Continuing with the ork figure showcases today, this time a deff dread and a trukk. The dread is a relatively recent kit that came out around the same time as the killa kans, while the trukk is a bit older although not much so. They hold up well today, and the cross-kit parts compatibility between the kans and dreads really adds to their modularity. Both models have been modified a bit as usual - or should I say kustomized?
Here's a group shot with a killa kan for size comparison purpose. Same 60mm base as the dread but around half the height.
The dread has been tricked out with three melee arms and a kustom mega-blasta, so more of amelee machine but capable of taking a few high quality (by orks standards) pot-shots as well. This is pretty much counter to all the competitive advice on how to equip dreads in 9th edition, but they generally don't get used anyway owing to lousy internal balance in the current codex.
The drill arm is straight out of the killa kans kit, and like all their arms is fully compatible with the dread's lower arm sockets. The reverse is equally true, although sticking dread ranged weapons on a kan makes them look a bit lopsided to me (not necessarily a bad thing in ork eyes, mind you) and the smaller walkers can't use kustom mega-blastas.
Built as stock dreads have curved spaced armor on their shoulders and upper arms, which I've left off here. I like the "Popeye" look it gives the arms, especially with the uneven sizes of those green sensor "eyes" it has. Not sold on the long term durability of the armor plates anyway, their connection points are rather small for the size and weight of the model.
The twin engine assemblies on the back can also be swapped with the kan engines, and their exhausts can be switched around between assemblies. The body of each engine comes in two pieces, and any left side can be paired with any right side. The number of possible combinations is pretty huge with access to both kits.
Trukks are pretty ubiquitous transport vehicles for many ork armies, but the kit isn't anywhere near as easy to vary the builds on as the walkers are. You can easily do things like switch the driver and gunner from left to right, and I've left the big forward scrap metal armor plate off of this one, but most other things will require some real surgery to change the look much.
The gunner comes in a sort of "gun tub" as a standard assembly, but it's a cramped fit so I opted to kitbash a small firing step to elevate him just enough to put his pintle mount on the railing instead. The unused parts are in the bits box awaiting future projects. The wrecking ball assembly is part of the "tub" but I prefer not to pay to upgrade to mount them, keeping my trukks as minimalist as possible.
As usual, I've gone for a rusty, dirty paint job on this thing. The orange-white checkerboard is a unifying scheme for the current waaagh, although I've varied it on infantry mobs to help differentiate them from one another.
The trukk bed does offer a lot of potential for easy conversion, the easiest of which would be to add some cargo or leave off the spaced armor plates. There's actually checkerboarding on the hull beneath them, which you can hardly see now that they're on. Couldn't overcome the urge to paint them completely even though I knew they'd be mostly concealed.
The spaced armor are reversed from the building instruction, making them extend a tiny bit beyond the end of the bed and giving a little more room up by the loading/boarding ramps.
Trukks can carry up to twelve of most ork infantry, which is pretty hilarious when you look at how few models you can physically fit in the actual model. The boyz really like crowding in when it gives them a chance to go for a ride.
Older versions of 40K had rules that let ork transports carry as many models as you liked, just piling them onto the thing in big untidy stacks. The catch was that anything that fell off while you were moving the vehicle...well, fell off, taking damage and staying where it landed. I can remember ork players in 2nd ed making these crazy pyramids of jumbled infantry models that inevitably resulted in "involutary dismounts" for some of them. Keep in mind that most models were metal back then. Chipped and battered paint jobs were commonplace for greenskins players back then.
I cribbed some spare heads from other kits for the crew here but they're otherwise stock. Their unique heads will be adding a bit variety to some future boys mob, of course. They're best painted separately and then put into place, but the driver (who's part of his driver seat and controls) is pretty tricky to get into place. It can be done, but you need to be patient.
There's almost enough room in the bed of the trukk to fit a can or dread even with its base on, and you could certainly fit the model without a base if you wanted to do something crazy like an ork kan-hauler. Even 2nd edition wouldn't have allowed quite that much silliness (although the old gumball dreads were even smaller), but it does remind me of an idea that GW's demo guys were floating around when the first edition of Epic Space Marine first came out. They got very enthusiastic about the idea of variant Rhino designs coming out in both 6mm and for 40K, including the modern day Whirlwind, Predator and Vindicator. One concept that didn't appear was a "flatbed" Rhino that traded its troop compartment for a fighting platform designed specifically to carry a marine dreadnought, letting it fire its weaponry while hitching a ride on the vehicle.
Always thought it was shame that one didn't make it into the game, but here's an opportunity to do it ork-style. If I ever wind up with a spare kan maybe I'll give it a shot.
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