There is another large wave of Orks arriving for Warhammer 40,000, which means a great many hobbyists are currently staring at their existing collections and wondering whether the models they liked perfectly well last month have somehow become old overnight, because this is a hobby where a new photograph can cause several hundred dollars of painted plastic to develop an inferiority complex before breakfast.
The new codex is coming with a great many detachments, the Warbikers are being refreshed, the Nobz are getting a new kit, and there are enough new models being shown that even people who were not planning an Ork army are probably looking at their shelves and considering one, which is usually how these things begin, followed by a box purchase, another box purchase, and eventually the discovery that an entire dining room table has become a staging area for green models that still need their trousers painted.
I have been in this hobby long enough to know that the new kit is rarely the end of the project, because once the first five models are built exactly as the instructions suggest, the sixth model is usually where the old need to make something different begins to crawl out of the basement again.
That is where conversion bits are still useful.
The interesting part of the new Nobz reveal is not simply that the models are larger and newer, although those things are certainly doing their usual work, it is that the kit is being shown with several weapon combinations, specialist equipment and additional little helpers carrying ammunition, which makes the entire unit feel like a group of individuals instead of five copies of the same angry employee arriving late for the morning meeting.
Even with a generous kit there are never enough options for every idea, because one person wants a unit made from armored scrap collectors, another wants mechanical lunatics with too many blades, and somebody else has decided that every model needs a pirate hat, which is the kind of decision that sounds unnecessary until you see ten of them together and suddenly it is the only correct decision anyone has made since 1994.
The practical answer is not always another complete miniature.
A head, an arm or a weapon is usually enough to change the entire direction of a model, and it is considerably easier than buying a second box because one particular blade looked better in the photograph. A set such as the Space Orc Machetes LEFT X10 can be used across a mob while still leaving room for different bodies, armor and poses, which is useful when the goal is a force that looks connected without appearing to have been issued uniforms by an especially organized warehouse manager.
Mechanical parts are another option that is becoming more useful as the larger Ork models arrive, because oversized bodies tend to make older weapons look a little less threatening than they once did. The Space Orcs Robo Boyz Melee Blade Arms LEFT are there for models that are supposed to look as if somebody replaced an ordinary arm with machinery and then continued adding blades well past the point where a responsible adult would have stopped.
Responsible adults are not really the target audience for that particular idea.
What matters during a release like this is deciding what the unit is supposed to be before printing a random pile of parts. It is easy to download twenty files, print all of them, and then discover that the models have no common visual language beyond being green and armed, which is certainly traditional but is not always enough to make the finished army feel like it belongs together.
Choose one repeated element first.
That element can be a style of blade, a mechanical limb, a particular helmet shape or a shared collection of symbols. Repeat it across several models, then let everything else become messy around it. Orks are supposed to look ramshackle, but good ramshackle design is still design, much like the garage bands we listened to in the eighties were still practicing even when they worked very hard to look as if they were not.
The current Space Orc conversion bits collection is there for that kind of project, with weapons, character parts and other upgrades that can be mixed into an existing force without requiring the entire army to be rebuilt.
The new Ork release is going to create a great deal of noise over the next few weeks, and some of that noise will be useful while some of it will be the usual internet ritual where everyone declares something unbeatable before anybody has finished reading the rules.
The models will remain after the noise settles.
That is the part worth paying attention to, because players will still want their army to look like their army, and a few carefully chosen bits are often what turns a new box into something that feels personal instead of merely new.
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