Orks vs. Eldar - Big Mek Stompa Takes on an Old Foe

Hi everyone,

We recently had a chance to play a very fun game against our friend Mr. S.

Some key background items here:

1. We have not ever beaten Mr. S.  In fact, we've been on the fairly substantial end of a whipping the times we have played him.
2. Mr. S. has some pretty powerful Eldar.  And, we've not been too good at tackling those D-1 weapons and all of the fancy-dancy movement his Eldar can do.
3. Mr. S. is an extremely nice person - and has enjoyed Ork modeling - lots of fun to chat with about projects.

So, we did a little bit of thinking on how to give him a run for his money.  Here's what we came up with:

1. Use the Necron-looted Big Mek Stompa we had built for Armies on Parade.  That way if he brings his really tall Eldar we can use the Lifta-Droppa on him!!
2. Put Tank Bustas in the Big Mek Stompa.  That way they have some good armor.
3. (Most Important) Strike a SYK-A-LOGIKUL (that's Psychological) Blow by bringing our Da Pain Train.  That lovely Looted Wagon is Supreme Warboss Fork's armies looting of Eldar technology - and sports a skewered Eldar pilot on the front  :)  :)  [Link to blog write-up about Da Pain Train]

 

Here is Fork's Big Mek Stompa.  We built the Lifta-Droppa out of parts we found washed up on the beach.  Used our green glowing stuff (Necron style) too.  Fork's Big Mek figurz this will keep the Eldar distrakted!!  Oh - and the Ork script on the side does say "Spork Suks".  The Rivalry continues....

 Here is Da Pain Train.  Skewered Eldar pilot right up front.  Lots of shiny Eldar blood for Mr. S's Eldars to look at and think about!  Da Pain Train is pulling a shield generator (why not?)

Here's how the battle shaped up....

We used the Mountain View Game Kastle's Normandy beach terrain.  We were the defenders - the Eldar were invading....

From the Warboss Log of Supreme Warboss Fork:  "Der waz sum weerd chant'in from dose Eldarz.  Figgured we wud attak anywayz."

The Eldar moved quickly to find positions of cover to shoot at the Ork vehicles.

As a set-back for the Orks, the Shield Generators effect on the Big Mek Stompa only granted one extra HP (rolled a 1 on the d6).

Eldar units moving quickly into cover to line up shoots against the Ork vehicles....

The Eldar quickly moved into positions of cover - and made a series of rapid runs against the Stompa.  Clearly their goal was to reach the weaker, rear armor.

However, while the Stompas big weapons pounded away, the Tank Busta crew cleaned up the Eldar units which did manage to get into the rear.

The tone of the battle began to shift.  Fork's boyz were shooting exceptionally well - and it did not appear to be the Eldar's day.

And, so in a move to save their fallen brother, the Eldar made a dash for Da Pain Train.  Successful in crashing the Ork vehicle, they almost managed to save the pilot "figurehead."

Eldar units mounting a rescue for the skewed pilot.  The Ork's looted vehicle is disabled.  This is their chance!

But, alas for the Eldar, the Stompa rounded on the rescuers and dispatched the lead units.

The lead units are wiped off the battlefield by the Stompa.  The Eldar pilot is not rescued....

And, with that, the Eldar retreated from the field.  Clearly seeing the long view of their fight with the Orks.  This battle wasn't crucial for them -- better to build their strength and fight again on a more auspicious day.

None of this made sense to Fork and his Boyz.  None of it mattered either.  There was looting to do on the battlefield!!! 

How to get to Warhammer World (International Travel)

Hi everyone,

A short while back, we had the chance to visit the UK.  And, of course, near top of our list of things to see during any free time while there was Warhammer World!

We're probably the last ones to figure it out what Warhammer World is (seems that pretty much everyone knows that Games Workshop has a sort of company store and model-museum in England).  But, in case you're in the same boat as us, here's a walk-through of how we made our way there....

(Link to the Warhammer World website)

Our favorite Ork and Space Marine by London's Tower Bridge.

Step 1:  Get to England. 

In our case this was a business trip with a weekend in the middle.  If we were to do it again, we'd want to plan for more time - and arrange to take some models along.  In this case, we pretty much arrived in England empty-handed.

Flying was relatively painless.  And, the customs people were quite friendly.  1) They actually thought it was funny when we ("American" speakers) said we'd been working on our English.

Step 2:  Get to Nottingham.

Warhammer World is in Nottingham, UK.  And, pretty much right in the middle of Nottingham proper.  We had decided to avoid driving.  Would have cut down on the travel time - but our "drive on the left skills" aren't so great.  And anyway, if you can manage a train to Nottingham, you can find your way to Warhammer World.

You can see on the Google map search below that it's roughly a two-hour train ride to get there.  Not so bad.  And, we'll point out a few subtle points that we we stumbled upon as we went.... 

Here's a phone screen capture of the trek from London to Nottingham.  Didn't want to risk driving on the left - so working on a route by train.

To begin with, you need to make your way to Kings Cross station.  Pretty easy on the Tube.  We dropped in a handy reference photo for comparison (making sure you're in the right place).

And, depending upon your inclination - while at Kings Cross Station, if Harry Potter fits your liking, you can check out the large display and store arranged at Platform 9 3/4.

A quick hint about booking the train.  There are (at least) two different train routes to get there.  The faster, more direct one costs more.  The slower, less direct one costs less.

We used the slower one on the way there -- the faster one on the way back.

Only downside of the slower one is that you end up spending about 45 minutes waiting for a connection in the nice town of Grantham.

If you happen to be a train fanatic, that's like all good -- because the station in Grantham has lots of memorabilia about the speed run set by the Mallard.  If you're not particularly into trains, this delay might be frustrating....

 

The train schedule board at Kings Cross - showing our train to Leeds (we'd be getting off at Grantham and changing trains for Nottingham)

 And, our train arriving!

 And, we're on the train!!!  Here are our favorite Ork and Space Marine with our ticket on-board.  They were both very excited to be heading for a sort of "homecoming."  [Also, you'll notice on our ticket that it says "via Grantham" in little letters - that's where we switched trains.]

Arriving in Nottingham....  We saw that there were some failed buildings right by the station.  Not sure about how those came to be in Nottingham.  In the US this is what a failed factory building often looks like.  If that's it, here's hoping that everyone in Nottingham sees better times in the coming future.

It did strike us though that these buildings, though falling down, did look very much like 40K scenery buildings.  And, we wondered if they were in some part the source material for Games Workshop artists.

As we arrived in Nottingham, there were several buildings on the eastern side of the station which looked a bit like 40K scenery pieces.  Not sure of the circumstances for these old failed buildings - and very sorry if those circumstances were sad ones.  But, interesting to see how much the 40K crumbling buildings look like those in real-life.

More photos of the crumbling buildings....

Step 3:  Tram from main station. 

When you arrive in Nottingham, make your way out of the station - and then up onto the elevated tram platform.

[From the station, Google maps has it as a 30 minute walk.  It was a little cloudy when we were there - threatening some rain - so even though we had the time for a walk, we took the "NET Tram" tram.]

We were a little bit confused about which side of the street to stand on....  We ended up asking grandmother and grandson for help on which direction's train we needed in order to go "west" to Warhammer World.

Our phone indicated that we should take the "Toton Lane" tram -- ride for three stops to "Gregory Street."

That turned out to be exactly right :)  And, the cool thing is that we would see Games Workshop on the left as we arrived coming down a slight hill toward Gregory Street.

 

 Here's our phone map of the route from the Nottingham Station to the Gregory Street stop for Warhammer Work.

The tram stop has a very nice sign to let you know how long it'll be until the next tram.  As you can see here, they run quite often.

 For piece of mind -- here is the list of stops on the Toton Lane tram line.  Sure enough only three from Nottingham Station up to Gregory Street (Warhammer World's stop)

Here's another phone screen-shot showing the route :)

Step 4:  A short walk.  

The walk down the street is very nice.  On a Saturday it wasn't a very busy road.  Crossed a small bridge with boat canal going underneath....

And, then walked into the parking lot of Warhammer World :)

Walking from Gregory Street back to Warhammer World - crossing over a very nice canal!

A quick shot from our walk to Warhammer World

The good news is that you know pretty well when you've arrived.  You've got the Games Workshop logo on the building.  And, there are also the full scale Ultramarines tank in the parking lot in case the other big graphics on the building aren't enough to tell you that you've arrived!

And, Warhammer World itself -- was awesome :)  Highly recommend making your way there!!  We're already working on ways that we can visit again....

The Warhammer World building with large emblem!!

Ultramarine's tank on display at Warhammer World :)

Armies on Parade - Crimson Fists Frigate, the Fist of Vengeance

Somewhere near Pythos in the Pandorax System....

"Supeem Warboss Fork -- pleez check dis!  Dey iz turnin' to ram us!"

Fork, the Supreme Warboss of the Yellow Orks turned to his Nav Boy's display; and focused on the blue craft on the image.  As its prow swung toward his Ork Hulk, Da Ruinin' Runcible, a huge grin dominated his expression.  "Lovely, dey IZ comin' righ' to us!"

Turning to, he bellowed, "Nav Boy!  All reactys to full!  All ahead frank!"  And, then drawing in an Ork lungful threw back his head with a full war-cry:  "Waaaaagh!"

Fork and Spork's Hulk - Da Ruinin' Runcible - With Looted (Failed Ramming Victim) Crimson Fists Frigate as Background.

An Explanation:

Back in August when we ran the Ork Train at the Reno Summit Warhammer Store, Mr E, (the store warboss) challenged us to take part in the Armies on Parade event in October.

The problem, of course, was "how do you fit an Ork Train on a 2 foot x 2 foot base?  The answer we came up with was to use 3 dimensions.  After thinking of a while we had realized that if we created a model of the inside of Supreme Warbosses Fork and Spork's Hulk that we would have plenty of space for the train.

Yet, as we started thinking about how to create the hulk out of foam, we felt that it would be fun to have something in the background to give nice contrast to our Ork lootings.

Write-up Part I -- Creating a Crimson Fists Frigate to be part of our Ork Hulk :)

Our friend Mr. M has beaten us with his Crimson Fists enough times ("preferred enemy Orks" rings in our ears) that we needed a little bit of modeling revenge.  And, we chuckled a bit as we imagined what might take place if a hapless (and smallish) Crimson Fists Frigate should try to ram an Ork Hulk.

The Hulk would win in the crash of course -- and after spawning to make up for any losses in the hand-to-hand assault which would inveitbly result -- the Orks would loot the remaining hardware from the Frigate.

So, we thought that it would be fun to make at least one wall -- or section -- of a Crimson Fists Frigate as an incorporated part of our Armies on Parade display.

How to do it?

We spent some decent thought pondering how to integrate the Space Marine's Frigate.  And, finally went with using the wall of the frigate as a "background" for the section of the hulk.

 And, we figured we could make something pretty gothic looking if we used a set of the scenery building pieces.

Then, at the local Game Kastle's swap meet we found this:  And, if we split it apart, we figured it would make great pieces of a Frigate!

We were worried that it would look flat, though.  So, we had the idea of making it with two flat sections one sloping up; the other sloping down.  We noticed that lots of Battlefleet Gothic ships have that diamond-shaped cross section....

Our concept for the section of Space Marine Frigate.  2 feet wide, 2.5 feet tall.  Angled so that it looks a bit Gothic.  We were thinking to hold it against the "rock" of the Hulk using magnets....

So, we built a plywood frame....  Here is the back-side of it.  Two pieces of 1/4" plywood attached to 2x4 pieces which we trimmed on a band-saw to match the angle we wanted.

Here is our plywood frame.  We painted it grey.  Ran out of time to do anything more fancy.  Going forward, we'll coat it with plastic and create some "insides" of the frigate for the Orks to be looting....

Then we covered it with plastic....  We were wanting the surface to look like a space ship.  We knew that wood grain would be hard to cover up.  We plastic sheeting at Home Depot which looked nice.  Plus, the ribbed structure puts small ridges in it -- which end up looking a LOT like the welded hull of a ship.

Here is the plastic sheeting we used.  Pretty inexpensive at Home Depot.  Cuts very easily, etc....

Once we had covered our wooden frame with the plastic, we realized that this plastic was not super easy to glue to.  We tried plastic glue out.  Did not bond (just stayed as a liquid on the surface of the white sheet).  Since this is a very large structure, we were worried that super glue would not create a very elastic structure.  So, we did some quick testing....

Of course our old friend epoxy would certainly bond.  But, we didn't have a lot of time before the Armies on Parade event -- and we would be in trouble even with the 5 minute curing epoxies.

Luckily hot glue turns out to do a really super job of bonding 40K plastic to the white sheet material.  In the trial (below) we glued a tank turret piece on and could not budge it after 30 seconds!

Here is our gluing test.  Plastic glue didn't work.  Hot glue was great!  (And, hot glue was really fast -- certainly compared to epoxy!)

Well, at first we were thinking to build our Frigate out of pieces of Imperial Buildings -- such as some of the terrain sets.  Mr. E had pointed out that the windows on those have quite a "gothic appearance" - just like Battlefleet Gothic's Imperial ships.

However, when at the Game Kastle swap meet we spotted a cast-aside Fortress of Redemption we new we had found some better raw materials!

Here is the donor Fortress of Redemption.  Turned out to be much easier to take the turret sections apart than the tower itself....

Breaking the Fortress apart turned out to be pretty tricky.  In the end, we used hot water to weaken the glue bonds - and then pried things apart.  We ended up with all of the pieces intact (for the most part).

Then, we started trying some layouts....

Right away, we had the idea of using the building skirts along the bottom of the top portion of the Frigate.  Then we noticed that we had just enough of those skirds to put some right-side-up -- and another piece reversed.

Trying layouts of our pieces.  Part of what we tried to work out was anticipating where we would put a blast hole in the side of the Frigate.

After some trials fitting we started hot-gluing things down.  This is a good point to add that we ended up purchasing a little band-saw about a year back to help with another project.  That turned out to be HUGE for building the frigate.  We were able to carefully trim sections off of the Fortress's pieces with nice repeat-ability.  And, it really helped with the speed of construction.

Our trusty Ryobi mini-bandsaw in action.  Turned out to be extremely useful for trimming the pieces in a nice and straight fashion.

As we started gluing things down (and that's hot-gluing, mind you), we took a break and showed our progress to Mr. S at GameKastle.  He gave us several additional pieces of advice:  1) work on making sure that the Frigate doesn't look like bits glued to a board; 2) use the two color spray paint trick; 3) always work on building your narrative....

So, one thing we did was carve out the white plastic where we had placed access doors so that they looked realistically indented.  That did help a little bit with the appearance.  The biggest factor though (in hind-sight) was deciding to make the Frigate's walls out of two angled pieces.  It still allowed us to have a wall at 90-degrees to the Hulk's shell -- but created more interesting internal angles for viewing.

Here is the Fist of Vengeance with most of the components glued.  Still some work to go on the cargo bay....

Part of the grand plan was to have the Fist of Vengeance in a condition where it had *just recently* rammed the Orks' Hulk - and the Orks were gearing up their looting efforts.  So, one idea was to create a cargo bay at the bottom.

We found a plastic salad container (from Trader Joe's grocery store) which looked pretty good as a cargo bay.  Then we added bay doors slid most of the way open.


Then, we started priming everything black as Mr. S had instructed.

We have most of the black primer on.  Turned out using 2 cans of black primer for this project!!  Got the cargo bay doors fashioned at this point - ready to prime again :)

We didn't want the Frigate to look perfect - so we were planning for a blast hole on the upper left portion.  We used a "hole saw" to cut a hole in the wood behind the plastic.  Then used a heat gun to melt away the plastic surface.

We did this after we had put on our Space Marine blue coat from the top angle -- and Alien Purple from the underneath angle.  So, we primed the blasted hole black again.  And, this ended up creating a nice "charred" look!

Here is our blaster hole - thanks to our heat gun!!  Mr. S had suggested that a heat gun held nice and steady up close to plastic would have a nice effect - and sure enough!  What we did was heat it up and then poke it with a screwdriver to make it look "blown inward."

For the final painting, we decided to keep things simple.  We used some nice red to paint a few accent items -- such as the Crimson Fists logo and the ship name.  Decided to also paint the ribbons on the large side-of-ship statues as well.

Here is The Fist with the red painting done....  Also, have the cargo bay put together....

And, lastly, we used magnets and washers to mount guns onto the turrets.  We decided that any good Space Marine's Frigate would be sporting weapons like Plasma Obliterators -- so we borrowed our Ultramaries Obliterator for this mission.  :)

And, here it is with the turret-guns magnet mounted.

And, here is the finished Fist of Vengeance!

So, that's the story of building the Fist of Vengeance Frigate section for our Hulk.

More writing to come -- we'll write-up building the rest of the Ork Hulk.

And, of course, much more work to be done.  Ideas at this point:
- Build internals for the frigate on the reverse side of the model!
- More painting?  Although we liked how this ended up a bit muted for a background piece
- Add Orks and Grots working the surface over.  (That IS the reason the "F" is bent on the "OF" in Fist of Vengance -- we'll have a grot pulling it off.)

And, not really sure what to do about the fact that the Crimson Fists seemed to have used a pretty unconventional spelling of "Vengance".  For now, we'll keep it.  Fork and Spork are enjoying the humor of Space Marines spelling something the way Orks would do it!

Custom Dice! (Wasn't as hard as we thought!)

 Hi everyone,  

Custom dice....  Playing at events or conventions, we've ended up with a few souvenir custom dice here and there.  Also, we've seen people playing with Space Marine dice when playing Warhammer 40K.  

Thinking about that -- and, while gearing up for playing 40K with our Ork Looted Train at Warhammer The Summit -- we were thinking how cool it would be to have more of the Green/Pink dice to go with Spork's Pink Orkies :)  [We figured the one Green/Pink die we'd found must have been a custom run somewhere.]  

We had found this single die -- perfect for Spork's Pink Ork Army.  We were trying to figure out where we could find more.  No luck so far....

We had gotten the Green/Pink D6 at Kublakon about a year back.  And, thought (maybe??) we got it from the Chessex stand there.  

So, we started out by doing some checking of the internet to see if we could find a way to order more.... Nope -- none of the websites seem to have the Green/Pink type.  

So, we started digging deeper - and when we found the e-mail for Chessex (figured we'd ask them directly) we stumbled upon the spot on their website which mentions custom dice.  

Custom Dice !! ?? !!  

Giving that some thought, it struck us....  "Wouldn't it be cool to be playing Pathfinder with one's Pharasma Oracle -- and have Pharasma symbols on the "6" side of the dice?" 

So, we took the image we had created in Windows Paint to 3-D print our Pharasma tokens.  (Here's a link to that adventure!)  And, e-mailed them to very friendly Chessex team....  (And, we also asked about Green/Pink dice, too.)
 

 

Here is the Pharasma symbol we had created in Microsoft Paint - coloring in the blue and yellow tinted one so that we had a monochromatic version....

Responses from Chessex:  

- No - they didn't make Green/Pink dice  
- But, Yes :) they'd be happy to make D6's with our graphic.  And, they even sent us a rendering of how the dice would look.  Said it would take 4-6 weeks - and at a price of about $1 per die we wanted created that way.
 

Pretty amazing that this is a rendering!  The Chessex team sent this to us very quickly after we sent our e-mail of the Pharasma image....

So, we placed our order.  And, right on time (just over 4 weeks), we got a very nice box in the mail from Chessex with the dice inside!!!  You can see for yourself - they look just like the rendering Chessex had sent us!  

The happy box from Chessex!  Pharasma dice inside!

And, of course we had to give them a try.  Did a lot of rolling.  They seem to be just as random as any other six sided dice.  (There was a brief moment of worry that the Pharasma-swirl might not come up as often as a normal "6 dots" on a d6.  Not to worry - they seem to work just fine.)

 

Here are our custom Pharasma dice along with our Pharasma tokens....

Ork Train Apocalypse Battle at Warhammer, The Summit store

Hi everyone,

Had the chance to play the Waaaghbash Kannonball Ork Train in an Apocalypse Battle yesterday at the Warhammer, The Summit store.  Here is a link to the Store's page with a video of the train in action.

The Waaaghbash Kannonball lining up against seven armies in Da Chew Chew A PoK O'LiPZ battle at the Warhammer, The Summit Store

It was great fun!  Here are several highlights!

•  First of all, a big thanks to the Warhammer, The Summit store team and all of our opponents.  We have been wanting to have an Ork Train battle for a long time!

• There were SEVEN fantastic opononents challenged the Supreme Warbosses Fork and Spork and their Looted Ork Train!  (All at the same time!  What a table full of fire-power!)
• 1 Space Marine Army
• 2 Necron Armies
• 1 Eldar Army
• 2 Tau Armies
• 1 Chaos Army

•  Stayed up until 3am the night before finishing up painting on Da Pain Train and also on the Kannon Kar.  But, had both ready for battle :)

•  Since each army had quite a few points, played as if each car of the Ork Train was a Stompa.  And, added a Kustom Force Field for staying power (from the Plasma Ball on the Kannon Kar).

• Each army made hits on the train.  Interestingly the most focus was put on the Grot Tank Holda (flat car with Grot Tanks).  It died first :(

• We also played a rule that each Ork Train turn, the train drove for a random number of seconds -- and then dropped of 3D6 Orks to charge!  That was fun because it gave some of our co-generals a chance to play their orks as well. 

• To keep things balanced, and also in deference to our opponents, created an informal rule that the train (and 7 huge Stompa guns) would target the enemy armies evenly.  And, while this did help with balance, it meant that Eldar army's Heavy Wraithcannons were still around.

We have quite a bit of posting to catch up on.  Getting the train ready has taken nearly all free moments in the past 2 weeks.  So, posts we'll have coming....

1. Update on Da Pain Train
2. Update on the Kannon Kar
3. Update on the Kaboose and Train Boyz
4. Update on Flat cars (Grot Tank car and Stolen Space Marines' Container car 
5. More fluff.  We have been working on the back story of Spork, Fork and the Waaaghbash Kannonball :) 

Da Pain Train passing a line-up of Tau!

The Dakka Chugga leading the way....

Figuring out the rules as we get started....  Space Marines and two armies of Necrons at this end of the table.

The Grot Tank Holda passing the Eldar.  (OW!  DOZE D WEPPONZ HURTZ!)

The Kannon Kar passing between the Eldar and Tau....

The Waaaghbash Kannonball steaming past two Tau armies....

 Armies on the move!  The first Ork turn is over, the seven armies close in!

And, we're thinking of having another battle in the fall.  Will be a chance to update the rules a bit.  Also might be a very good idea to plan on more co-generals to make things faster on our side :)

Please help us with any thoughts on the next battle.  Some ideas already in the works....

1. More or different cars for the train (Fork and Spork's Meks have some SEKRET PLANZ)
2. Making each car have unique rules?  Or, maybe Big Mek Stompas instead of vanilla Stompas?
3. Maybe one army (randomly drawn card) decides to target the other armies so that they can capture whatever is inside the Space Marine container (an Artifact!) and have it for themselves.  In the first turn, which army would you present your back to?  Should the Orks still shoot if one army is on their side?  (Well, they probably should....)

 And, for handy reference, here are links to our earlier postings about the Ork Train:

• Dakka Chugga (Looted Tyranid Powered Steam Train)
• Da Pain Train (Looted Eldar Weapon Shooting Diesel Locomotive)
• The Kannon Kar (Looted Rhino with Plasma Ball and Tyranid Gun)
• The Waaaghbash Kannonball (Fork and Spork's grand plans for the train)

Kannon Kar - (Pink Orks' Mek contributes to the Waaaghbash Kannonball)

Hi everyone,

Supreme Warboss Spork has been ENKOR-RAGIN' his Pink Ork army's Meks to come up with some BIGGER DAKKA for the battle he can feel coming.  He has agreed to an alliance with his brother Fork and his yellow Orks - and together they are readying the Waaaghbash Kannonball, their Ork Looted Train!

 The Ork's Waaaghbash Kannonball!

What's been on Spork's mind is that a really, really big gun mounted as part of the train has very clearly been used in the history of FIGHT'IN!!  Spork's Weird-boy has pulled the following images from the Warp for study:

Believe this train mounted gun was built by the French army.  Though pretty sure there are examples of this built by many armies over time....

An even earlier example of a train mounted cannon!

Catching you up, here are several posts related to the Waaaghbash Kannonball:
- The grand plan for the full looted train, Waaaghbash Kannonball
- The Dakka Chugga, looted steam train (POWER'D BY BURNIN' NIDZ!)
- Da Pain Train, looted from Eldar hardware
[This, here is the post about the Kannon Kar]
[And, still have work to do on the Kaboose Observ-obliteration Kar]

Spork's team has the following ideas for the Kannon Kar:

• Should have a really big gun.  After looking around, found a very nice big Tyranid "arm" gun.  Figured this could be looted with some way to mount it.
• Fully functioning turret; fully functioning elevation.  We weren't sure how to do this.  But, Spork has learned the hard way that if guns can't aim (with the help of Grots), they are pretty limited in what they can shoot.
• Had the idea of using a "Plasma Ball" on the Kannon Kar.  Got this idea from a very nice posting on Dakka Dakka where a visionary Warboss and Mek had mounted one onto a Morkanaut (here's a link to Deathwhisper's post)

And, for the beginning, that was it.  Then, had a nice visit with the team at Reno's The Summit Warhammer store.  (Happened to be on the Space Marine's Birthday.)  Chatted with them about the idea of playing a Death Race type scenario (which, of course, being a fight or battle, Fork and Spork agreed to)....  And, they pointed out that it would be pretty cool if the Kannon Kar's assemblage could disconnect from the flat car and charge into the battlefield if/when necessary.  Have had this idea echoed by several others in the past few weeks, so figured we needed to find a way to do it.

• Mount gun on mobile platform.  Well, a Rhino turned out to be pretty easy for Spork's boyz to obtain....  [And, disclaimer -- one of us -- who also works hard on his Space Marine Army pointed out that Ork looting was a pretty darned poor use of the Emperor's valuable Rhino!!!]
• Create a locking turret.  More tricky.  Lacking detailed plastic - and not wanting to use HUGE magnets, decided on using a threaded turret assembly.  Probably crazy to watch in real life - if the tank body is rotated enough times (righty-tighty; lefty-loosey), it comes free and can drive off the flat car.

As a bonus, the use of a Rhino provides a location to mount the 12V battery needed for the plasma ball's battery :)

Our Basic Raw Materials....

Here are the flat car (which once upon a time launched Lionel Train rockets with a little spring - ours doesn't - we got this off eBay for lower $$); the Rhino; and the Tyranid "arm" for the Nid Gun....

Caption....

Turret Assembly:

Looking around, we stumbled on the safety lid for medicine bottles.  We could cut the top off the bottle and then use the lid (which had threads on it) to mount on the flat car - and thread the tank onto that.

Here's the medicine bottle we looted to form our turret.  Cut off the top of the green plastic from the pill bottle - glued this to the bottom of the Rhino.  Then, mounting the lid onto the flat car.

So, here is the flat car with the lid glued on.  We had to build some I-beam structure under the lid to make sure that the Nid Gun wouldn't hit the brake superstructure on the flat car.  Added some bits for the rotation's automation.

Here's our flat car so far.  Have the rotation hardware in the works.  Needs some Seth Wires and Pipes to be added yet.

The Kannon -- Nid Gun

We cut off the "shoulder" connection part of the big tyranid arm -- and then had the idea to glue that onto an Ork Gun.  We connected the two with some "Seth Wires" (link to our lesson from Seth at Game Kastle - use real things for real things....)

Here is the tyranid gun-arm glued onto the Ork gun....

Very fine Seth Wires on this side - connecting the Ork power supply to the little "holes" in the tyranid arm up above....

One bit Seth Wire on this side to connect the Ork power to the Tyranid section....  (We added some other Ork bitz for fun!)

What was cool about that is that the Ork gun was set up to mount in a Lobba set of brackets for elevation.  Of course, we didn't have an extra Lobba bracket-set.  So, we dug through our bits.  And, what do you know - the forks of a Warbike (if turned inside-out) fit right onto the little plastic buttons on the Ork gun.  So, we used some hunks of sprue to build up an assembly to allow for the elevation.

Here is our gun hinge formed out of Warbiker forks with a couple of pieces of sprue glued on.  Probably going to add an Ork or Grot to be the elevation operator - but haven't done that yet.

Even more cool, that set of Warbiker forks fits right into the front of the Rhino!

Here is the 'Nid Gun on the front of the Looted Rhino.  You can see the inverted forks fitting perfectly into the front of the Rhino!

The Plasma Balla and Power Supply

We had sent a message on DakkaDakka to Deathwhisper to inquire about the plasma ball they had used on their Morkanaut.  Feedback was to look at Amazon, searching on Thunderball Plasma Pendant.  It's only about 2" across - so perfect to use.  (Here's a link - though probably need to find a different way to buy right now - this one says it's not in stock.) 

The Thunderball comes with a 12V car's cigarette plug - and a string of 12V hearing-air type button cells wired up.  Deathwhisper had warned us that the wiring (including the fuse in the plug) were a bit finicky - so we were ready for trouble.

Main thing was that we wanted ours to be rechargeable - and didn't intend to use in a car.  So, we cut away the alkaline batteries and the car plug.

Then, searching on eBay we found a very small 12V lithium ion battery which came with a charger.  (It took some searching to find one small enough to fit inside the middle of a looted Rhino!)

We wired this up to the 12V input to the Plasma Ball's boost converter - and Wow! we were in business.

Here is our rewiring job in completed state.  Lithium ion battery pack spliced to input of boost converter for Plasma Ball.

Quick video so that you can watch the plasma ball working - this was plugged into the car....

Another video of the plasma ball working from our 12V batteries

So, that's where things stand.  Lots of work yet to do -- here's a list.  And, of course, open to new ideas....

• Air brush the tyranid gun arm the same colors we used for the tyranid bodies in the Dakka Chugga's tender (blue and turquoise)
• Add more Orky bitz to the Rhino
• Build a "holder" for the plasma ball -- probably will use more tyranid bits for this
• Add Seth Wires to connect the plasma ball to more parts of the tank
• Mount things together with magnets (figure we need to use magnets in case we ever need to update the wiring)
• Mount the recharging cable in a way which looks cool - not dangling behind the Kannon Kar!
• We'll probably have room on the flat car for some Ork boyz -- we'll see...

Here is the Kannon Kar so far - with Plasma Ball flaring away!