“Give it up for… Mushrööm Klöwd!!!!!”
Back in the late eighties/early nineties (when I started getting into GW) the company had its own record label. Really.
The difficult second album.
From bands with names like “Bolt Thrower” came songs like “Stealers Kiss” and “Noise Marine”. The “Noise Marine” track even led to the development of the Slaaneshi marine cult (rather than the other way around IIRC), which is a weird little factoid. So its safe to say that the GW studio at the time was heavily fueled by rock. Brian May is also fuelled by rock and also featured in White Dwarf during that era. Yep, he did.
Inspirational (WD122, February 1990)
Presumably all of this eighties rawk influence in the studio was at least in part why Kev Adams sculpted these models in 1990. I painted these “Goff Rokkers” in the same colour scheme as the rest of my Bigdogz orks. I was tempted to vary the patterning on the models and to add some other colours to suit the supreme absurdity of these models (leopardskin like on the Executioner and Dr. Leghorn might have been a good idea), but I resisted. I am a model of restraint.
Smash
I did repeat the hazard stripes that feature on the larger Bigdogz miniatures (like the Ripper Suits/Mega Armour, Deffkoptas and Cyborks) because I thought it suited the models. Plus it reminds me of Stryper, a band even more ridiculous than Spinal Tap, except Stryper is real.
Stryper: one of the top Christian glam rock bands of all-time. And some people think that toy soldiers are weird…
I have been painting the highlights on my ork flesh in quite a harsh way for a while now. On the table its looks fine and that finish is quick to achieve and satisfying. I find that sort of painting harder when the miniature musculature is less defined than on the gnarled plastic orks though, such as on gretchin models and on these old 1990 sculpts. So I painted the flesh slightly differently on these guys, which takes a little longer. Im not sure that the finish looks very much better, but it definitely takes a lot more time and the return on that time is minimal, so I will be avoiding that approach as much as possible in future. Turnover is the most important thing and undermining that part of the painting process now will cause the Bigdogz project to grind to a halt. But the extra work was probably worth it on Mushroom Klowd. Because they rock, obviously.
Mosha
I have come across two different official ways to use the Goff Rokkers in games. The first is a one sentence entry in “Ere We Go” that allows a Goff Warboss to include the Rokkers as part of the retinue to boost morale. The other version featured in Citadel Journal #8 back in 1996 or so and allowed the miniatures to be used in 2nd edition 40K games.
Ziggy
The Journal version was a lot more engaging, if unavoidably daft. Primarily the Rokkers channel Waaagh! energy using their “jammerz” (thats a guitar to you and me). Should the rokkers be engaged in close combat the jammerz – presumably sparking with built up green psychic energy at this point – can be used as power axes for a turn. Smashing the jammers over the heads of the opposition renders the the jammers useless for the rest of the game however: rock- and – roll. I still have a nagging memory of another article somewhere with colour photos of the Rokkers, but I cant find it. Mildly irritating.
“And what is your position on crowd violence?”
I plan to use the rokker models in whatever role seems appropriate for the game at hand: as Shoota Boyz or objective style VIPs or Flash Gitz or whatever. As ridiculous as they are, that makes them suitable for either every game I play. Or possibly none of them.
“Spacehenge ’tis a magic place, where the Moon doth rise, with a squiggoths face…”
Filed under: Miniatures | Tagged: 40K, 40K Skirmish, Bigdogz, Goff, GW, Mushrööm Klöwd, Orks, Rogue Trader |
sho3box 
Suitable for every game, I reckon. Great work.
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I agree 100% WP. These guys are going to get some table time 🙂
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Your models rock.
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Mushrööm Klöwd also salute acolytes of rock like you 40kterminatus.
[ROCK SALUTE SOUND]
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Lovely, what’s not to love in glamrock spaceorks (Glamorks…)?
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I actually see Mushrööm Klöwd more as stadium/cock rock, eighties style rather than glam, but Im all about the music man, I dont care what the dudes wear 😉
A future 40k project will be all 70s glam. Plans are already afoot in fact, its really going to happen…
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Zogging Epic! WAAAAGGGHHH DA ORKZ!
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I think there might have been some 3rd edition rules somewhere but again irritatingly I don’t recall exactly…..GLAMDARK rules I guess.
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“Testify” re “Waaagh” etc.
As for third ed rules, I dont think that there were any. Does the Iron Chancellor care for a wager? 😉
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Mmm I suspect you are right. I am probably mixing them up with the Epic rules perhaps where they had a stage on a battlewagon.
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Yeah, I had forgotten all about the Epic Rokkers (“Epic Rockers”, tee-hee!). I had plans for making them in Epic at one stage, but I dont think that I ever did. I will have to check.
Anyway, rules-schmules. Mushrööm Klöwd make their own rules, then break them. These guys are coming to a table near you!
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Wooo, so great! Are you adding a rival band of Noise Marines? 😛
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I do have five (maybe six) of the original Noise Marines in a bag alongside the newer NMs and Daemonettes from the three good sculpting eras. So its a distinct possibility.
But a Chaos project is waaay down the list. A number of years before the Noise Marines get some filthy, sinful, dirty, shameful, swollen purple lovin’.
Thanks for the feedback 🙂
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Awesome paintjobs and educational, too. I had no idea GW had a label and even a band under contract. The shading and highligjting of the skin turned out beautifully. Even if they turn out to be not good for actual gaming just use them as cheerleaders on a special stage base with some LED light show. You could even have a smoke generator used in modelrailways. All there is left to say: Heavy Metal battle cry! Hail,hail,hail!
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The Warhammer Records label had more than one band signed actually and Brian May played on some of the D-Rok album
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D-Rok_%28band%29
As for setting up a lighting and effects rig while it would definitely be cool, Im not sure that it would be the best investment of my hobby time. In the time it took to do that I could probably paint about forty miniatures 😀
Mushrööm Klöwd arent into that sort of stuff anyway. They are all about the music, man 😉
Thanks for the feedback!
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Great paint jobs and the Spinal Tap jokes are always a plus. I’d love to see these guys get a bit of game time, I think you have a scenario right there (Waaaghstonbury?) with an unfairly clever enemy attacking during a concert.
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The Spinal Tap jokes were just unavoidable in the end.
When I initially read your comment this morning I dismissed the idea of a “Waaghstonbury!” scenario as an very well named but ultimately somewhat forced scenario. Since then however I have had a couple of ideas that could make it feasible and reference the idea of the joke while not just being a bad one-note gag all the way through.
Its weird that I care about that sort of thing after painting models as ridiculous as these, but I do.
There would have to be an “Up to Eleven” scenario special rule though. Its unavoidable, so it might as well be embraced.
Thanks for the feedback Mikko.
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The more I think of it, I think it would actually make for an interesting scenario. You know, orcs gathering (as they tend to do), the band slowly whipping them up into a frenzy with their jammers, a class 10 waaagh about to turn into an unprecedented class 11, a strike team trying to stop the band in order to make the building energies dissipate…pure 40K! 😀
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I was thinking all day that nothing says “Musik Festival” like a whole load of tents, so I was thinking of adding some more to the 6 or 8 that I have already. I have several more Renedra tents waiting for a quick paint job already, so why not get them ready for Waaghstonbury?
Then I spotted Dr The Vikings latest addition to Warboss Batshits warband over on LAF. 😀
My campsite wont look as nice as DTVs – I have a few other things to get ready before my gaming weekend with theottovonbismark in a fortnight – but it is funny to see how sometimes things develop in paralell.
So, a Waaaghstonbury game will be played in just over two weeks. You cant ask for more than that 🙂
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Awesome. Just awesome. I’ve got these guys in a box somewhere, too. I’ll have to paint them when I wheel around to renovating my Orks again.
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They are fun old Kev Adams sculpts and I did enjoy painting them. There were a few hiccups during the process, but none of them were due to the models, which are fun sculpts with classic, albeit extremely daft stylings.
I cruise from army to army and project to project in cycles of 6-24 months these days. I try to get another squad or two of grunts plus a couple of the more interesting units – like Rokkers – painted alongside each time. The forces grow slowly but steadily without causing me excessive burnout. Its fun to have a small strike force of space dwarfs and tribe of orks so many years after first promising myself some.
The orks bubbled to the top again recently and I must say, for someone who never really had much to do with them back in the day, the green guys are turning out to be some of the most enjoyable figures that I paint.
Thanks for the feedback.
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Oh I agree. I’ve got a pile of unfinished 3rd-4th edition 500/600pt combat patrol forces started (I even finished a couple). Now I need to firstly update the “finished” ones to 6th edition with the various list changes, then go back and update the lists for the unfinished ones and try to finish those. Then the plan is to do something similar to yours – cycle through them updating them to 1k/1200 or so, then eventually 1800/2k.
The Orks look great, I’m going to have a lot more of a poke around on your blog for the other stuff.. 🙂
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The orks are all listed under the Bigdogz tag. The space dwarfs/squats are all under the Ursa Miners tag. Primarily the stuff that you are likely to have most interest in is listed under the 40k Skirmish tag, which includes actual 40K stuff as well as the other bits and pieces that I use for games in the 40k setting, like the Avian Aliens for example.
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[…] miniatures have had an appeal since their release, it took me until late least year to finally get a set of Goff Rockers painted. While I was quite pleased when I finished painting those disciples of rock, Mushrööm Klöwd […]
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[…] the models in late 2013, the Mushrööm Klöwd sub project started properly last January when I painted the three classic old Kev Adams Goff/Goffik Rokkers/z (spelling varies) models. The newly named Mushrööm Klöwd was an enjoyable project to work on and it turned out that the […]
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