Warhammer 40,000 - Thoughts on the Emperor

 

Let's start this out with a little background. If you're here then you probably already know all this but if you've stumbled on the blog for the other stuff I do this may prove helpful. Summary - Games Workshop created a tabletop wargame set in the year 40,000 (40k) and has a shit-ton of books/lore about the setting. At the top of the heap is the Emperor of Mankind - this dude up here who likes gold armor and stuff I'll talk about later. Before you ask there are no good guys anywhere in the lore. Seriously. No one is good. The genre is 'Grimdark' and it really is both grim and dark.

Now that the base concept is out of the way, let's talk about this guy. Colloquially we refer to him as Big E. There's other versions of that but it's kind of a nickname and also has a bit of snark because of what he is. One big reason for it thought is that we don't know his actual name. The lore (as far as I've read and per the wiki) does not give him a name, at least not yet.

Another concept that wraps around the story is Chaos. That's a whole 'nother universe that is trying to take over this one. That's important for story and game purposes. It's also known formally as the Immaterium and the shorthand version is the Warp. The Warp serves three functions in the game and lore:

1. The source of physic powers
2. Their way to do hyperspace travel
3. To corrupt humanity so that there's bad and other bad guys fighting each other

Side note. If you've ever watched the movie Event Horizon it's mostly canon 40k at this point and the first time humans have encountered the Warp/Chaos. The writers were big 40k fans and after much fan discussion GW just gave in and said that sure, it's canon, go with that. The movie is pretty good so watch it if get the chance.

OK. I think we've got a setup going on here. If you're a lore person this would be the absolute barest introduction to one small section of the larger universe and the jumping off point for far more discussion than anyone into the game - and many who are - would not want to engage in if they had the choice. Because there's also a shit-ton of 30k lore that builds up to 40k lore. Lore enthusiasts who find each other tend to become bestest buddies. I'm an enthusiast and it probably explains why I can't get a date. But I digress.

The Emperor is considered the most powerful psycher (that's their term for someone who can use the Warp for psychic effect) in the universe, has the Perpetual gene so he's immortal, is stupid smart, has an expert understanding of genetic engineering, and doesn't actually give a rat's ass about humanity in general no matter what he says. He's got one friend who's been with him since the start of his real rise to power, who is also a powerful psycher but not immortal by nature. That guys name is Malcador the Sigilite but we won't get into him because he doesn't weave into the part of Big E's story that I'm going to focus on.

The Emperor was born in the Bronze Age of humanity. There's backstory on how he got the powerful psychic powers that's not really important but he knew early on he could do stuff with his mind. He also got the Perpetual gene and a taste for temporal power at the same time. Yes. The dude has been around since the Bronze Age. That gives you an idea how far back the lore goes.

Funny enough GW has been stingy with information about what happened with him between then and the current game era. There's been little throwaway short stories and throwaway references but in general he didn't do much visible stuff in all that time. There's reference to him occasionally showing up to lead parts of humanity but then he wanders off again. Personally I think he was biding his time until he could take complete control. He didn't see the point in being leader of one country because it would make him known to the world in general. It kind of makes sense when he knows he's not going to die any time soon and he's got Big Plans for the future.

Let's jump forward to another period of history that's left vague by GW - the Unification Wars. Earth is a mess, warlords are all over the place trying to grab as much as they can, and Big E finally saw his opportunity. As he worked his way around the planet and took over the various mini empires he also took the relatives of the defeated warlords, gene engineered each of them into his own private army, and moved onto the next.

He also did something not very cool. He made a foot soldier army called the Thunder Warriors. Consider them the Bic lighter version of his future gene engineered warriors known as the Space Marines that the game and lore is so well known for. There's not a lot known about the Thunder Warriors except that they were an experiment that the Emperor knew would be a short term project. After he won the Unification Wars and became the supreme leader, he killed almost all the Thunder Warriors. The official statement is that they died heroically in one last battle. The reality is that he had no more use for them and had them eliminated. A few survived and show up in short stories, etc. But in general they were made a footnote in the story of the empire he was building.

Dude. Not cool. But it's a very good example of his attachment to his creations.

Funny thing. He went into the Warp to learn his advanced genetic engineering and seems to have weaseled out of whatever bargain he made to get them. That matters in a bit in two ways.

So the guy is now top dog of Earth. What's left of Earth after centuries of decay and war but now he's got the power to try to repair that. To his credit he does start doing that, probably for selfish reasons because he wanted a pretty planet to be his home base. With Earth under his control it's time for the next phase in his plan - a universal Empire.

You do have to admit the guy had ambition and the power to back it up. By this time he had his personal guard of bespoke genetic engineered warriors to be his bodyguard and elite strike force. Note the term 'bespoke'. If you aren't familiar with it think 'custom made' since each one was individually genetically engineered using their original bodies.

This is where things get hinkey. He knew he needed to be in more places than one to build an empire and that he needed generals to do what needed to be done. Of course he went the genetic engineering route, using what he learned/stole from Chaos. This was not his finest hour.

Let's introduce Erda. She's not referenced much but she's generally considered the woman who contributed the necessary half of genetic material for the next project. She's also a Perpetual and once her role was done she shook Big E's dust off her feet and went .. somewhere. She's a Perpetual so she's probably still out there but doing her own thing but so far I haven't found anything that says what that is.

If you haven't guessed the lore deals almost entirely with men. This has caused much vitriol in the community. It doesn't help that the game itself started out advertising to teenage boys with their parents' credit cards. It's got a much broader customer base now that those kids have aged into adults with their own disposable income.

Anyway. Onward.

Picking up on his Galactic Empire project Big E decided to make brand new generals. Not just any generals but more or less superhuman generals. Big feckers. Each one of them would have unique qualities for specific areas of his new empire built into their DNA. Well. HIS DNA because of course all the generals were dudes. This time around he made them from scratch, using that nifty knowledge he stole. This was not a good idea.

He made 20 (or 21 depending on whether or not you count the 20th set of twins as one or two, in lore they're considered one) and created a special place where Chaos couldn't get to them. Yeah, right. Chaos got their mitts on them and flung them out into the universe. Now Big E had to find them. But first? He needed his army and this time he didn't want mistakes. The Space Marines were the new ones and while the were assembly line genetics each set was infused with some of the DNA from the Primarch who was going to lead them.

GW is big into pseudo-Latin. They call it Gothic. High and Low Gothic, depending on how formal they're being. There's a bunch of it scattered throughout the lore. Get used to it and if you know actual Latin be prepared to wince a lot.

So Chaos took the incubation pods and sent them to various and sundry worlds. Now the Emperor not only has to build his empire but he has to find these kids to do the jobs they were created to do. As he does he gives them the legion they were meant to head, all of which have already been fighting in the Crusade.

I think you can already see why lore discussion require people who get into the lore itself. It's a rich world that's been created but it's a lot of stuff. And this is just background, mind you.

The Primarchs are gathered up and each one has two things going on:

1. They've all got a touch of Chaos in their makeup. Go figure, given how Chaos knowledge was used to make them
2. They've all taken on qualities from the world where they grew up. Conveniently they went from infants in the incubation pods to adults in stupidly short periods of time

Cue the Galactic Crusade. As you can expect it goes pretty much like any crusade. They find a planet they like, they conquer it. then they remake the society to be what Big E has in mind and make them send resources to fund the Crusade, they move on to the next one. This was happening while the Emperor was looking for his lost sons.

Let's talk about 'sons'. The Primarchs all refer to him as their father. That makes sense given a broad definition of fatherhood. Canonically the Emperor considers them tools for his empire and indulges them by letting them call him father. He honestly doesn't care about them as individuals. It's something that's easily missed since he does call them 'son' when he talks with them so it would be easy to be fooled into thinking he cared about them beyond their usefulness to his wars.

He finds all the Primarchs. He gives each one their legion of Space Marines, all of which are renamed to match up with their new leaders. Then he makes a mistake. Yes, even all powerful guys make mistakes and this one is both valid and a reason for the rest of the lore. His mistake was to leave the Crusade to return to Earth and work on his long term project. He appoints the Primarch designed to be the best general in charge.

This went .. OK. The guy he appointed knew is stuff and with only some resentment the rest of the Primarchs accepted him as the new general. A handful thought they should be the one but overall they dealt with having someone they considered a peer elevated over them. BTW - in the cartoon the Emperor skips the one with the wings to tell him not to fight. That's because the guy with the wings is more or less totally good but still isn't a good guy. After that Big E goes back to Earth and the absolutely massive palace he's building to work on the Secret Project.

Now it's time to summarize because there's dozens upon dozens of books going over the 30k/Horus Heresy situation. Horus is the guy chosen to be general and because he's a fucking idiot he decides that he should rule the empire. One of the higher placed Space Marines has already been dabbling with Chaos and gets him to turn traitor. Fucking Erebus. We all hate Erebus. As part of turning traitor the most psychic of the Patriarchs is convinced he needs to tell the Emperor what's going on and does what he's been told specifically not to do - to use his psychic powers to take him to the palace.

See, the long term project is the remove the need for Chaos from Humanity. There's another way to get from place to place that an alien race has been using for pretty much forever and it's isolated from Chaos. Big E is working on a way to use that and one of his Primarchs was made to keep that way available. That would be Magnus the Red. Who was specifically told to do nothing with is psychic powers. In fact the use of psychic powers by anyone except the Emperor and his buddy Malcador are expressly forbidden. But, fuckin' Erebus.

This is where things go wrong. The Emperor's careful work to connect Humanity with the other way (the Webway) gets kinda borked by Magnus and it just happens to open a hole between the Webway and Chaos. The exact thing that the Webway was set up to avoid. Now more trouble happens since the Emperor has to mitigate that damage.

Wrapping up now. Horus is being very efficient at turning other Primarchs and their legions to Chaos then making war on them and various planets in the current Empire. The Emperor is stuck on Earth using all his psychic power to hold Chaos from coming through the hole Magnus made. And Horus is intent on taking over Earth/Terra from the Emperor.

Whew. That's a lot even as a summary.

Where was I going with this? Back to the Emperor. He's a true emperor in that he doesn't give a damn about the people he's ruling. He really doesn't. He doesn't care about the people living on the planets he conquered except that they pay their tithes. He doesn't care about his Primarchs, who consider him their father. He doesn't care about the Space Marines, leaving them to their Primarchs to handle. He doesn't care about the state of the Crusade he started.

His real concern seems noble - keep the forces of Chaos from meddling with/taking over Humanity. But even that is because he doesn't like Chaos. In theory they would take over Humanity if left unchecked. At least that's what he says. Now he's trapped by his own creation to never leave the control throne so the hole doesn't get breached. The empire he was building is still limping along but the Primarchs are gone (I haven't gotten to the books where most of them were removed - there's a few who have been killed in the 30k stuff). The Space Marines are all over the place, doing Space Marine stuff based on the nature of their Primarchs. Some are loyal, some are chaos, all hate anything that's not human.

The Emperor is stuck on the Golden Throne because he was almost killed in the battle with Horus and his minions dragged him to the throne to keep him alive, for a given definition of alive. He's been there for 10,000 years, holding the forces of Chaos at bay. Except for the ones that the heretic Space Marines have been playing with, and there's a few Primarchs who are over in the Warp being powerful and stuff. He needs a little help in that his priests feed 1,000 people with decent psychic ability to the cause. And literally feed since those 1,000 never come back out of the throne room.

During his (active) lifetime the Emperor denied being a god. He considered religion irrational in general and wiped it out of his empire. That caused some problems with one of the Primarchs but we're not getting into that. He kind of let the technicians on Mars consider him a sort of god so that he got access to all the cool things they were building but never really admitted or denied the whole thing. After he couldn't take an active part in the Empire the people deified him. So now he's a god whether he likes it or not.

Why did I bother to write all this out? 

I have a bit of a fondness for the big guy. There's a ton of fanfic out there about what he did in all the time between the Bronze Age and after the Unification Wars. There's very little canon. Personally I think he laid low, maybe played kingmaker, and let things settle themselves until he saw the time to take the reins for everything. It would make sense since he needed technology to advance to the point to match what he wanted to do. And since he was the next best thing to immortal he could wait it out.

Let's have a brief chat about that immortality thing. He wasn't the only person who had that gene. I mentioned Erda. There's a few others (John Grammaticus! But he's not immortal anymore) that show up in the books/lore and he was friendly with at least one of those people. Being immortal could have a big impact on how he viewed humanity since they never stuck around for long. I'd say he never passed along the Perpetual gene into his creations but the first set of genetic engineered guys seem to last and at least one Primarch has survived well beyond anything someone should survive. The Primarchs are tough but they're not immortal.

More about immortality. It seems that it only goes so far. If the damage is bad enough, it can't stop death. The thing that seems to override it is severe damage to the spinal cord. There's far too many times someone was killed by being broken over someone's knee in general. Far too many. It's kind of a theme and heavy foreshadowing. That's how Horus almost killed the Emperor. Almost and it may have worked if the throne, with its life support capabilities, wasn't conveniently right at hand. Horus was also directly/indirectly responsible for the death of Malcador since he took the throne while the Emperor fought Horus and he wasn't nearly as powerful as Big E so he got sucked dry by the effort.

And what was the Emperor going to do once he carved a hole in the Webway for humanity to use and needed to keep it open? He built Magnus specifically to do nothing but sit on that throne and keep it open. For the rest of time. It's kind of ironic that Magnus did what he did and made it so the Emperor had to take that role. I think it serves the Emperor right.

Afterword

The 40k universe has been devoid of the Primarchs as active participants, has the Space Marine legions either loyal to the Emperor or fallen to Chaos, and alien races of various kinds have been around for all the legions to fight when they're not fighting each other. In lore the planets of the empire are treated pretty badly to the point of eliminating all life on them if someone thinks it's a good idea and they don't figure into the game at all except as an origin point for a couple of sub factions of human soldiers.

The current lore and game have Primarchs returning by various means. What that means for the whole thing I'm not sure about yet and I'm not sure how I feel about it. The Emperor also seems to be waking up so that's going to be a whole new kettle of fish when he finds out what's happened since he was plopped onto the throne. Funny enough the original Emperor's guard has been the biggest deterrent in the empire since they're still the same as when he was around even though they've had to replenish their ranks without him.

As for the various sizes of the groups I mentioned here's something that's vaguely considered canonical.

The Emperor is a tricky one to pin down since he appears however he wants to appear so he's not on the scale. The Primarchs vary in height and the books aren't consistent. The Custodes are generally big. Space Marines (Adeptus Astartes so GW could copyright/trademark the name) are about right although they also vary in height since they all start out as humans before they're upgraded into what's called transhumans. Figure that's a six foot/almost 2 meter tall human because they're noted as chest high or shorter than the Space Marines.

Attribution

The top artwork is uncredited because I can't find the original artist.

All the cartoons are the work of emwattnot and I dearly love those. However if you're not into the lore most of them won't make sense and/or be as funny. He uses current memes as a base for a lot of them, as you can tell.

The size reference is attributed to Tim Remin but he's not on Patreon anymore it seems.

I used the fan created Warhammer 40,000 Wiki for the bits and pieces where I needed to get things in order.

Warhammer 40K TV Series?

 

This post is going to be a little different. I've had my own thoughts about the 40k universe as I've been reading Horus Heresy and what it means to be a Space Marine. This kind of ties into the strong rumors of Amazon making a series out of it with Henry Cavill. I have thoughts about him too.

I'll try to make this as coherent as possible but for anyone who has read my blog you know I can't make any promises. I don't know why I bother to say I'll try but I do. I think it makes me seem like I'll be better this time. We all know I won't.

About the 40k universe. I'm talking about the Space Marines in this case. Yes, Custodes kind of fall under that but they're not important to the general theme I'm going for. And yes, Primarchs but they're not relevant either. All three are gene engineered but to different extents. As Space Marines are the equivalent of generic while the others are brand name we'll go with that.

Yes. In the lore the Space Marine tinkering was meant to be generic. Anything more than that took too long. So Big E toned down the goodies and made a bunch of super soldiers without any real special stuff. They're assembly line work. And they're treated as disposable in a lot of respects even without going through all the HH culling. Because, after all, they can always make more.

Now I'm going into my head canon and my own small knowledge of biology. It's been a long time since I took biology but with the lore and a bit of that there's some things that come to mind for Space Marines. The short version is that they're mules. The process that makes them into Space Marines pretty much takes them out of the gene pool. And that's by intention.

So many books refer to the changes in their physiology. There's a consistent "He would have been handsome if it hadn't been for ...". They're massive compared to humanity. And they're processed when they're teenagers. They have the fear response removed. So hormonally they're altered as well. All in all it makes sense to cut them out of the human pool since they're not meant to spread the geneseed willy nilly.

Then there's that geenseed. It comes from implanted organs. So there's no canon on whether or not those changes actually change the DNA or if they're reliant on the organs. The implication is that the organs do it and that's why they take them back when they can. There's bits and pieces saying that the 'donors' will live on in the next implantation but that's the kind of lie someone who's dying would tell themself. As it is the geneseed seems separate from previous hosts or they're be far more careful who they took it from.

Why am I going on about whether or not Space Marines get it on? Because with the way they're made and the changes I honestly don't think they can. Quite probably their naughty bits aren't part of the equation and the hormones involved down there have been rerouted into more aggression and less fear. So not only may they not be able to do the dirty they don't have any interest in it.

On to Mr. Cavill. He's a handsome man in most respects. When he's all cleaned up and shiny he's about as interesting as a soggy water biscuit. I stole that. Honestly - have a look at him on the red carpet or as Superman and while he's good looking he's rather meh. When they dirtied him up as Geralt he looks a lot better. At least in my and general opinion. He's got the kind of face that needs definition that comes from hard living.

Which brings me to the next point. How are they going to cast him? There's a lot of talk about which of the lore characters he'd be and my thought is that he should be none of them. Space Marines aren't handsome. They're also huge. So anything where he's in the Space Marine clique would require the huge costumes, CGI, and other expensive things that look dated a year after they're released. There's also only so much you can do with a chapter of Space Marines. They fight. They practice fighting. They fight. There's not much else in their lives. That's what they were built for. And they wear those big helmets. What's the point of casting a well-known handsome actor when you're going to slap a helmet on him for most of the show?

My personal opinion is that the series would be better served by using the guardsmen as the central focus. The humans. And I say this for several reasons.

The first reason is cost. Having the bulk of the cast be human means they're working just fine with fewer special effects. That and the comparison between them and the Space Marines would be more jarring. Fewer Space Marines too when it comes to that. Showing the difference between guardsmen who do know fear and the ones who don't make both more emphatic.

The second reason is story. As I said earlier - Space Marines are pretty boring, story wise. They have their little spats within the chapters but overall they do what they're told. They're toy soldiers. It would be problematic if they keep killing off characters around the one Henry is playing. Making him more of a leader again gives the problem of a fluid cast around him and little in the way of character development. Space Marines don't grow.

My personal idea is to make him a put-up guardsman sergeant. Give him a troop and all the problems that come with being in that rank. Then he could really chew the scenery and have a decent ensemble cast to keep the stories fresh. Killing off one or two won't matter as much and the Space Marines are as rare as they should be.

There's people who are trying to decide what Primarch he should be. Unless they go back to 30k time there's not that many to choose from and they were even less interesting than the Space Marines. These were beings designed for specific roles and they didn't really deviate. They're figureheads and the amount of special effects to have a main character as a Primarch would be incredibly cost prohibitive.

I know everyone wants him to be the Hero. That's what he's been. But maybe it's time to let him be the hero, lower case letter H. Center the show around him but not as the top of the pyramid. Having characters both above and below him would give him a huge range that's not possible when it gets unbalanced. Let's face it - 40k is unbalanced enough as a game that doing it as a show would be correct but annoying.

Another reason to put him as a human would be to let him be human. That means his physiology would be just fine the way it is. Heck, he could even cut down on the weightlifting and slim down a little. Being human means romantic interests. It means getting hurt. It means fearing things that the big guys brush off. It gives him a range as an actor that isn't possible if they cast him different.

I could be completely wrong on this. On all of it. I don't think I'm completely off the mark on the geneseed stuff but the show? Yeah. They're going for ratings. And if their audience is expected and demanding the guy play in power armor then he'll be in power armor. I just think it would be a waste of the show and of the actor to take away so many options for where things could go.

Comment below if you have thoughts on this. Note that all comments are moderated on this blog so if you're just going to call me names it isn't getting through. Comments that are civil will go through even if they destroy every single thing I've written here. I'm all for discussion, if it's done with manners.

Ork Speed Freeks - Work In Progress 5

This time it's red. Lovely, lovely, pain-in-the-butt red. I won't go into the long winded details of the painting techniques because I did that in Part 4 of this series. You're welcome.

I'm still using craft paints, as the picture below shows. Here's the set of colors this time around.

The specific paints are:

• Anita All Purpose Acrylic - 11039 Wine - Pantone 7623
• Anita All Purpose Acrylic - 11003 True Red - Pantone 186
• Anita All Purpose Acrylic - 308062 Light Coral - Pantone  489 (closest, Pantone is darker)

This time there's no white or ivory. Red is one of those annoyingly difficult colors because it's wonderful right up until you get to highlighting. Highlighting means using some other color than red because red plus white equals PINK. While pink is not a terrible color in and of itself it doesn't work well for most things I paint red.

If you look up tutorials you find a lot of different ways to go with red highlights. Because of all the dark yellow on mine I decided to lean into the orange range without actually going orange. I picked that coral color because it's still in the red family while leaning into orange. Coral is one of those colors I dislike for no reason I know. It seems to work for this so now I'm stuck with having coral paint around.

To same some time here's the red and red-coral mixes dried on the parchment paper for your review.

You can see that there's three shades on here. Let me explain them.

Center right - True Red. I like this color. It's a vibrant red with not so great coverage. At least two coats are needed to get this one decent. More on that later.

Lower center - True Red and Coral in about a 3:1 ratio. I'm not exactly sure since I mixed and added until I liked it. This was the color stippled over the base coat.

Upper left - True Red and Coral in about a 4:1 ratio. Again I can't be certain because I mixed on the fly. This one is darker than the first mix because it went on after the glaze.

Not shown - The color from the upper left with more Coral to use as edge highlighting. It was probably about the same as the one in the lower center or slightly lighter.

As you can tell I'm not very concerned about matching these colors again. Orks are wonderful for variation. What I was concerned about was building up a depth of colors.

First up - base coating.

Nothing too fancy here, it's a red base coat. If I were doing fancy painting I would have gone back over all the areas I was going to paint red with white or grey so they were a consistent base. As it is there's black, grey, white, and some yellow under there. There are differences where those change but I didn't think it was important enough to spend the effort.

Base Stipple

As you can see there's a lot of difference between the two colors and it looks pretty harsh. This time I cut down a smaller brush for stippling since I was going to be painting smaller areas. I also did a few lines of the lighter color on the weapons where I wanted a different effect. I'm going to work on that later as I get more into the details.

Glaze

The wine glaze smoothed out those color transitions nicely and added the depth and lining. The red-coral mix is still more visible than the yellow mixes were but that's part of painting red when you're not doing it in lots of layer transitions.

I also moved the glaze around while it was wet so it would have some variation rather than making it smooth. It's kind of subtle but adds to the overall effect.

Second Stipple and Edge Highlights

And the bulk of the red is done. It's still got a kind of pink cast to it in my opinion but not enough to make me want to do anything about it. On the tabletop it isn't all that obvious and with all the other colors that will be involved it won't stand out like it does here.

I'm not going to say the red is done. I know I'll be using red in detailing so there will be more on the models. I don't know what I'm going to do about color, depth, etc. until I get to that point.

One thing that slows down the process now is picking where to paint a color. That happens at the base coat step. Orks are random. Random is more difficult than people think. We like patterns. Trying not to make patterns is frustrating because I keep double checking myself. In this case it's worse because of the prevalence of red in the canon color schemes. I did my best.

Going forward the posts won't be about a single color. I'm past that point in the process. The bulk of the models have been painted and now it's on to the detail work. The technique I use for important colors is well documented (base coat, stipple, glaze, stipple, edge highlight) so I'll do the same as here and just link back to the original post without showing all the stages of the process. Unless I think it looks cool in which case you get to see all the steps.

You will notice I haven't really touched the orks except when I overpainted a color. That's because I consider them a separate object to paint. It would have been very nice if the riders were separate models but they're not so I work with what I have. I did do some black base coats when I was in my black phase and those may or may not stay. It's all about what looks good in the moment really.

Ork Speed Freeks - A Work in Progress 4

And we're on to colors! Well. One color. Since these are going to be run mostly as Evil Sunz that means yellow is the main color for them. That's just how it is. And of course yellow is one of the more difficult colors to paint.

I started trying out miniature paints and found that even with the surplus of paints I have I didn't have the right yellow to get a color I wanted. Yes. I did look at mixing, as much as I don't like mixing paints for armies. I even ordered another set of yellows but I'll show you what happened there later. I ended up buying craft paints for a couple of reasons.

One - They're cheap. Vehicles take a lot more paint that miniatures for the most part and there's no real need to use the expensive stuff for them.

Two - They cover well. Once again I'm looking at army painting here. So covering well is an important thing.

The colors I decided on were these. They're the Hobby Lobby house brand so I included Pantone numbers for those who are looking for a close match. Since I have a Pantone sample swatch book I have to assume everyone has one.

• Anita All Purpose Acrylic - 11164 Ripe Apricot - Pantone 150
• Anita All Purpose Acrylic - 11005 Bright Yellow - Pantone 116 (close enough)
• Ivory (any will do)
• White (any will do)

The first layer is 2 coats of Bright Yellow over grey primer. Or use white primer. But I don't recommend black primer once you get into the colors because it's a pain in the butt to get both coverage and bright colors. But you do you.

It looks a little bland but that's fine. It's a solid yellow base to use to build up (and down) colors. I left some areas unpainted that I plan on painting other colors and I painted some areas that will probably get painted other colors. It's an evolving process.

Now we get into the fun part of painting orks - the lack of uniformity. For most factions you want things to be uniform. Because, uniforms. The ork faction is pretty haphazard by design so it gives you a lot of creative freedom and the ability to cut as many corners as you want.

The next layer is a stipple of lighter yellow. Let's get into that.

For those who aren't familiar with the stipple technique. You need a brush with short, stiff bristles. Take one of your synthetic ones that isn't floppy and cut it straight across a short distance (1/8 inch or 5mm at minimum). This brush is gonna get wrecked but that's fine. Then pick up a small amount of paint, maybe double what you would use for dry brushing but half as much as you'd use for regular painting, then you're ready to stipple. Stab the area to be painted randomly with the brush. Voila - stippled. Or maybe gobbed in this case.

I mixed up a lighter shade of yellow from the base coat; I wanted something duller than the color straight white would give so I decided to use ivory too.

First I tried straight ivory paint and didn't like that the result was really dull and greenish.

See? Meh and greenish.

Next I tried a half-and-half mix of ivory and white. I wanted to dull the color (ivory) while still keeping it bright (white). That was the winner. Coincidentally it's almost identical to Reaper Miniature's limited edition Golden Glow paint.

Now that I had the lighter color I blotched stippled it all over the base coat. In reality I painted blotches over about half the base coat so I had both colors showing.

The orks sat here for a while due to some pretty serious real life issues. If you know me either you know what happened or you can ask. If you don't know me then just accept that they were pretty serious life issues. It took me a while to get back to painting in general.

On to the next step - covering up all that paint. Really what I did was paint over everything with a transparent glaze of the darker yellow. That blends the colors into a more harmonious whole while leaving me the ability to keep going light again. If that makes any sense. Just look at the pictures.

I used acrylic blending gel rather than matte medium because it has the glazing properties that matte medium doesn't. After mixing it with the paint I added flow improver until I was happy with the result. It's just like making the contrast paints in that I drew up the paint onto the side of the palette until it had the right viscosity. I'd try to explain more but it's something you have to learn in person. Remember - paint is cheap so keep trying.

You can see the previous colors through the glaze and that it pooled in the recesses to do some nice shading.

Next up was more paint! I'm using the light yellow mix again. I did the same stipple thing as before but in smaller areas.

These pictures are doing double duty because I took them after I used a lighter version of the light paint to do edge highlighting. To make it lighter I used white. That made it the bright color but it was already light enough that it didn't go cartoonish on me. I wasn't very picky about edge highlighting because orks. But I did do all the hard edges and the softer ones on those face fronts. I also did some on the big curve of the wartrike front fenders.

And that's it. The yellow is done. When I paint more the lighter yellows won't be exactly the same but they'll be close enough. You can see that this turned out a very good yellow without leaning into the orange too much and without being YELLOW. It is a difficult color to paint but I think I chose well when I picked the shades.

I got pretty sloppy when painting these. It's part of the way things go both when stippling and when glazing. Once I saw it was going to get messy I accepted it. That doesn't mean I didn't try to make it tidy. It meant that I knew I was going to have to do cleanup after it was done. As it is I'm going to hold off on that until the rest of the colors are painted or I'd be doing that more than is needed.

I did say I'd let you know know what happened with the set of yellow paints I ordered. I'm not going to name the brand. I like the brand. I use them when I paint miniatures. They didn't work for this particular project but that's nothing against them.

This was one coat of the darker but not darkest yellow in the set. You can see that it already went green and just didn't look right. At least it didn't look right to me. It wasn't ork yellow. So I painted over it with the craft paint and never looked back.

This little end bit is to remind you to try things. Nothing was harmed here and it didn't take me much time to try, decide, and move forward. Some won't work, some will work, some will surprise you. If you're really not sure try one decent size area or a failed print/piece of sprue and use that as your test piece. 

Ork Speed Freeks - A Work in Progress 3

Each step is less and less surface area to paint. Yay! This time it was the silver for anything I want to be metal. It's painted over black to give it some depth. Rather than doing large group pictures going forward I'll be showing smaller batches since details will start to matter soon.

Yes, I can see the layer lines too.

The Megatrakk Scrapjet has the metal on it. I'm not really sure how I'm going to paint the treads yet so those are still black. I forgot to get a side picture to show the tread workings but since it's been further painted I don't want to muddle up the order. There's a lot of silver in there too.

I'm trying very hard not to let the layer lines bother me but I have a feeling that these will be retired in favor of resin printed ones at some point in the future unless I can minimize how those layer lines stand out. For now they stay. This taught me lessons in patience about printing thinner layers even though it takes longer, and I've done that with other vehicles going forward.

Shiny metal guns, struts, exhaust, claws, etc.

The leftmost magnetized arm looks like it doesn't sit flush but I think there's a loose piece of pin in the body cavity causing that. I didn't do a lot to make these pretty pictures since it's a WIP.

Yet another view, showing the differences. I know there's a lot of faces as the front fender but that's because I forgot to print one of the options and printed that one twice.

The Nob Bikers with their power claws (which haven't been seen before). The claw arms are magnetized so I can swap out weapons and because of that they're painted separately. That's why they weren't shown before.

I was bothered by the rectangular block on the back wheel/tread area (see previous posts for those) because it didn't seem right. Finally I realized I had forgotten to print the guns. Sigh. I hadn't even prepared the files for printing. Those got printed, I stripped the paint off the contact areas on the bikes, painted the guns up separate, then attached them. I have to touch up the joins but they're out of the way enough not to matter that much. Forgetting the guns. Sheesh.

Here's the boyz! Warbikers go vroom.

Another view showing the variety of poses.

Now we're getting into the basic fast attack troops. They don't have weapon options so everything is what it looks like. One again it's silver over the black.

Another set of warbikers. These have humanoid skulls on them in various places.

Another view of them.

Yet another view! The humanoid skulls are quite small compared to the size of the orks, which is as it should be.

A different set of warbikers which adds variety. I prefer a variety in my troops and luckily I can get it with 3D printing them. One of these guys isn't behaving at all when it comes to attaching the front wheel assembly. I have it pinned and even now it's a bit loose. Once it's on the base it will be fine but I need to be a bit careful when handling it. I don't like him.

My, that's a big gun you have there.

More warbikers, more guns.

Yet another different set of warbikers. I don't quite understand the metal plates wrapping around the tires but I guess it's an ork thing. I'll be doing some weathering on those when the painting is done. These have a space for a gun to be attached to their back and I had an extra so the center guy got two. His grots like him better.

Oh yeah baby.

I still really like the unusual aspect of a trike with two wheels in the front. It's way front heavy because I didn't hollow those out when I printed them and I won't make that mistake if I print another. I probably won't because these don't have a lot on the table at once and I have different versions if I want another one.

I didn't magnetize his claw arm because he only has one arm option. I could have done it but the other one I have right now has a claw on that arm too. Seems like this fella likes his power claw.

I touched up the black after painting the silver but I know I'll have to keep touching up things as I paint. It's part of life. Going forward I'll be using craft paint for silver rather than the expensive stuff. Silver is silver and these things eat paint and brushes. I bought more cheap craft paint brushes too.

The silver that's on it is Army Painter Plate Mail Metal. It covered great in one coat.

The Games Workshop Way is to pick out details on metal with a bronze/copper color. I did a little of that and painted over it. I'm not sure how I'm going to pick out the details on these yet. There's a nice amount of detail on the weapons so I'll have some fun with it.

Next up will be painting yellow because most vehicles are used in Evil Sunz clan games and their color is yellow. Yes, I know red makes things go faster but that's more a Goff color. Yes, I know Goffs tend to be painted black more than red until you get into the bigger guys. But yellow it is and it's the next largest color block.

Yellow sucks to paint and I'm very sure you're going to be reading a lot about how yellow sucks to paint in the next post.

Ork Speed Freeks - A Work in Progress 2

I'm through what I consider the most tedious part of painting - large base coats. I can't find a way to describe them as interesting. What's even less interesting is doing them twice.

In the last post I had base coated them black with a different shade of black on the tires. I wasn't certain about the tires. I was right to be uncertain about the tires. And the base coat needed some work.

This time I did what I should have done in the first place. I used acrylic craft paint (Hobby Lobby store brand) instead of the miniature paint. Not only is it much cheaper it's got more coverage. And it's cheaper.

Woo. Black. At least it's a more solid undercoat and I finished base coating all the areas I currently think will be metal. I'll be figuring that out as I go since that's detail stuff.

A bit more tidy in these shots, showing where the metals will be once they're finished. A lot of what the other pictures showed are the undersides, which to me are important to paint but won't be seen much if at all once they're done. It's a personal quirk.

I haven't done any work on the separate arms. I'll correct that in the next painting session since I'll need to get metal on them and eventually paint the skin at the same time I'm doing that for the base models. I might as well set it up with these.

Next up - lots of silver, which should be only slightly less tedious than the black because there's less of it to do.

I have something special planned for the megatrakk scrapject canopy windows but it will be at the end of the process so you'll have to wait for it. I also have to test it and confirm it will be what I want it to be.