rubber bands. The victim in the claws actually is a bit that comes on the plastic giant kit.

I like how you can see the lobster, but still see a lot of the spider in it

I think it was one of my son's ideas to do the rubber bands - they really add a nice touch.

 The tail of the lobster was made from strips of plasticard, curled around the thorax of the spider and providing the plate 'look'.  I actually brought home a couple of lobster shells left over from dinner at Red Lobster.  At one point I was thinking about trying to clean and preserve the actual lobster tail, but eventually decided against it.  The tail goes all the way underneath, ending in a three part 'fin' like a real lobster.

Tell me, does this picture make my butt look big?

 As I write this, I realize I'm rambling a bit, not doing the units in any order.  Well, yes, there is an order (to me) - starting with the coolest models and going from there.  It's my blog - I can be as random as I want.

Speaking of random - I have always loved the randomness of the orc & goblin army.  In fact randomness was the inspiration for the original "United Goblin Postal Service".  One of the most random aspect has always got to be night goblin fanatics.  After you release them, you have no control over where they go.  I wanted to theme them appropriately - and got the idea to do sea creatures.

The squid is mainly greenstuff and a few tentacle pieces.

The octopus is many tentacle pieces from various bits, with greenstuff for the body and blow tube.  Pin heads were used for the eyes.  He was actually built in an afternoon up at The Toledo Game Room .  My youngest son had qualified for the Throne of Skulls 2nd round, but he was only 14 at the time so I had to drive him up for it.  I didn't qualify, so I had pretty much nothing to do while he played except to explore the awesome bit bins that Daryl has there - I picked up some glue, a hobby knife, a handful of chaos tentacle bits and created the octopus.

The jellyfish is actually almost completely Valejo water effects.  It is a gel that sets up transparent - so I filled the inside of one of those plastic cups that you get from vending machines with stickers or toys.  It was actually too thick to set up, so I pried it out to try again and it popped out perfectly round on the top.  A bit of white paint - and then fishing line for the tentacles, again coated in water effects.

They might not look like night goblins, but they are great fanatics!

 Let me talk about the basing for a moment.  I decided that the theme was orcs & goblins at the beach - but some units were definitely water based, while others were intended to be on land.  I struggled for a little bit on how to make them consistent, then said screw it.  The water based units were based with blue tinted water effects, I used a craft stick to give them little 'wave' peaks.  The land based units had the sides and tops of their bases painted tan, then a layer of sand was glued to it.  The sand didn't need any additional paint - as it was supposed to be sand after all.  (Of course this did mean that EVERY time I got the army out I would find sand coming off the bases).

One of the new units added to the army list at the time was the Mangler Squig.  I liked the idea of them, but it took quite a while for a model for them to come out.  When it did, they were stacked on top of each other.  Like so many other people, I said "screw that" and made two out of the kit.  These were some of the last models added to the army, and it took a while to think of what I could do with them.  The first one became a beach ball, that two goblins are "playing with" as it bounces back and forth over a net.  I like that I was able to convert two of the 'handlers' to be playing volleyball.  The ball is greenstuff to cover up the squished night goblin on his back - with the added chains to 'control' him.

Now serving 1 - love.

So if the squig steps on the net is it in or out?

 For a while I played with only the one squig, but then I had a chance to add a few more points, so converted the second one.  This one I put in a Hawaiian shirt and sunglasses - with a night goblin trying to steer him. Sunglasses of course, because what cool squig goes out with his shades.  There are two fixes that I think this model still needs.  First the finecast leg just isn't strong enough to holdup the body, so it leans a bit.  This needs a steel pin through it to give it strength.

Coolest squig on the beach!

The second I realized was he really needs a pair of white 'ear buds' and wires leading to an ipod / iphone in his shirt pocket.  I do have to say that even before the conversion I thought this was a cool model (I always like the goblin in his mouth peeking out).

The future's so bright, you gotta wear shades!

I mentioned spider riders already, which became crab riders (because crabs are basically underwater spiders, right?).  These were made from the forest goblin spider riders, with claws from the daemonette kits (basically fiddler crabs,with one huge and one small claw).  The unit is lead by a goblin big boss on gigantic spider, but rather than that kit I converted it based on the Tomb Kings metal tomb scorpion (without the tail or front skull, and green stuff).  All the eyes here are sewing pins painted black, sticking up a bit to represent the eye stalks.

Just keep them away from butter and they will do fine!

Of course crabs actually move sideways - so most of them are facing to the side!

Of course I need to show the unit that started it all.  Much like the crab (spider) riders, it has a goblin big boss on giant squig in the unit, and six more squig hoppers.  The movement tray had to change for these since skirmishers changed while I was working on these.  All of the sharks are green stuff over metal squig or squig hopper models because I wanted to keep the teeth.  Eyes are again all pins painted black.  They aren't that effective of a unit anymore, but they will always be in the army as they were the inspiration for it.

So I finally jumped the shark with my conversions

This is actually the model it represents underneath all the green stuff.

So lets finish off the rest of the goblins in the army.  I have always loved night goblins - and they have some of the most characterful models.  I used some old metal netters, and the musician is a squig herder - but I love bagpipes.

Who sells sea shells by the sea shore?

One of the things a lot of people don't notice at first is the zinc oxide on all the noses.  I did this consistently for all the night goblins - since they generally live underground they aren't used to being in the sun, so they need to keep their big noses from burning.  If you take a look, all the night goblins have this (but the forest goblins don't need it).

It wasn't until after they were complete that I realized I should have used the shell as umbrellas.

Unlike my first orc & goblin army, this was designed to use both orcs and goblins.  I hadn't used savage orcs before because they had previously been very expensive metal models.  When GW came out with the plastic savage orc boys kit they were much more reasonably priced.  (Ok, so why doe 10 savage orcs cost $29, while 10 dark elf witch elves cost $60?  Sure the witch elves can make two different types of models - but still, the price difference is ridiculous.  Now even $29 for 10 is a bit much - one (of many) reasons I quite buying GW models when I can get 20 great ax orc models for $25 from Mantic (if I want the morax models it is $25 for 10 because of the metal bits).  If you ignore price (because we are all independently wealthy you know) GW does make some really nice models - though a lot of the current styles are not to my taste.

Anyway, when I thought about the savage orcs - with all their hands in the air - it made me think of the bodybuilders of Muscle Beach in Santa Monica - so I used different sized washers to make the weights, and bits of sprue trimmed down to make the barbells.  I pulled a Gold's Gym logo off the web, and then orcified it (so it is Green's Gym now).  I really liked how the blue war paint on the dark green skin, so used that for both these and the boar boyz.

No pain, No Gain.  Of course the pain should be from the enemy.

From the side you can see more of the weights, including the Big Stabba - which is the weights held by two orcs.

The savage orc boar boyz (hmm - $29 for 5, or mantic has 10 orc gore riders for $35) used the new plastic savage orc riders - however I wanted them on jetskis.  So like I had done for the Hells Angels in my Grateful Undead (again, a subject of anythor wayback machine), I actually bought a lot of 40K ork biker bits off ebay.  I then wrapped the bikes with platicard - essentially keeping only the handlebars exposed.  I used the water effects again to make each of them have a squirt of water coming out the back.

To be honest - the jetski's did not come out as good as I would have liked.  Looking back now I should have seen if there were other models for jetskis out there, or something closer.  So points for originality and ideas, but I lose some for execution.

One note - I didn't know what I wanted to put on the banner, and searching the web I saw the SeaDoo logo, and putting it on it's side it almost looks like stylized glyphs instead of letters - so I went with it.

Savage Orc boar boyz.  The blank bases in the front corners are where the characters go in the unit.  I used the blanks when displaying the unit for judging.

Unit with Characters (Warlord and Shaman, both also on boars).  This does hit like a ton of bricks!  

In Warhammer, characters are important.  You have to have at least one to be your general.  You usually want a Battle Standard Bearer to help keep your units around.  Wizards are almost required, if just for magical defense even if they don't get spells off.

So to start off was my general - a Savage Orc Warlord on boar.  This was a conversion, mainly of a 40K ork biker boy with the head from the savage orc shaman.  I moved and added in a second wheel on the back to make this a three wheeler, which seemed more appropriate on the beach.  One reason why he wasn't displayed with the unit is he is based on the beach, while they are in water.  So separate for display, but for gameplay I freely mix them (I put the BSB in with the orcs on foot as well).

Savage Orc Warboss on boar

A savage orc great shaman was based on the kit - but swapping out the head for a normal head, adding pigtails (they are actually the tails from horses).  The tower and float were scratch built.  Of course if you watched tv in the 80's you know where the inspiration for her came from.

I named her Pamela.

For the BSB, I was trying to figure out what to do for a big banner - when the idea of a wind surfer came to mind - what could be a bigger banner to inspire the army than a huge sail?  Sprues and then I took a sheet protector and cut it up for the sail, with craftsticks for the board.  I reused the racing stripes from the jetskis here, and I think it worked out better.

Surfing the waves in his wetsuit.

Hang ten buddy!

The final model was originally for a specific tournament.  My friend Bill Robertson runs the "Siege at the Tower" GT, which is the longest running tournament in Ohio, and a great one that I highly recommend.  He likes to do some fun stuff, often requiring a little extra.  So this year we were supposed to bring in a "Chaos Spawn" model.

Basically in the first scenario, we would take one of your infantry models and he would be your messenger, who you had to get across the board.  He ended up getting exposed to the chaos wastes, and so in the next scenario the messenger came back as a chaos spawn.

Of course, you want the cheapest model you can as the messenger - which for me was a night goblin.  Thinking about him getting exposed and growing to a monster - yes I went all Incredible Hulk on him.  I used an Ogre body (filling in the hold in the middle that normally has a gutplate), with a night goblin head.  The hood is still there, but the robes are shredded (and of course he has purple pants!).  He is actually beating up on an orc who had been kicking sand in his face earlier (yes, I also based this off the ubiquitous Charles Atlas adds that were in every comic I read growing up).  Originally on a 40mm base for the tournament, I then re-based him to use him as a Savage Orc Big Boss.

Night Goblin Hulk Smash!!!

One thing I had seen other people do that I adopted was to make themed accessories for their armies.  This included the display board of course, but also things like turn counters, objective markers, etc.  Now one bit I've always loved was the snotling tied to a spear at the front of the pump wagon.  I took an old metal squig herder who was holding a big trident, and replaced it with the snotling on a stick.  I then had him roasting him over a campfire - the goblin equivalent of toasting marshmallows.  The goblin actually turns around the campfire, with the shell (and spear) pointing to the round number (which is blue water effects on the sand).  The fire is actually water effects as well, painted orange and yellow.

So keep rotating the snotling for six turns, or until he catches on fire.

Lastly of course is the display board.  Standard 2x2 size (though there is enough space to have made it a little smaller) - simply framed - half water and half sandy beach.  The coral in the corner was just to help break it up a bit - and is honestly a real pain as it keeps the board from being able to fit flat anywhere.  I probably would not have the coral if I did it over again.

The empty display board in all its glory.

So that is Da Beech Boyz - I believe it is 2500 points.  If I were to ever go back to it (not likely, as I've decided not to play WFB anymore, and Kings of War has Orcs and Goblins as two separate armies) I had thought about adding river trolls to it as they were a nice kit, though I'd need to do something to convert them.  The one other unit I never did was goblins surfing.  These would have been wolf riders - so the surfboards would all have the space wolves logos on them.  I wanted to make them in a wave - even a full tunnel with a hand in back.  One difficulty of course is doing this as 10 individual models that can be removed - though if I were to do it as Kings of War I could make a single diorama out of it.

Because it is all fun and games . . .