Spork and Fork's 40K Ork Tie Fighter - Progress Report

We're thinking it's a pretty common question -- "What happened to Darth Vader after Episode 4?"  And, from what we read, the answer is that he managed to fly to a nearby space station.

Darth Vader's TIE fighter spins out of control after crash with his wing-man....

The next question isn't answered very well -- "What happened to Darth Vader's TIE Advanced after the space station team jettisoned it as trash??"

Here's what really happened :)

A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away...

Spork and Fork's trusty Ork Hulk the Da Runcible of Ruin burst from the warp.

The Warbosses found themselves in the midst of a huge pile of debris....  

[Why?  It must be that the intensely Waaaagh-warfare filled warp energy had drawn them across space and time to a location near Yavin.] 

Fork:  "Doze squishy 'umies been fightin' 'ere!!"
Spork:  "Yeah!  And, look ats all of duh great dakka we cud loot from dem!!!   Waaaaagh!!!"

And, so, we have started to build a model of the Ork-looted TIE Advanced :)

Key points of the project:

• Project costs have been low.  We got the TIE Advanced for $3 at a thrift shop

Here is our humble TIE Advanced as purchased from the thrift store.  No cockpit hatch; no Darth Vader miniature....

• Decision have been challenging.  There are so many options of what to add (or subtract) from a TIE fighter.

We decided to add Ork flyer wings to the TIE fighter.  This gave us a place to mount more dakka -- with swing-mounted guns (looted from Imperial forces).

• Wires and hoses.  We are certainly going to use Mr. S's advice from Game Kastle -- and use real things to represent real things.  Going to have hoses and wires all over when we are finished.

• What to call it?  We still have no idea.

• Adding metal.  Why?  So that Orks and Grots with magnet boots can stand all over the place on it.

The Orks use a lot of metal -- not that funny carbon fiber stuff -- to patch up the TIE fighter.  This also gives spots for the Ork Nobs with magnet boots to stand :)

• It needs real engines.  Orks have no idea what makes a TIE fighter move.  They need things which are more burny and shooty.

Fork and Spork's Ork Mek got the power plant hatch open on the TIE Advanced -- and decided to keep it propped open so that they could tap in to this to power the systems they were adding to the fighter....

 The Mek added thrusters from a Space Marine speeder to the back of the TIE.  An exhaust pipe was also added -- 'cause there will be a lot more smoke coming from the TIE fighter now

The Orks added more good stuff to the bottom - this is one of the places where we'll add hoses and wires :)

• Other Star Wars models to loot?  Who knows what else is in that field of debris ??  And, well, we already have an X-wing and a Snow-speeder on the Ork-Mek-Chopping-Block!!

Repainting old 40K terrain

Hi everyone,

A while back we came to realize that there had been some Games Workshop / Forgeworld terrain pieces -- such as the ones with the crashed Imperial flyer (the Aquila Lander which has crashed on Macragge).  http://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Aquila_Lander

After a bit of a search, we found some affordable ones on eBay - and have had fun with them several times.

Here is our Aquila Lander Crash site terrain as purchased on eBay.  We realized that as our painting skills had progressed, we could improve on the original artists paint-job.

Then, more recently, we got to talking about dry-brushing.  And, a more crude version we've used quite a bit -- painting with a hunk of foam :)

And...  several times recently we've worked on repainting our Battletech minis.  This is mainly because our painting skills are getting better -- and we realize that we can now do fun things like make cockpit windows look more high tech than we might have in the past (etc....)  When we've done that, we've worked on stripping paint off (Wow! we used to use think globs of paint) -- and then repainted.

However, since this lander was supposed to be a dirty wreck, we tried out the following -- new primer, then attack with drush sponging.

 Here are the models after we primed them....

And, our friends at the Warhammer store in Reno taught us about painting the blue and green tinted GW paint over silver to make cool high-tech glass effects -- so we took a shot at those as well.  [In this case we used a scramble of blue and green tint over silver.]

And, here's our repaint effort so far.

Our take-away from the project -- never give up on old models!!!  (If nobody else will use them, Orks can always loot them!)

Visiting Orc Town in Seoul (Travel Log from our Ork and Space Marine)

Hi everyone,

Found ourselves with little extra time in Seoul, South Korea this week - and wondered if there might be a local game store which carried Warhammer 40K.  (Always nice when traveling to have a chance to talk to people in other parts of the world who share a love for table top battle games!)

After some Googling we discovered Orc Town - in Seoul. 

Our Pink Ork and Space Marine at Orc Town in Seoul

Here's a link to the web-site
오크타운 온라인 스토어

Or, in case you're still learning how to read the Korean alphabet like we are:
http://www.orctown-store.com/

The question was, how to get there....

Step 1 -- translating the Korean on the web-page.  That sorted out using Google translate.  Here's what we learned :)

Step 2 -- finding our way there.  We ended up using Google Maps for that.  It was a bit tricky.  Google couldn't understand us typing the address in English.   

Seoul, Gangnam-gu, Nonhyeon-ro 26 Road 46-8 B1F (Dogok-dong, Samho Building) ORCTOWN

But, of course, it did know where "Orc Town, Seoul" was located!!!

We sorted out how to get there by sub-way.  Turned out to be pretty easy coming from City Hall.  One stop on the Green subway - transfer to the Orange Train, and hop off at the Maebong Station.

Here's a cut-out from our Google Map set of directions

From there, it was a short walk.  And, sure enough, there it was on the street in one level down (that's what the B1 means).

And, here's a zoomed-in version of our directions to Orc Town.  These are helpful if you need directions in English :)

After following the directions, we spotted the "Orc Town" sign on the right hand side :)

Popping inside, we had a quick chat with the Orc Town team.  Overall, very nice store!!  Here are a few of our highlights:

• Very fun terrain in the store - including one really long table.  (Have only seen a cool long table like this at Warhammer World.)

• A really complete set of Warhammer (of pretty much all types)

• And, extremely reasonable prices - in fact, it sure seemed to us that some of the prices were lower than what we could find in California

We chatted a little bit about other games - such as FFG's X-wing.  And, we learned that in South Korea it is not easy to import pre-painted models.  Turns out they are viewed as toy products - and require careful analysis of paint materials to make sure nothing is toxic.  40K models, on the other hand, are consider grown-up hobby materials - and since they are unpainted, much more straight-forward to import.

Our Ork and Space Marine were really happy to be able to spend some time at Orc Town - and thoroughly enjoyed the gaming tables and terrain!

Fun taking photos with our Ork and Space Marine on the (very nicely painted) Orc Town gaming table :)

Cool to see a Plasma Obliterator on the table....