The Ironfang Pirate Fleet - Docker Goff

Docker Goff

Goff was a rather mercenary pirate who worked on several different ships over the years. Strangely, none of the Kaptains he briefly followed seemed all that bothered by this at all and he came and went as he pleased.

He was superstitious and always wary of ill omens, which he saw everywhere. Whenever he met new shipmates he wanted to exchange news about other crews and places they'd been - he always assumed his listeners knew them even when they clearly didn't.

+++

The build:

I knew I would buy the Goff Rocker model as soon as I saw the preview. I also knew I would be converting him into an orruk pirate.

But it wasn't until after he arrived in the post that I realised I hadn't thought about what he could represent in terms of story and rules. So I spent a few days mulling it over before I made any serious conversion changes to the model. My first thoughts were:

• A Warchanter
  + Using the guitar as the basis to make a hurdy gurdy!
  - I don't think I need another Warchanter right now (I could save the guitar bit to make a hurdy gurdy player later).
• A shaman of some sort
  + Could be a Weirdnob Shaman or a Wurrgog Prophet (on the 40mm base he came with) or Wardokk (on a 32mm base).
  - I went off the shaman idea after a few people made reference to the trope of "voodoo witch doctors" wearing top hats. I wasn't really comfortable with that.
• A Boss
  + Either a Bonesplitterz Savage Big Boss or an Ironjawz Ardboy Boss.
  - I would need to decide which crew he would join to pick which one.

Eventually I settled on both a Savage Big Boss and an Ardboy Boss!

I realised that if I made him so he could be either a Savage Big Boss (in the Cleavermaws who I play using Bonesplitterz rules), or an Ardboy Boss (in the Swordfyshes who I play using Ironjawz rules) it would give me the most narrative options later. He will probably see tabletop action with the Swordfyshes first as they are my warband in our current campaign.

In principle the build should have been pretty straightforward after that. But I probably made it more complicated than I needed too, because I had a fairly solid idea of what I wanted him to look like.

I assembled him following the instructions, up to the point where it said to attach his hands, then went "off-book".

+++

I clipped off the bit of squig attached to his left foot then glued a piece of Gloomtide Shipwreck deck (I had saved a bit with a sextant and a bone on it while I was making my Shipwreck Rogue Idol) to the bottom of his left foot, so the bottom edge touched the ground next to his right foot. Then added bits of timber from the Skaven lightning cannon under the angled deck to hold it up.

I went through my bits boxes and started sorting parts that might work. I found a right arm holding an axe I liked - a nice big Boss Choppa from the Ironjawz Brutes kit. I clipped the Brute arm off at the elbow, along the edge of the armour plate, at an angle that fitted the Goff Rocker's arm without the guitar/hand bit. But it made his arm too long, so I trimmed the Rocker's arm a bit more to fit it.

I had to trim his left arm to the elbow, so I could replace the mic-holding hand and change the angle of the arm. I chose a left arm, also from the Brutes kit, that didn't have a hand attached then clipped a closed-fist from the Ork Nobz kit and trimmed it to fit the wrist joint of the Brute arm.

Before I attached the bandolier (well, guitar strap) I shaved off the bullets where they poked out of the loops. Once I had glued the strap in place I added the gunpowder flasks from a WFB Dwarf kit and a flintlock pistol from the Empire Pistoleers. I also shaved off the bullet from the hat-band.

There was an area on his back that had a hole and a flattened bit where the guitar should have gone. My old faithful came to the rescue again: the Ogor Glutton bag of bones. I fiddled around with the position and angle before I glued it in place, to find a spot that both looked good and had plenty of contact points to make a strong join.

His shoulders looked a bit narrow and out of proportion to his armoured arms so, after shaving of a few studs, I added a Brute's pouldron.

A Skaven Plague Monk pouch and a Kroot pistol finished off the gear on his belt.

The next stage was a little greenstuff work to bulk out the base where the sand would be, between the shipwreck timbers...

... and to fill a couple of gaps around the backpack.

It was really cold on the day I did the greenstuff and it was much harder to work with than it normally is.