The start of this conversion was a commission from one of my followers of a version of Ghaz
who embodied all of the ork clans in his design. This was an interesting challenge, but I still
started it with what I do to all my builds, which was to snip Ghaz off at the waist so
I could expand his midsection. In general I tend to do this because miniatures often
don’t have real midsections, and they look more proportional when one is added, and orks
in particular tend to not even really have chests. You can see this in how the groin
guard in Ghaz’s armor is directly attached to the portal for his head.
I glued a chunk of pvc sheet to give some height, layered on greenstuff to bulk it out,
and glued his torso on. To armor the greenstuff I added the pauldron from a killa kan to his
front, and the eye slit from a deff dread to his lower back.
To represent the evil suns the commissioner had requested this ork tech freak head. It’s
a great sculpt, but it’s jaw was a little too wide to fit into ghaz’s jaw plate. To
make room I snipped off some of the head’s saw chin, and scraped clean the inside of
the jaw plate. Speaking of making room, I cut off the few
armor plates Ghaz originally comes with. The reason is that to give Ghaz a really imposing
and powerful silhouette he was going to need a bigger chestplate than that one. For breastplates
you either need to go high to give a deep chested look, or a gut plate which gives the
figure a slouching and kind of weak silhouette, and that wasn’t really the energy I was
going for with this conversion. Unfortunately my first shot at a breastplate
was too wide, and just looked awkward, a slab of metal instead of a breastplate. To get
a better fit I used this armor plate from a Redemptor dreadnought. It worked well, but
was a little too plain and unorky, so I added this jaw plate from a Killa Kan. This gave
him a double toothed aspect that I really liked and felt far more orky and imposing.
To fill the rest of the gaps left by increasing his height I used a combination of greenstuff
and armor plates. The commissioner had specifically requested
that Ghaz’s claw be replaced with the chainsword from an Imperial Knight to represent the looting
nature of the Deathskulls, so I broke open his arm and cut off the forearm portion. Finding
another forearm to replace it was difficult though, as Ghaz’s proportions are sort of…
weird. Judging by the size of his upper arms this Bullgor forearm should match perfectly,
but looks hilariously underized. By contrast this Fire Giant Jailer forearm is way too
large. I eventually settled on a combination of Beastmen
Ghorgon fist and round armor plate that didn’t look too incongruous. To make sure the chainsword
would stay in place once glued, I used wire to pin the chainsword and fist together, along
with a pommel. The limb assembled, I attached it to Ghaz.
To represent the Snakebite clan I glued onto Ghaz’s shoulder the dragon skull from the
Age of Sigmar Megaboss kit. I’d later use chains to strap it to the arm and add some
plausibility for how it stays in place. Another aspect the commissioner asked for was to replace
Ghaz’s toe talons with saw blades. The buzzsaws from the Necromunda Ambot kit fit pretty perfect,
so I glued those in place. They look pretty metal.
To emphasize the looted nature of the chainsword, I cleaned up the edges and protrusions so
I could layer on Ork tech. The easiest way to do this was to use the buzzsaw arm from
a meganob. I shaved down the back, snipped off the saw blade, and glued it in place.
I extended the ork tech layer by gluing on the panels from the meganob kit to give the
impression that the chainsword had been totally assimilated.
Into the pommel I drilled a pair of holes and fit in cabling so that it would look like
the chainsword was being powered by the reactor. For the cabling I used one of the ones that
come with the original kit, and a section of guitar wire. Guitar wire is a pain to bend
and never looks natural, and here loops out a little too much, but it didn’t look too
bad. The last step was to add barrels to Ghaz’s
original gun arm. Basically every conversion of Ghaz I’ve seen done this because it looks
significantly better. The added length makes him feel more imposing both because it expands
his silhouette, and because it adds some angularity which makes him feel less rounded and thus
cartoonish. For those wondering, here’s what the converted
Ghaz looks like compared to the original. He’s a fair bit bigger, and I think has
a really different and unique look to him. I also think he’s successful at representing
the klans in his weapons and armor: Deathskull chainsword, Snakebite drake skull, Evil Sun
cybork head, Goff jawplate, and Bad Moon dakka dispenser. The only klan that didn’t make
it in was the Blood Axes because there just wasn’t enough space for it. I played around
a bit with adding a trench knife strapped to his lower leg, but the commissioner didn’t
really like it. If you liked this video hit the like button,
and subscribe if you’re interested in seeing more huge ork warboss conversions, because
there are a few on the horizon that completely dwarf Ghaz. If you’re interested in commissioning
me yourself, there’s a link to join my email list in the description box where I’ll announce
when I’m accepting new ones. Thanks for watching