Rather than pit mighty champions against one another in a gladiatorial duel, the Arena of Death episode dropping on WarhammerTV this week is an Ork Destrukshun Derby.
It’s a high-octane free-for-all in which four clans stick their bravest Speed Freeks in their best motors and race around an arena, gathering upgrades and blasting each other to bits. We had a quick chat with the team behind building the vehicles and the board.
Andy: For this episode, the team wanted a custom environment to race around, and a whole fleet of vehicles, plus upgrades. Si wrote the rules, and the game has four teams in a last-Ork-standing format. We built the arena, vehicles and upgrades especially for this episode – the board is littered with weapons that can be picked up and bolted on to the various vehicles and grots that can be swiped to help the crews. There is also a set of six special Kustom Gubbins trailers which can only be snagged by making a death-defying jump over a scrap metal ramp, which we built using a Stompa support structure.
James: The four factions are: Goffs, Evil Sunz, Deathskulls and Snakebites – and each have a group of vehicles that fit them. The Goffs have a heavily upgraded Battlewagon and Defkilla Wartrike, while the Evil Sunz get wicked fast buggies like the Megatrakk Scrapjet, the Deathskulls have two Trukks in their fleet, and the Snakebites get the outrageous Big Rig. Using Orks for this gave us a lot of freedom as they just love to bolt all sorts of weapons and upgrades to their vehicle, and unlike the Imperium or the Aeldari, there is no specific design that has to be adhered to. There are also lots of kits to snaffle bits from – we cracked open a few Trukks to get wrecking balls, and some Killa Kans for the scorchas.*
Andy: We had a lot of fun with this because as much as we love working on standard gaming tables for the show, the Arena of Death format is a bit more like the old exhibition games you’d play at events, and we could really go to town creating a detailed board that fit the rules for the game.
James: We’re going to go into loads of detail on how we made the board, vehicles, accessories and how we painted them up in a future episode of Da Mekboy’z Workshop, if you’re tempted to try something similar yourself!
Cheers lads! You can watch the episode right now on Warhammer TV. You might recognise some of the footage from the exciting Ork-based video game Warhammer 40,000: Speed Freeks.
If your appetite for aggressive green guys racing around in rickety constructions still hasn’t been sated, then there are two more shows this week. Loremasters is all about the Gitmob who race into battle atop chariots and Snarlfangs in Warhammer Age of Sigmar, while Citadel Colour Masterclass is focusing on how to help you paint your grim and determined Death Korps of Krieg this week, presenting methods for both blue and green uniforms.
You can watch all of these as part of your Warhammer+ subscription, which also gives you access to the whole back catalogue of Warhammer TV shows. You’ve got just two more days to enter the Warhammer+ Wicked Brick competition, which you automatically enter if you’re subscribed by the 31st of January. Terms and conditions apply. Those who are subscribed will also receive a 15% discount code for Wicked Brick.
* The infamous office sprue bin would have been groaning with bits…
