Mad Max Fury Road Ork Army Part 3: The Goff Wagon
VRROOM VROOOM! Follow along with our progress on this Mad Max Fury Road Ork Army!
Greetings fellow wargamers! Caleb with White Metal Games here. This series of articles will follow the creation of a Mad Max Fury Road themed Orks Warhammer 40k Army. (Not to be confused with another, similar project we are simultaneously doing, a Mad Max ‘Compilation’ style army, which had a heftier budget and was quite different by the end)
Part 1 of this series can be found here: Immortan Joe on Blitzbike
White Metal Games is a miniature painting commission service based out of Raleigh, North Carolina.We specialize in producing custom models for any range, including wargames, board games, roleplaying games, historical figures, and display dioramas.
HOW THIS ARMY CAME TO LIFE: For those that hate backstory, feel free to skip ahead to EXECUTION below
A few years ago, on a lark, I set about building a Necron/Ork fusion army called the Necrorks. This army was exhaustively covered through a blog article on BOLS here.
Although we had no client at the time, I was eager to cut my teeth on a REALLY big project and show just how far you could push a kitbash/conversion project, cranking it up to 11! There were many interested parties, and the army sold quickly. This ended up being a great project for me as a calling card to showcase just what I could do if given the opportunity and an ample budget!
But even with the army sold I didn’t want to stop there. I had dozens of other ideas for projects and wanted to share these ideas with prospective clients! So I created a sample listing on Ebay.
The listing is kind of a generic calling card or placeholder. It’s intentionally high, so that buyers will open up a dialogue with me before they buy. There are dozens of ideas on the sample listing, and more to follow on our website in the months to come!
Over the past few months we had multiple inquiries, and through an unusual turn of events, two different clients back to back requested Mad Max Themed Ork armies, although with different budgets and lists but some overall similarities, such as paint scheme.
For sake of ease, we are going to refer to this army as MAD MAX-FURY ROAD army. The client wants more of an emphasis on the latest film in the Mad Max franchise and the army will reflect this more than anything.
If you haven’t picked up on it yet, this isn’t a ‘how to’ article. It’s an overview. I’m going to skip steps from time to time. This is meant to give you a general impression of my workflow and how I got from A to Z, skipping many letters in between.
Which leads us to . . . .
EXECUTION -Da Goff Wagon
To begin, I plan to use a traditional Battlewagon for the basis of the Goff Wagon. I ‘mostly’ assemble a battlewagon, and then start to thing about how to Goff this thing up. In essence, the Doof wagon is just a suped up truck with a ventillation system that serves to reverberate the drums, that end up pumped through a series of loudspeakers. This backs up to a stage, where a rock star, suspended beneath a catwalk like awning, blares music with his electronic guitar which also spews fires. So . . . piece of cake. I immediately think of Burna Boyz and my brain starts to work.
I have this Tamiya Mammoth Dump truck model I picked up Ebay on a lark a few months ago. Thebody itself isn’t bad and kinda looks like it could work for the ‘ventilation’ system. I set about dry fitting it on the rear bed and realize the side rails are going to have to go. I also rip out the old cab door, since it won’t be seen when the model is done and I can use it down the road for something else, like plating or siding or even just a door on a terrain piece. I cut the truck bed in half and start playing with orientation until I get a good dry fit on the pieces.
I figure well, the front grill on the old dump truck cab sort of looks like an amplifier so I decide to use that to back the stage. Now I finally start gluing shit in place. I erect a tentative stage using some Robogear platformer kits, which I tend to buy on Ebay in bulk with other generic kits I can kitbash from time to time. I make some can lights from a combination of Robogear Chemical plant pipe connectors, some plastic tubing, and a plastic piece from some generic toy I got in a CVS or something. The lesson here is use what you’ve got around!
I add some plating to the side of the truck bed and enclose the reverberation system. I also add these missile pods from the same generic CVS toy from above. I think it was a hovercraft of some sort. More importantly, I add the drummers! The traditional Goff wagon has 4 drummers, but this is an inspired piece, not a copycat model, so two will be fine. I give them some drum sticks from gear shafts and support some chairs using a variety of spare bits, including some Deffrolla supports, and Marine bike footrests. Next comes the fun stuff, the stage!
I’ve learned over the years, having done a project similar to this a few years ago , a Rock Band Squiggoth, that when it comes to a stage, speakers are hard to do. It’s tough to find convincing amphlifier outputs. I used some melta bombs from an ork kit for spears, sort of, and then came across these goodies in my bits box. I think they’re from a game called AT-43, but that game is long OOP now so good luck hunting these down. What I will say is when you find a bit you like and it goes on sale, stock up because you never know when you might need it down the road. For the guitar player himself, I took a Burna Boy and modified him, adding part of a choppa and a Chaos searchlight to make a makeshift guitar. Unpictured, I string him up with some thin wire.
Here are the finished pictures of the converted model, photographed for the client. I think, overall, this definitely reminds me of an Orky version of the Doof wagon, but what do you guys think? Let us know your thoughts on the matter, how we could have made it better or what you might have done differently given the chance. Or hell, build on and send me some pics!
Follow along with this series because in the next article, we’ll add a few Ork Trukks to the mix, and make sure they’re all kitted up, Mad Max Fury Road style!
White Metal Games is a miniature painting commission service based out of Raleigh, North Carolina.We specialize in producing custom models for any range, including wargames, board games, roleplaying games, historical figures, and display dioramas.
White Metal Games is currently going under a web-redesign. Come see the progress on our new web page as it develops!
And until next time, this is Caleb reminding you to PUT YOUR MINIS WHERE YOUR MOUTH IS!!!
Caleb Dillon
White Metal Games
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