Divers Alarums

So my meticulous plan to paint one tribe of greenskins at a time has not only gone out of the window, it's been fired out of the window with a cannon.

Ta-da!

I started noodling around with some pieces from my bitz box, and came up with a whole new Doom Diver. I have the actual model somewhere (biding its time in the Dettol tank), but having the spare parts from an Empire Mortar, plus the original Doom Diver models, was too much temptation.

(and credit where it's due: I got the idea from The Beard Bunker)

From The Great Gonzo school of entertainment.

The front of the machine is a spare chariot side, since I didn't have enough cannon pieces for a proper chassis, and it gave it a siege-type breastwork look.

The bit that connects the breastwork to the cannon is a prism-shaped offcut that seem to be abundant in resin kits. It already has a slight grain to it, and I added some goblin shield bosses and a few rivets (cardboard and green stuff) to show where it had been bolted on.

The gun barrel, powder barrel and trail belong to the Empire Mortar, although because the barrel was set so far back, I had to improvise the capsquares by putting another set of handles over the barrel's trunnions.

I hope you're appreciating this lesson in cannon anatomy.

I put the whole thing on a 60mm base - it was probably small enough to go on a 50mm one, but the other Doom Diver is too big for anything but a 60mm, and I wanted them to match (since they match in no other way).

Anyway, that left me with some space to fill up. After the barrel and the mushrooms, I didn't want to clutter any more, so I tried a 'blast mark' on the back of the base (perhaps there was a second barrel of powder there, until some goblin crew got careless?).

I used Agrellan Earth crackle paint to break up the ground, then did a freehand blast in Chaos black, drybrushing heavily over it, to break up the sharp lines. Finally, I put a rim of static grass around the blast, and dabbed at it with Black Ink, to show where it had burned away.

"Don't worry - gunpowder never explodes twice."

As this would be a captured mortar, I painted over the Empire badge with an orky skull. And since I was defacing the cannon anyway, added a few 'kill strikes' along the side of the barrel (which is probably a count of goblins fired, rather than targets hit).

Neither one stands out particularly well against the barrel, to be honest, but it's only meant to be a subtle touch.

The snotling on the barrel makes a good power monkey.

I also wrapped a coil of greenstuff around one of the trails, just to make it look even more patched-together.

The paint job is my war machine staple: a mix light browns with a heavy Brown Ink for the wood; drybrushed Leadbelcher over black undercoat, then washed with Typhus Corrosion and highlighted with Ryza Rust.

For best visibility, the goblin is tilted at a slightly higher angle than the barrel - but I don't think accuracy's a big factor here.

That's the machine done, now it's time for the crew...

... or should that be: the ammunition.

This is the second of the two original Doom Divers (the first one being shoved into the gun barrel). They are cracking models - and deserve far better than the crappy little catapults they came with.

As these are Common Goblins (not Night Goblins or Savage Orcs), I get to try out my third style of greenskin. In this case, Goblin Green base, Green Ink wash and Nurgling Green highlights. Not massively different, but at least they look like they see more outdoors than the Night Gobbos.

The usual colours everywhere else, although I got to break out a few new pots of paint: Dryad Bark for the wing supports; Zandri Dust for the wings (makes a nice canvas look), and Mephiston Red for the clothes.

Red may be a bit garish, given I'm doing my best to keep colours muted, but I thought it needed something to brighten it up - and when I hit upon the idea of adding some sporty lines down one side, it made the perfect 'jumpsuit'.

"This is another fine mess you've gotten us into."

The other two hapless attendants look about as confident and cheerful as any goblin would, when tasked with operating an unstable blackpowder weapon.

They models are Gretchin from the original 40k Ork range - crew for the Hop Splat Field Gun (a fun-sounding name for a very boring model). Aside from their morbid expressions, there isn't much to recommend them - I had to add the rammer (also from the Empire kit) and the slow match (a SAGA spear and greenstuff) to give them something to hold.

And so completes the first unit of my Goblin Waaagh! I have a feeling war machines will be a big part of it.

Shoot for the Moon!