The Unnamed Gorkamorka Site

When I was first starting out in wargaming I was 12, I didn’t have much money, nor did I have access to much in the way of materials. So today I’ve written a guide for my 12 year-old self, or anyone in a similar position, to get some cheap terrain on their board.

These hills are easy to make and about as close to free as it’s possible to get. They’re relatively sturdy but are also light-weight, which is hopefully a good thing.

You will need the following:

-Flour
-Water
-Scrap paper
-Scrap cardboard
-Cardboard toilet rolls
-Some kind of tape (sellotape, ducttape, etc..)
-PVA glue or similar
-Sand
(-Paint)

You’re better off making more than one hill at a time as it seems to be virtually impossible to make a small amount of papiermâché glue. We made two, but that was mostly due to limited space and time. I may well make some more soon. A big thanks to Depiff for building these with me, always ready to lend a hand, it’s appreciated.

Step one: Make some papiermâché glue

Planning can wait until later – let’s get some raw materials on the go!
Heat up some water in a pan, it doesn’t need to be boiling, just kinda warm. Take a small amount of plain flour (other kinds probably work too) and drop it into the water.

I say “a small amount” because this is about ratio, not about mass. I used 100ml of flour which was far too much for this project. Try 25ml or 50ml. The water should be five or six times greater (i.e. 5:1/6:1) so 300ml water or 600ml, respectively.

You’ll need to give it a good stirring and perhaps add more water if it’s getting too thick, it’s all a bit trial-and-error!

A minute or two later you should have a goopy white/grey mass. Pour it out into a bowl and set it aside to cool for a few minutes, you’ve now got time to plan.

Step two: Planning

You’re going to have to establish the height of your hills and the general shape and size. The first hill Depiff and I made was going to be quite a tall one, although this was a little unintentional. The central plateau of it is 5.5cm tall, which doesn’t sound that tall but is deceptively tall for a small hill.

Draw out a basic outline, ideally with a model to hand for scale purposes. At the same time decide whether this is going to be a bumpy hill, a crag, a cliff, etc..

Step three: Support structure

The toilet rolls are going to be your support columns inside the hill. Draw a rough line around where you reckon the hilltop should be and compare it to a vehicle. As I mentioned a moment ago, that line is 5.5cm from the base.

Next up, flatten the roll and use a knife or some scissors to slice it into the relevant height. You’ll probably use multiple toilet rolls for this, but that’s just fine, the more support, the better.

Now you’re going to need that scrap card. It doesn’t need to be thick – card stock, corrugated cardboard, whatever really. These are going to provide structure for the papiermâché to cling too. Try to avoid sharp points as they’ll show up. Slice it into triangles and angled pieces and tape them onto the toilet rolls.

They don’t need to be particularly sturdy as they’ll get entangled with the papiermâché , holding them in place. The more you use, the more defined your structure will be. Some things can be fixed later, but it’s better if you have a vague idea of what you want your hill to look like before you start coating it.

Step four: Papiermâché

Now comes the messy bit, which is why there’s not many photos – both Depiff and I had our hands covered in papiermâché glue and couldn’t really stop to take photos. You don’t really need much direction at this stage though – take a strip of paper, dunk it in the glue, drape it over the structure, repeat.

Some long pieces work well for establishing a basic structure, then smaller pieces can be used to add more well defined pieces.

To get the process done faster, use a hairdryer to dry the piece (as we so often do when building things). Once it’s relatively dry, add more papiermâché.

I would recommend doing this on a surface like a cutting mat – it can be picked up, rotated, and peeled away. We stuck our hill to it and then trimmed the scraggly edges.

Step five: Drying and basing

I’d recommend leaving your hill to dry overnight, unless you’re incredibly aggressive with the hairdryer. We tried to dry ours at a very rapid pace but it still took quite a while. The results weren’t bad though, so no complaints.

Once it’s dry, dab on some PVA glue and dunk the whole thing in sand. Make sure you cover the entire thing as adding more glue later is irritating, but you knew that already.

Now you’ve got a choice – you can keep it as it is, covered in sand, or you can paint it. Personally I prefer my hills painted. It does have the advantage of holding the sand in place a little better, but it’s by no means compulsory.

(Optional) Step six: Painting

I undercoat mine with a dark brown, then give them a moderate dusting of a colour approximating Snakebite Leather, followed by drybrushing with a lighter colour.

I’m not going to say this is the definitive method as I am fairly sure I could have painted them differently to make them look better, but I’m not going to repaint them. They’re good enough for me!

Here’s the finished hills:

Do you like them? Do you hate them? Could you teach me how to do better?
Comment and let us know!

It seems that the Out of Print Games page on the Games Workshop website has been hidden. This is perhaps intentional, but it’s far from a certainty, but it matters because it was the page distributing the rulebooks for GoMo.

Regardless of the intent, the page itself is still up and can be found here. We suggest you get the books from that page, rather than via the links below, simply because that’s what GW have asked of other sites.

There’s no guarantee the page will stay up though, so here’s direct links to the PDFs:

Da Roolz

Da Uvver Book

The obvious disclaimer applies – we did NOT create these documents, they’re subject to the GW terms of use. The following text accompanies/accompanied the files:

All the files are free to download but please be aware that all PDF files downloaded from this website are copyright Games Workshop and that you must abide by our terms of use policy when downloading and using our internet resources.

We hope we’re not going to get in any trouble over trying to make sure our readers have access to the rules of Gorkamorka. We just want people to be able to play this awesome game!

Sending your boyz to the Dok can be a risky business but there are great rewards to be had too, depending on your fortunes of course. This article focuses mainly on Gorkers and Morkers (although Ork Freebooters get a mention too).

If one of your boyz gets seriously injured the question often arises, “Should I send him to the Dok?”. The answer isn’t always a simple one unfortunately

Personally I base my decisions on the subject around the intended purpose of the warrior. If he has low leadership and a headwound then he’s going to be under the knife before he knows it, particularly if he also has low WS (meaning Frenzy won’t be worth much). On the other hand if the boy in question is a driver or gunner and receives a leg wound or an arm wound I’m unlikely to bother.

A good strategy for the risk averse amongst us is to wait until multiple serious injuries are sustained; that way even if the Dok gets a bit mixed up there’s a reasonable chance that one of the other maladies will be remedied.

That’s my strategy but certainly not the only one, not by a long stretch. Ross, tUGS‘ freebooter player tends to send his boys in at the first sign of a fever, usually getting an assortment of crazy results. This seems to be quite an effective tactic for augmenting otherwise unremarkable warriors. For example, one of his boys has a Cybork Body (thanks to Kromlech, their Post-Apocalyptic Mechanical Torsos are ideal), he’s able to stand up to a hell of a lot of punishment. On one occasion it took three guys and one with a Power Klaw to take that git down!

Sending a yoof to the Dok may well double his cost (the Dok’s bill is added to a warrior’s cost, don’t forget) but it can provide some rather interesting results from a mob member that might otherwise be fairly useless.

In the end it’s entirely up to you – are you feeling fortunate?

Just had to make a quick post out of these little fellas. Jaggedtoothgrin over on DakkaDakka posted these over a year ago but I’ve just been made aware of them by our resident Kaptin…

Holee crap these are awesome!

Seeing anything like this coming over the horizon towards me, I would simply lay down my rifle, curl into a ball and wait for the rush of death to sweep over me..

Make sure you check out the rest of the pics in there, though if you have a slow connection, it might be quicker to wait for them to break the atmosphere and begin scouring this world of life.

Recently Easy E asked on The Waaagh what the point of Ork bikes were, which of course prompted an article on the subject, created with considerable help from all of those that replied to the topic.

Ork bikes are lousy at ramming, can barely fit any gubbinz and can’t mount big gunz at all. However, one spanner boy can support three bikes and they are only 10 teef each, fifteen if you factor in a driver allowing for a more flexible approach and avoiding putting all your eggs in one basket noted Da Bikers.

If you try to use a bike like you would a trukk or a trak you’re going to run into problems, but if you learn to play to their strengths then you can really harass your opponents.

As long as you build the bikes right you should be able to fit one passenger on them. That passenger won’t get any protection, unlike if they were the crew on another vehicle (or the bike’s driver for that matter) but they do become hyper mobile. A passenger can easily be transported near scrap counters, moved to an advantageous location, or be picked up and escape from trouble very quickly.

This picture is reason enough to have Ork Bikers in your mob

Zogg pointed out the often neglected rule of tailing, which is particularly useful with bikes. If you opt to tail an enemy vehicle you will move when they move meaning you can continually harangue them. Combining this with krak stikkbombs can be an excellent way to take down those pesky steel behemoths although a similar strategy can be employed if you’ve equipped the bike with twin-linked kannons (as I have) – every turn you’ll get D3 S4 shots at close range against the vehicle you’re after. Not amazing, but sooner or later you’re going to inflict some damage.

If vehicles aren’t troubling you then bikes can still be valuable assets – more so if you have multiple bikes in play. You see all those warriors in the open? Yeah, they could really benefit from being run over a few times!
You might not actually kill them, but it’ll certainly keep your opponent distracted, allowing you free rein to implement some sort of Kunnin’ Plan, if you’ve got one. If not, now you’ve got the breathing space to come up with one…

If you’ve got more ideas for good ways to use bikers in Gorkamorka either leave a comment on this article or head over to the forum and drop a reply there.

Artwork provided by Clayton Tait and used with permission.