Weekly Waffle #343 – Hello Karl
3rd August 2024
For this week’s weekly waffle I’m staying with my Puppets War box of delights and bringing you Karl. I think this really highlights the dilemma I have when it comes to my Ork army. For the most part I’m all in for the big red one going with speed freaks. Mainly because I like the idea of being able to play around with different kit bash and scratch build ideas for vehicles. Add in what Puppets War are currently doing with their film inspired ideas and I just wish I had more hobby time to play around with more ideas. But at the same time I also love mech creations in the form of Dreadnoughts and Killer Kanz. I’ve even played around with trying to make some of these faster by building Killer Kanz with jump packs and my mono wheel Bendy Dread. They don’t have any special game rules I did them just to look fast so they would blend in with the rest of my army. So should I go fast or should I go clunky. I love both so for this week’s update I’ve gone clunky. After all even if it’s not getting across the battle field as fast as everything else it’s still an awesome site. A mech creation plodding relentlessly towards the enemy.
Karl is a nice take on the theme with a few different weapon options. It’s a 3D printed multi part kit like a lot of their offerings at the moment. One thing I have found this time is that the resin they use is quite brittle. It’s not anything that would ever put me off picking up more of their offerings, but it does have an impact if you are trying to pin or magnetise anything. You can still do it but you just need to take your time. If you rush in with to large of drill bit you can crack the resin. But if you take your time and build up the whole size with a few different drill bits it works ok. Me being a bit impatient resulted in a few cracks but I got everything to work in the end.
The details are all really nice and everything went together really nicely. There wasn’t a lot of cleaning up needed which can be something of a double edged sword. When you have a first look over the parts everything looks nice and clean. But if you look a littler closer there a bits of supports that need to cleaned up. Everything cleans up easily and everything fits together really well so it’s a nice model to build.
They also do another version called Tom. This is their more original line which has some different weapon options and some more armour. I did think about getting one these versions but decided against it because there are so many other models that I want to pick up first. But the Bushi version of their orc boys may be my go to form some Ard boys in the future.
Once I built Karl I decided not to do anything fancy and just stayed with my standard red, blue and yellow colour scheme. It’s something I do a lot of and I find it quite therapeutic because I’ve done it so much. A quick overview is that after priming it I dry brush everything with a dark metallic before a dry brush highlight. A wash with nuln oil and then a final dry brush highlight. This gives me a basic metallic effect all over the model. Then I add three shades of each of the colours to give a bit of depth. With the final step being the details.
It’s a process that I think gives a good overall standard and easy to repeat. One thing I do find with this process is that it seems like you aren’t really making any progress until you get to that last highlight. Then everything seems to come together really quickly. The one thing have consciously done differently on this one is to keep the cooler of all of the cables the same. On a lot of previous builds I’ve tried to paint each cable a different colour just to try and force in a bit more details. But I’m not sure it really needs it here so I’ve been a bit boring and gone with just grey cables.
But what do you think.
You can see more Ork miniatures at my gallery here.
I’ve really enjoyed painting this guy and it’s topped up the mojo tank nicely. The plan is to with some more Puppets War for next week and then I’m going to have to have serious think about what I do after that because I have a bit of dilemma. As just said the mojo is working well at the moment and I have quite a few things that I want to work on so there is no shortage of projects to dabble with going forward. My issue is that my hobby time is about to be massively curtailed. I have some big things in my personal life coming up over the next month or so and just happens to land as we start a massive new piece of work at work.
Over the last few years I’ve been really lucky to be able spend some time each week working from home. That has meant that some of that commuting time has been converted to hobby time. But for starting in just over a week I will be back in the office every day for a few months. That means the commute time in the evening that I was using for hobby time won’t be there. Coupled with the personal stuff I have going on, which I will share in about six weeks, means I’m not going to have a lot of time for hobby. But I do want to find a way to keep the blog going each week. As I say the mojo is still there so I want to keep things ticking over.
So I have a been toying around with a couple of ideas. The first is that instead of trying to get you a finished mini or squad each week I just share whatever I have been able to get done so there will be a lot more work in progress type of posts. The second is to spend some time revisiting old projects and reviewing what I did but more importantly what I might do differently new. I know this sounds like a bit of cope out on the content front but it’s something I can work on whilst I’m commuting. There are a few projects I’ve like to go back over because I’d quite like to have another go at them and this could be a good way to lay the groundwork for that.
Either way I’m still committed to having updates for you each weekend whatever form they may take. So if there are few short waffles over the next few months please stick with me. I’ve not lost the mojo and have lots of things in the pipe line. Including a new order that I have just placed with Puppets War. But you are going to have to wait a little while to find out just what that is.
That’s it for this week. I hope you have fun whoever you have planned for the week ahead and hope to see you all back here again next Saturday.
