Manteara now on tour

Mantearer (also spelt Manteara) were playing brutal rokk long before Sirrus Bizniz ever popularised the genre on Boff's Rok, slamming away at their instruments in bars full of orks too keen on getting drunk to realise they were in the presence of greatness. Lead gittarist 'Toofbag' Torgrum eventually took the initiative and took to smashing his gittar over the heads of anyone who wasn't listening during their sets. This kind of violence was met with a mixed response, ranging from 'vaguely amused' to 'extremely keen,' and led to Mantearer gaining a reputation for the most brutal mosh pits in da Scene.

Toofbag's propensity to start fights with everyone meant that the band soon had to invest in armour just to get through the opening songs, which in turn resulted in ever larger objects being thrown at them. Mantearer soon found themselves in a harms race, which they ultimately won when Sirrus Bizniz helped them surge in popularity to the extent that they could afford mega armour.

A modern Mantearer gig is rarely considered a success unless someone or something dies, and their shows are unusually dangerous. It's not uncommon for them to set fat-smeared squigs on fire and send them bounding into the crowd, or to split the audience into famously violent walls of deff so unstoppable they once knocked Sweary Bozz over. Rokk fans are known to boast about how many Mantearer gigs they've survived, particularly if that gig was the notorious Grogtown Oopsie.

The only thing Mantearer take almost as seriously as their own rokk is their loyalty to Sirrus Bizniz for his role in their rise to fame. That, and his vision of the Metalwaaagh, a cause they consider to be sacred. Particularly given how many teef it's making them.

Konversions

Judging from the studio paint jobs, I didn't think I liked the meganobz kit. The leg poses are really, really static, and the official paint job just makes them look like giant lego bricks. It was only once I had the kit in hand that I started appreciating all the little details. While this doesn't fix the static posing on the legs (the arms are far more modular and posable) it does at least give them something in their favour.

So much delicious detail

One thing you notice when you build them is that if you leave the iron gobs off, it makes the nob look a lot less chibi. I only had two iron gobs from the nobz kit available, or I might have done this more widely. I considered just leaving them off, but given ork proportions that just meant that half their torso was effectively unarmoured, so in the end we've got a mix, and the lads look pretty well protected. By ork standards, at least.

Left: stock iron gob. Right: headswap from the nobz kit.

That said I added more armour, using spare shoulder plates from the nobz kit, around the upper arms. This helped add variety and increased henchness, which are both very important things.

Since the painting's very much in line with the rest of the Goffs there's not much more to say than that. I built this unit during the end of 9th edition, and sadly 10th edition has seen fit to completely neuter their guns. This was most vexing, but I must remind myself that models are permanent and rules are temporary. Seethes at loss of 5 skorchas.

My Pile of Goffortunity is now down to a fairly manageable size, kinda. Left in the queue are:

• Some grotz
• 20 beast snagga boyz
• A buggy
• Battlewagon
• One mek
• The final deff dread
• Da Stompa

Right, I'm off to see how badly orks perform in Fury of the Swarm, which I'm still hard at work on. And will be. For... some months yet.