Well, this only took a few months. More like half a year. Pathetic, isn’t it? Sad as it is to say, these guys have been
sitting half-done on my cutting mat the whole time.
The ripper guns weren’t that hard. I wanted to stick to the combat shotgun idea
from the Imperial Guard codex, but I didn’t have a problem with them looking a
little simplistic and Ogryn-friendly. My
previous Ogre-Ogryn conversion (for my Penal Legion) had used the autocannon
magazine on the side, but I wanted to see if I could make something that looked
more like an industrial Thompson sub-machine gun.
The most notable part of a Tommy gun (and a ripper gun) is
the ammunition drum. I played around with
a few ideas, including building the drums from scratch. What I finally decided on was gluing together
a pair of old Fantasy shields. It gave a
size and depth to the drum that I liked, plus some tiny details around the
edges.
The main body/barrel of the ripper gun is 3/16” tubing. I cut a 1/4” section and then a 1/2”
section. These would go on either side
of my magazine. On the shorter, back
half, I also added a wheel hub to serve as a machined-looking butt to the
weapon.
Then I took some 1/8” wide plastic and cut a 7/8”strip. This would be the top of my
ripper gun and help tie the whole thing together, both visually (it helps hide the fact that a few
of the front and back pieces don’t line up perfectly) and structurally (it was
going to serve as a sort of spine for the next bit). I lined it up to the back so any excess hung
out over the end of the barrel.
I made a few 1/4” squares and put them on either side of the
rear section, placing them so they “connected” to the top strip. This gave a bit more bulk to the body of the
ripper gun. I put 1/4” x 1/8” pieces on
the front, also lined up with the top strip and butting up against the
magazine. It gave the whole thing a
nice, solid look. I finished it off with
a thin strip along each edge and a 1/16” strip along the top.
The last touch was to cut a 3/8” piece of 1/8” tubing and
slide it in the front of the ripper gun to give it a muzzle. I left 1/8” sticking out and filed it a bit
to make it perpendicular to the barrel.
I toyed with the idea of putting iron sights on the front of the muzzle,
but for the moment I’ve decided against it.
Since ripper guns are made exclusively for Ogryns, I can’t see them
being manufactured with any level of accuracy in mind. I may change my mind at the last minute
before priming, though.
Next step was to mount the weapons on the Ogryns. The Ogres come with a lot of large, square
blades that look a lot like machetes, and I like that look for Ogryns who were
going to be in the jungle. Since those
blades are all right-handed, I had the choice of making all the ripper guns
left-handed, or doing a lot of modeling work to switch everyone’s hands
around. I decided to stick with machetes
on the right, rippers on the left—mostly because I like how this works with a
lot of the arm poses (which are pretty inflexible on the Ogres)
(keen-eyed readers may note one of those is a right
hand. I did a cool knife bit with the
Ogre musician hand, so I had to put that ripper on the opposite side. The other option would’ve been having it
slung over said Ogryn’s shoulder, but that would’ve involved building a sling
and a trigger mechanism and, well, I didn’t want to do all that and have it
come out half-assed. Plus it’d leave me
with the oddness of what to put in the other hand...)
I cut the weapons away from the hands and filed them
flat above and below the fist. I tried
to make sure the flat sections were parallel, so I could add a base to the grip
(just a little square of plastic) that would line up. This is one of those subtle little things
that can really gnaw at you if you get it wrong, and it’ll take forever to
figure out why.
Helpful Hint – I attached the fists to the
bodies before I attached them to the weapons.
Most of the Ogre arms are tight against the torso and I didn’t want to
risk attaching the hand to the weapon at a point where it would prevent me from
attaching that whole assembly to the body.
So hand to body and then weapon to hand.
Ogryns get frag grenades, but all the standard grenades look
ridiculously small on them. So I tried to think what a group of near-feral
abhumans would use. Oh, sure, they might
just use oversized frag grenades, and I even had an Inquisitor-scale grenade,
but I thought it’d look a little weird to only have one model in the squad with
a visible grenade. Plus, I wanted
something that would sell their borderline bestiality with something a little
more fun.
As it turned out, the answer was right there on the Ogre
sprues. Bear traps. They’re big, primitive, fit into the jungle
setting well, and... well, let’s be honest.
They work as frag grenades. If
someone throws half a dozen open bear traps at you, you’re sure as hell going
to put your head down.
I also added a bit of random greenery from different Fantasy
sets onto the bases. Especially for a
jungle-themed army, I find the big empty swaths of base are kind of
distracting. I find these leaves and
weeds all the time in
the bitz bins (I think they’re from Wood Elf sets,
or maybe Dryads), and this is a great use for them.
I tried to pick some of the less-crazy Ogre heads. Even so, I filed down a lot of the weird
bumps and pins on their heads. I’m
toying with the idea of using a little bit of green stuff and making simple
bandanas on them. It would tie them to
the Catachans even more... and also give me some more time to consider those
iron sights.
But, there they are.
A good-sized squad of Ogryns for about
a third the price it would
cost to buy as many actual figures. If
I’d been able to work on them straight through, this was maybe three days of
non-intensive work. I might toss up a
picture later once they’re primed and have some basic colors on them.
Next time (which will be, I swear to God, in one week) I’ll
show you how some friends and I whipped up a bunch of good-looking, dirt cheap
scenery in just a few hours.