Deathskull warbands are famous their lootas, orks that build all kind of crazy guns out of whatever weapons and equipment they can scavenge after a battle. I had a small unit of these in second edition when their kustom kombi weapon used the artillery dice for strength, giving a result of 2, 4, 6, 8, 10 or explosion! But those models are long gone and I never made a unit of lootas in 3rd edition (when they used the actual rules for the guns from other armies) or 4th edition when they once again got their own models and custom gun rules. So, Da Skulltakaz, being Deathskulls, gave me the perfect excuse to finally dive into this unit.
I had two boxes, which only makes 8 lootas and 2 meks. I wanted a big unit of 10 lootas. With Mob Rule giving morale based on unit size and ork BS of 2, I feel orks need large units to be effective in 4th edition. I also did not want any of the 10 boyz to look alike, despite there being only 4 unique sculpts. So I pulled out the bitz box, knife, and glue.
I had some fun unleashing my bitz box to make the custom weapons. I even utilized an old metal lascannon from the 2nd edition metal ork dreadnought. I decided to give a nod to my two main opponents: Crimson Fists and the Tyranid Hive Fleet Tarasque. One or two guns may be a little over the top, but this is 40k and orks so there really is no such thing as a gun that is too big! I just could not resist the look of a giant "spud gun" made from industrial terrain. It looks like a junk launcher out of Fallout. And it is fueled by the power plant of a Crimson Fist's power armor. I also could not resist trying to mold electrical with organic for a looted Tyranid bioweapon. I figure the electrical signals from the copper wires can cause muscle spasms that fire the gun. The hardest part was making the extra harnesses so all the models would look roughly equivalently beefy. The only ork without a harness has the ammo grot on his back and he still has a cross bar so he can mimic the look of how the others hold their weapons.
I think these guys look like they could dish out some serious damage. With ten boys with D3 shots each at S7 AP4, they will be deadly against anything except space marines. And whenever they do not do much, I can chalk that up to misses and misfires and just assume the guns did not shoot much that round.
