Looking Back: Warhammer 40,000 2nd Edition Gretchin

I've got a war inside my head.

Over the last few months, we have been thinking a lot about greenskins in various forms, from painting a longsnout, to playing Space Gits, to converting the Red Gobbo, to being hopeful for the upcoming edition of Warhammer 40,000, to finally be disappointed when the orks were revealed. With the devastating loss of John Blanche, we have been reflecting on how we got involved with the hobby, particularly with the 2nd edition of Warhammer 40,000. The legendary cover artwork for this edition features a group of Blood Angel Space Marines being assaulted from all sides by Space Orks. This piece of art pulled us into a hobby shop and led to us getting a copy of the 2nd edition of Warhammer 40,000, where we went on to paint every model in the box, including the 40 mono-pose gretchin. These charming gretchin and the more vicious-looking ork boyz were our introduction to Space Orks, and continue to hold a special place in our hearts. John’s passing prompted us to pull out some of the original models we assembled and painted. We were particularly happy to see the small legion of gretchin, and wanted to showcase them here, as a reminder of how we started this hobby, and hopefully also as a push to keep working on greenskin models in 2026!

Dragged into Turbolasers Episode 132: An Ode to John Blanche, Games Workshop is using AI, and the state of hobby YouTube channels

John Blanche 1948 - 2026

We begin this episode expressing our sadness at the passing of John Blanche, a luminary that defined Games Workshop’s artstyle and vision for decades. We then touch on how just days later GW revealed Horus Heresy artwork that almost certainly used AI tools to give a Space Marine a sixth finger. Finally we discuss the state of miniature hobby YouTube channels and how the algorithm necessitates boring, but searchable content.

Resin Casting: Red Gobbo Conversion

Third Side of the Moon.

Throughout May, I have been doing a lot of mold making and resin casting, including creating some casts for Nemessos Miniatures and creating a casting gate for future molds. Having recently converted the Red Gobbo, they were the perfect opportunity to create a new mold using one of the gates we created with the frog skull logo. I attached the Red Gobbo conversion to one of the gates, along with adding some pins to different points on the gobbo to ensure all of the details would fill with resin properly. The mold turned out quite well, although some of the very fine details, like the barrel of the gun, can easily be damaged when pulling the model from the mold. Ultimately, I was able to make a variety of casts of the Red Gobbo. Each will need a little cleaning, but it is relatively minimal, and much less than would be needed for an original metal GorkaMorka model. I hope we can paint a copy of the model soon!

Resin Casting: Between the Bolter and Me Casting Gate

We created a gate for attaching to future resin casting projects!

We started creating silicone molds and doing some small scale resin casting recently for our friend Nemessos Miniatures. One of the most important parts of creating a successful and consistent silicone mold is to attach the piece you are casting to a substantial gate, ensuring that enough resin is poured to completely fill the mold. In the past, we have used discarded gates from Forge World models we had in our collection. We realized it would be fun if we created our own gate that had our logo on it for future casting projects. To do this, Adam created a wedge of modeling putty and sculpted our logo onto it. We were able to create a simple one-piece mold to make copies of the new gate, and quickly made a series of copies that we plan to use in future casting projects.