The Quarantina Mek Off!

I don't have a problem... I can stop at any time.

Greetings fellow quarantinos! Bulldoglopez here, I hope you're all staying safe and if you've found yourself at home more than usual I hope you've found some time to spend on your hobby. So a couple weeks ago Ol' Captain Crooks was running around the outback... shirtless as usual and then called me up on his Dick Tracy wrist radio and goes "Hey Lopez, I'm a better Mek than you!" and then I go... "Hey dude, I know you're from the future and everything but you're out of your mind if you think you're a better Mek than me!" and then he goes "Am too" and I'm like "Are not" and then he was like "Am too" and I was like "ARE NOT" and so on for 30 minutes.

So ANYWAYS... what ended up happening was a social media miracle. It's like when celebrities get together to sing Imagine except not garbage.

IT'S THE QUARANTINA MEK OFF!!

The rules were simple... each person (heretofore to be known as hypermasculine hobby sensei).. Each Hypermasculine hobby sensei had two weeks to complete any Ork Mek ANYTHING at any scale. (BlueinVT would have participated but he is currently buried under a pile of shamefully unpainted wolves.. more on that later).

MAY THE BEST MEK WIN!!

Bulldoglopez's Mid-life crisis JetTrukk!!

I had this idea to put Orks on a jet... on a monster truck... and so the JetTrukk was born!! The base for the monster truck toy that I picked up for $10 and a Dakkajet. After removing the truck chassis from the suspension and a bit of hacking I had a good basis for the monster truck, then I assembled most of the Dakkajet and attached it to the truck with a carpentry screw. The toy truck is mostly soft plastic and glue would not have held the two components together.

The blue turbines are from some cheap Russian toy jet I got off Ebay and the dual miniguns on the front are from a Gundam kit sent to me by the one and only Erasmus Papafakis.

Many hot glue sticks died to bring us these turbines

Once the jet and truck were attached I got to work making guns and jets. After cramming as much dakka as I could find on the front of this thing, I made some turbines out of hotel shampoo bottles (always keep these), toothpaste caps, and a bunch of random plastic bits from the depth of my bits box. I also added platforms on either side of the JetTrukk so I had some room for boyz and then threw on some boarding planks for extra fun!

After the 15 pounds of glue had dried I got to painting this monstrosity. When painting big stuff like this remember, spray paint and the airbrush are your friend! The paint scheme was pretty straightforward.. RED. Overall this was a really fun spontaneous project which I think I going to be the impetus for me painting up a bunch of Evil Sunz... maybe.... DEFINITELY.

Captain Crooks' Rock 'N' Rolla class Stompa

Greetings Creepers! Before I begin telling you about my mekanikal monster, let me just point out that EVERYTHING Bulldogcheeks said about me is TOTALLY untrue. Well, I mean I am generally shirtless, and I do live in the outback wilderness, but I never EVER run.

Also, the circumstances of this contest have been grossly misrepresented. I was quite happily minding my own business, working on some stuff for my fantasy dark elf force, when talk of this little contest began filtering into the group chat. "That's nice," I thought, "my kind, decent and respectful friends are having fun and will likely produce some great work, but I'll probably sit this one out as I already have my next few projects planned, and-"

"Yeah nah now ur fukt m8."

Some insults cannot be ignored, and I realised that in order to put this upstart mek's apprentice in his place, I was going to have to roll out some heavy duty mekanismo. And roll it does... prepare yourself for the ROCK 'N' ROLLA!

*guitars squeal*

I first glimpsed this mekanikal horror in the pages of White Dwarf magazine; the datafaxes coincided with the release of the stompa kit. I immediately fell in love.

I actually started building one of these about 8 years ago for a big game of Apocalypse but I never finished it and managed to lose almost all of it save for the mega-deff rolla, which survived, albeit in bad shape. I tore the arms off of another half-started stompa and off we went!

Everything a growing lad needs. If your lad happens to be a giant metal effigy of a barbarous ork god...

Usually I take my sweet time building conversions but with a 2 week time frame, I knew it would be tight, so I just made a quick sketch of the rough design and started lashing together styrene tubing and mdf discs to make some sturdy arms for the rolla to attach to.

The flamers are made from several... flamers. And the Laramie Super Soakers that come with the old buggy kit. I assembled as many supa-rokkits as I could salvage from a couple of stompa kits and welded them to a makeshift launching plate. The crew were sourced from both stompa and battlewagon kits, giving a bit of variety and colour to the whole shebang.

Painting something this large in a short time was always going to be tricky, but a lot of the work was done with rattle-cans and a very large drybrush. The mud and blood was painstakingly added with a small spatula using partly dried up Tamiya Clear Red and various Citadel texture paints. The idea is that the rolla kicks up huge volumes of mud and blood and meat as it crushes everything in it's way, but it also sort of looks like someone with a very sad colon took a power-shit on a wall.

The end result isn't perfect but it feels great to finally be able to get this beast finished after almost a decade of sitting idle and unloved. I owe Lopez some begrudging thanks for that, but he ain't getting any because I'm still cross. Eat my farts!

"EAT THEEEEM!!"

Spevna’s Speed Dread

The old RT era Ork dreadnoughts are fugly in the coolest of ways. Lumpy details, zero possibility of the legs actually working, and a pain in the arse to put together. They are supremely cool though. 

I’ve built a couple of them in the past,  but they were in typically static poses. I thought this Mek-Off would be a great opportunity to do something a bit more dynamic. So, after much pinning and swearing, we have the speed dread :)

I decided against the guns on the lower mounts as they’d just interfere with the sense of movement. 

The pilot (who isn’t actually holding any of the controls, so is he really a pilot?) is made from the Stomper kit Mek torso, and one of the Ork pilot heads from that flyer kit. As he’s pointing which way to go, maybe there’s some poor snotling underneath him working the pedals.

This has now filled me with an unquenchable thirst for more dread conversions! I’m already planning a jump pack dread and an artillery one :)

Sean's Mek-a-lekka Hi, Mek-a-hiney Ho!

Get off my lawn!

 So I had this Mega-Gargant sitting around and Bulldog Lopez challenged Captain Crooks to a Mek off. I figured, why not?

I'm sure I could have taken the decoration a little bit farther, but I started to feel the time pressure of the two weeks and just plowed ahead. The little lights and wires that I did highlight don't really show.

Does this bulkhead make me look fat?

Now you may remember we had an Mek battle at BOYL 2019. You can read my totally unbiased report of it here. But Asslessman wouldn't let me use a Mega-Gargant, so I had to build Cocksmasha instead.

Blue had this for sale around the time I was getting all excited about Epic and binge buying stuff. I think he was raising funds for buying wolves or something.

Cutting it off the sprue while watching tv with the family was a pleasant project, but I had no idea how to put this thing together.

Like the Mekiest of Mek Boyz I used the box cover art to figure it out. The smallest Orkea project to date. As you can see I ended up reversing the arms. Mostly because I painted it in sub assembly and the checks would have been facing the rear.

All and all a fun project. I'm glad I didn't have my usual response to peer pressure and refuse to paint anything.

So Creepers, what do you think? Who has won the mighty midlife crisis mek-off? Cast your votes in the comments and let us know your favourite!