This weekend sees a number of new Boarding Patrol boxes go up for preorders, though two in particular stand out as they have new models for their respective factions. The Orks Combat Patrol box comes with a new plastic Snikrot kit, while the Tau box comes with a new plastic Commander Farsight.
Before we get into things proper, we’d like to thank Games Workshop for providing us with preview copies of both of these boarding patrols for review purposes.
Boss Snikrot first appeared in the 3rd edition Ork Codex, released in 1999. He was introduced with a very evocative piece of art and a very cool piece of fiction of an Imperial court martial that only fed the myth around this Ork.
He could only be taken with a squad of his Redskull Kommandos and their rules weren’t great outside of a couple VERY situational instances. Snikrot didn’t see a model until 2008 and eventually that very good metal mini, sculpted by Seb Perbert, was produced in Finecast. Given Games Workshop’s implacable march to replace all non-plastic kits, it was only matter of time before Snikrot got the treatment. Was this on anyone’s list to be done now? No, but for Ork players everywhere, we’ll take it.
Details
DYLON: Snikrot comes on a single sprue with 3 head options, mask on, mask up, or no mask, which is a neat feature for a named character. The designers clearly spent a good amount of time with the previous sculpt. The boots, belt buckle, knives, and arms wrapped in dog tags are nearly identical while the face mask is of a new design. His backpack has been updated to the modern ork aesthetic but he larger maintains the same equipment and he’s gained a pistol of a very large caliber. The details themselves are very well modeled and the textures are visually distinct.
Rockfish: Snikrot has some neat breakdowns for details that you don’t always see with GW models, its resulted in him having layers from a few overlapping pieces. They are all nicely indexed too, so you won’t have issues from having to fiddle and guess how things go together exactly. (Something they could have done a bit better for Farsight…).
Assembly
DYLON: As with most larger modern plastic minis, if you follow the instructions and take your time, Snikrot went together without issue. I chose to go with his mask down and added some modeling putty on his arm joints.
Rockfish: I don’t really feel there is any world where you don’t go with having the mask on, even if its only on his forehead. When you get down to it this model is ‘just’ a ork with a couple of big knives, as nice as it is unless you are particularly familiar with orks he gets kinda generic as a model from a distance without his optics.
I will call out that there is a curious void you can just about see from a very weird angle as the model doesn’t have a completely rendered back underneath the backpack. Is it possible to see under any normal circumstance? No, of course not, you have to have a improbable amount of light at just the right angle to see but it is a bit curious.
MasterSlowPoke: This is the first of the ‘modern’ series of Orks I’ve assembled, and I hope they are all like this. The kit does a great job of hiding all of the seams and went together very painlessly. Normally I’d like to change up the default pose a bit, but Snikrot is not a complicated Ork and the stock pose does a great job at reflecting this.
Painting
DYLON: When I found out that I had Snikrot coming my way, I went looking on my desk and found my long-primed, but long-languishing metal Snikrot. I figured that now would be a no-better time to get him painted and thought it would be very interesting to see the differences between the two sculpts essentially painting them back-to-back.
Old Snikrot has a more closed pose with his knives closer to his body and a giant finger in from of his face. It was a challenge to paint it because of that and also there are some textures that weren’t easy to parse. Also, he’s considerably smaller and less bulky.
As soon as I had new Snikrot assembled, I knew that he would be easier to paint, for all the reasons mentioned above, but also that his pose is much more open.
I started off with a black undercoat and dove right into painting his skin. I still use the same method that I’ve been using since 1999, dry brushing successive layers of Dark Angels Green, Snot Green, and Goblin Green, all from the same old hex pots I had back then. A new addition to this scheme is mixing some Ushabti Bone into the Goblin Green and adding a couple layers of stippled highlights to the skin.
After that, in a nod to the 2nd Edition Kommandos, and to match my existing Kommandos, I painted his pants (and grenades) with Mephiston Red, highlighting them with Evil Suns Scarlet and Wild Rider Red. I painted his boots black and added the black camo splotches to the pants.
All the leather received a base coat of Mourning Brown which was highlighted by adding Ushabti Bone to the mix until the final highlight of pure Ushabti. I glazed a thinned layer of Wildwood Brown into the recesses. The smoke from the smoke grenade was base coated with Adeptus Mechanicus Grey and highlighted to white before a layer of Apothecary White Contrast to tie it all together.
The skulls and teef were basecoated with Steel Legion Drab and highlighted with Ushabti Bone with a final pointed highlight of white. I painted all the lenses with a traditional gem effect from black to Mephiston Red to orange, before dotting them white and adding a layer of ‘Ard Coat.
I finished Snikrot with a little freehand; dags on a grenade and the Glyph “grub” on the smoke grenade, which means “cunning, find, dig, hide”, which I thought fitting.
Rockfish: I kinda blazed through this guy in some free time on a weekend, so I don’t have a bunch of step-to-step things for you, but I can call out the main parts of the recipe!
For most of the base coats I find specifics aren’t too important for orks, you can just take your pick of metals and leathery/clothy colors by whatever suits your fancy at the time. The consistent things I use are Vallejo Golden Olive for the skin, Sotek for the blue armor, and Averland for the yellow iconography.
I would say that I’m a bit more consistent with washes on my orks, but every time I get to them it changes a bit. This time I mostly just threw Agrax at most of the model, with a extra coat of Basilicanum on the steel. The blue and skin are the only constants here, with the blue getting Drackenhof and the skin getting a all over of Biel-tan and then a recess shade of Coelia.
Next up is the highest effort part of the model, glazing up the skin! I start by building up Ogryn Camo, followed by Krieg Khaki and then for most of the skin I finish at Ushabti. I make a exception for soft or irritated bits like ear tips, lips and scars, for those I glaze Kislev then a bit of Cadian for a nice soft pink.
Past the skin I mostly just run around using whatever I feel like will fit on the lower importance highlights, but keep to glazing Temple Guard for the armor and Flash Gitz for the yellow. A quick little thing I do to tie various metal or painted parts together is run through and apply heavily thinned Skrag brown to anywhere I want to define or imply the presence of rust forming.
Lenses here are relatively simple, just following our usual Gem Effect technique with a couple of different sets of colours to keep it interesting. One set uses Mournfang, Skrag, Yriel and Flash Gitz for the yellow crescents and the other… I can’t say I remember exactly, I mostly just did something in a couple of minutes as there wasn’t enough definition with only yellow lenses. I believe it to be Mephiston, Evil Suns and Wild Rider but there might be a dash of Fire Dragon too.
The base is fairly basic too, Vallejo Dark Earth washed with Agrax for the river bank, and Wyldwood in the river bed with Vallejo Transparent Water paste sculpted into ripples then drybrushed Pallid Wych. I threw a bunch of different Gamers Grass tufts onto the base too, shrubs, mixed green, swamp and moss from my recollection.
MasterSlowPoke: I went with a bit of a paler version of Ork skin for mine, as I kind of like the bright but desaturated look you get with this effect. This was done mostly with Elysian Green and Ogryn Camo, with Caliban Green being washed into the recesses. This actually came out a bit more pale than I was intending, so I ended up glazing a bit of Biel-Tan Green over all of it to add a bit more life to the skin. For any thin areas, like his lips, ears, scars, and knuckles, I mixed Elysian with Kislev Flesh to accentuate those areas.
I’ve always liked Ork Kommandos wearing mismatched camouflage patterns. He’s not wearing a whole lot, but I went with urban style camo on one leg and Kasrkin-style camo on his other leg. His backpack is a huge part of the model, so I used two kinds of leather to help break up the massive shape. I wanted to make his eye lenses a bit more glowy than I usually do on models, so I did the normal gem-style color ramps but focused on the center rather than an edge and went a bit brighter than normal.
Final Thoughts, Parting Shots, and What Have You
DYLON: All in all, it’s pretty good glow up for Snikrot. I lament the loss of the the original’s pose with the cheeky ‘shush’ finger and I do like the old headgear better, but the new model is a better painters model by a long shot. It’s miles easier to paint and shows the advancements in model making of the past 15 years.
Rockfish: I will echo the above and say that it’s unfortunate that Snikrot ended up with a rather generic pose, it’s not bad per say but definitely not memorable and the head is tilted down just a bit too much for my taste. GW didn’t really drop the ball anywhere here, even if he could have done with a dash of something to get that zing the model is missing, so I don’t see any reason to dissuade anyone from picking him up other then the usual caveat for a being a model for a specific sub-faction.
MasterSlowPoke: Painting Snikrot was a lot of fun, and a great change of pace from my normal Rainbow Warrior painting. He makes me want to do more Orks, as their models are just fun. Boss Snikrot isn’t breaking any new barriers in ork-concepts, but he doesn’t need to. He’s just thriving with his three big knives.
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