Compared to the new Age of Sigmar orruk sculpts, Game Workshop’s ork line is beginning to
look really dated, their boyz and nobz weirdly proportioned and awkwardly posed. But what
if there was a way to combine the two? To bring orruks into the grim darkness of the
41st century? To try it out I bought a box of orruk brutes to convert into some nobz.
Though nobz were my goal, the same process could largely work for boyz, lootas, and meganobz.
For the first orruk conversion I started with this snarling fellow. Swapping out the brute
heads for nob ones would be one of the easiest ways to make the brutes look orky, but a lot
of ork heads are kind of dumb looking to me, and the brute ones to me are a big upgrade,
snarling and brutal and feral. Besides their heads, I wasn’t quite sure
how much of the original orruks I wanted to keep in place. I did know though I wanted
to replace all of their weapons. I started that process by snipping off the head of his
axe. I was planning on replacing it with this nob chainaxe but it was just a touch too oversized,
so I instead swapped it for this smaller boy one which glued into place cleanly.
This is the pistol to an ork boy. While I like the aspect of the brute holding the dismembered
head, and even thought for a hot minute about replacing it with a space marine helmet, I
decided to instead replace it with the pistol. The original fist isn’t at the right angle,
and the one holding the pistol is from the wrong side, but after some snipping and glueing
the hand came together. It’s an awkward fit between the two, but I’d hide the seam
later with a greeble. While the first conversion went well, this
second one is where I hit my stride. Where in the first one I could just swap out the
weapon heads, the big two handed choppa of the brute wouldn’t allow that this time.
Cutting the choppa away just to leave the hands would’ve been too much work, so I
decided to just swap them out for a pair of nob ones holding a chainaxe.
This was a bit tricky as the while the brutes are roughly the same height as nobz, they’re
very differently proportioned in their anatomy, less cartoonish in a lot of ways: their heads
are smaller, their arms thicker, and they don’t have the gorilla-esque butt jutting
out stance. You can kind of see it here, where the nob arms holding the chainaxe look a bit
undersized in width, but they still fit pretty well.
I proceeded to take off his arms and while they were off snipped down some of his tooth
gorget. Later I’d go in and cut it off almost completely on both him and the rest of the
brutes. They’re an element of their design I don’t love. They just look a little too
scavenged and slapdash to me. I also started adding various knives, pouches,
and pistols to the brute. I learned in my megaboss to warboss conversion that they’re
a good way of modernizing the medieval look while also covering blank spaces. I did this
to all the brutes, though this is the only time I show it.
The nob arms are too widely spaced for the brute body, so I mixed greenstuff and used
them to fill in the gap. Before that though I shaved down the rest of his gorget and replaced
it with this nob jaw plate. They’re a good way of modernizing his silhouette and giving
him a more aggressive feel. All those alterations made, I finally put
his new arms into place. I replaced the back plate, but as I did realized I didn’t like
the pauldrons. They kind of just looked too big and took away from his roided out and
muscled look. To hide the greenstuff I replaced the pauldrons with those of a nob which maintained
his sleeveless silhouette. A lot of ork armor looks like discount mad
max gear, but their shoulder plates are nicely metal and complements the brute’s original
armor. I liked how this looked so much I went back and replaced the pauldrons of the first
ork with those of a nob, and proceeded to do it with all the remaining brutes.
For brute number three I decided to use two of my favorite weapons: the nob bionic buzzsaw
arm, and the loota twin barreled shooter. He was by far the easiest of the brutes to
convert and I largely just applied what I had learned from the first two: I shaved down
his toothed gorget, used greenstuff to fit his limbs on, and outfitted him with an assortment
of pouches and gear. Brute four had from the outset one major issue
that needed to be fixed: he needed some shoes. Before I could get to that though, I decided
to try and make him taller. I have a bad habit of enlarging essentially every ork project
I start, and honestly it’s a miracle I got to this stage without trying it on one of
the other brutes. For expanding him I sawed off his waist and
slotted in a sheet of pvc plastic. This leaves a gap in armor between the girdle and breastplate,
but shifting the breastplate down closes it, and the gap left above that I filled with
a nob jaw plate. This gives him a really cool, aggressive look.
For his feet I sawed off these from a nob, and glued them in pretty cleanly. I don’t
love the moccasin look they have, but they’re better than his splayed open bare feet. You
can’t see it well here but they also give him a more charging forward motion than he
had originally. I also gave him for the right arm an appropriately huge shooter, though
it took a ball of greenstuff to fit it in place.
You can see here how lengthening him made him a touch taller than the normal orruks.
It’s not a lot, but it gives them a bit less of a squat look. I liked how much it
looked that I went back and expended the three other brutes using the same technique
The left arm of this brute gave me a lot of trouble. This is the knife from an ogryn that
I had the idea of giving him to hold in a backhand. This looked good until I attached
the arm and realized the blade was too huge for the ork and looked silly. I tried swapping
it for the harpoon from a nob bionic arm but that was too skinny. My third try was to switch
his arm to a simple choppa, but that looked kind of dumb too, a little goofy in the way
orks can sometimes. Finally, I settled on giving him this grenade which works well,
if not perfect. And with that, my nobz squad was ready for
combat. I think they hit a really nice middle ground between keeping a lot of the original
sculpts detail and not looking too medieval or simply like fantasy orcs with guns. With
only five brutes to a box this is too expensive of a conversion to make for regular boyz,
but for nobz or meganobz I think it would be doable.
But enough from me. What did you all think of them? Let me know in the comments, and
like and subscribe if you enjoyed the video. I’ve also recently launched a patreon, so
go check that out if you want to contribute to the channel and get a say in what I convert
next. Thanks for watching.