Modelling and painting tips: Ork big shootaz


When you start an Ork army you soon want to add heavy weapons to give your mobs that extra punch. You have two choices: Either buy ready made metal models or build your own. While the metal ones look great, they come at a price. Conversions on the other hand are cheaper, give your army a personal touch and can look just as well.

Don't be afraid: It's really simple.

What you need:

- one plastic Ork sprue
- your modelling tools (clip, knife and drill)
- plastic cement and super glue
- PVA glue and sand for the base - a small coin

Getting started:

Big shootas are probably the easiest heavy weapon to convert. You know how to as-semble a basic shoota boy, don't you? Now all you have to do is to give him a bigger gun.
In addition to the body and army for a shoota boy you will need two shootaz. I suggest the shootaz you can see on the right, but almost all combinations of shootaz will work.
Clip the parts out of the sprue and clean them.


Building the big shoota:

Cut of the muzzle of the shoota with the ammo belt as well as the grip and ammo feed of the other shoota. Also drill out the muzzle of this shoota.

Your shootaz should now look as shown on the left.

Now glue the two barrels together in order to get one long barrel. When doing this take care that the metal plates and details match.


The result should look like the big shoota on the right:

All that's left to do now is to assemble the shoota boy and glue your brand new big shoota into his hands, just like you would with a normal shoota.

Before I do this, I prefer to put the model together with blue tack to see if all parts fit, as shown on the left. This is especially advisable when you intend to give your boy a more dynamic pose. With blue tack you can toy around with the bits until you found the right pose and place for every part, without risking to ruin the model.

When you have assembled the model feel free to add ammo belts, bags and such to add some details and you're finished. To ensure that the model won't tip over, I also glued a small coin under the base with super glue (I used a 5 Euro Cent piece). This will provide a counter weight and balance the model.

Voila: Your first converted Ork heavy weapon!




Other ways to build big shootaz:

Instead of making your own big shoota out of plastic shootaz, you can also use the metal big shoota that comes with the killa kans and dread. You don't have to buy a complete dread for these, you can either buy them in your hobby store, mail order them or trade bits with other Ork players.

To get a boy with this kind of big shoota you first cut of the tube at the rear end of the metal big shoota like the lower you can see on the left. The upper big shoota is there for comparison.

As you can see in the picture the big shoota has a small hole which is used for attaching it to a kan or dreadnought. As you want to use the weapon for an Ork boy, you don't need it and you don't want it to be seen.
You have two options: The first is to fill the hole with green stuff. The other is to glue a small piece of plastic on one side, while the other will be covered by the ammo box. I cut a thin slice of a plastic sprue for this and it worked just right.

To finish the model you glue the dreadnought big shoota to your model just like you did with the plastic big shoota in the first conversion. Just remember to use super glue for this, as you are gluing metal to plastic.


Here's a picture of the finished model together with the first conversion:



Other big shootaz

If you have access to bits from other armies (through trading bits or because you have models from other armies, too), you can use these to create very original looking big shootaz.

For this one I used a Tau burst cannon. I put it together, drilled out the muzzles and cut of the rear bit. I then took the remaining shoota bit from the first big shoota conversion and glued the two together.

All that was left to do was glue the big shoota to the model and add some more details (in this case a back pack and an ammo belt on the arm).

As these models will be part of mob of shoota boyz, I decided to give their nob a big shoota, too. I took a nob's arm with kustom shoota, cut of the shoota and the hand and replaced the hand with a plastic one. I then pinned a metal big shoota to the hand and added some details. The only thing missing now is a strap holding the big shoota.

Here's a group shot of Lutennunt Markuz and his boyz:

And finally a picture of the painted models:

See? It's really simple. I hope you now have at least one Ork boy with a big shoota and lots of ideas on how to convert the next. If you have any questions, feel free to e-mail me.
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