Warhammer 40k Ork players and actual Warhammer 40k Orks have one thing in common – they love to build unique, ramshackle devices from piles of scrap. Long-time Ork collector Dave Gormley took that attitude to heart when he built ‘Da Kommand Gubbin’, a custom turn and points tracker to use alongside his Dread Mob army.
Gormley has been playing Orks since second edition Warhammer 40k, and “went all-in with Bad Moonz when the first Space Marine” videogame released in 2011. “I’ve wanted to make an Orky turn/point tracker for years”, Gormley says. His custom build started “with a cheap dice popper” he picked up to go with the ‘Try Dat Button’ detachment rule for his army – pictured below.
Like many an Ork invention, the initial plan to “change out the dice inside” the popomatic soon grew. “I thought it would be cool if I could cram some LEDs into it to make it light up red”, Gormley says. After that, “ideas just kind of snowballed from there”.
He’d learnt how to wire LEDs to a battery for a display board he took to the 2023 Grand Narrative, “so had the most basic understanding of that already”. “It’s basically a guitar effects pedal, without the guitar effects part”. The base of the console is “styrofoam insulation board and EVA foam”, plus “a top plate made from plasticard that the cheap electronics bits are screwed into”. There’s a lot of hot glue holding it together.
“I think the coolest parts are the big dumb safety switches”, Gormley says. Those bits “were advertised as being for race cars”, and though he had some doubts before adding them in, “they just feel so right for it because they’re so chunky”. One controls the light in the popomatic, while the other toggles the green Waaagh! light
Like any good Mekboy, Gormley has many more ideas, some practical – like adding thumb sticks and an antenna so that it looks more like a control device – and others much less. The least realistic idea is to turn the Kommand Gubbin to turn it into an actual factual guitar FX pedal: “I’m absolutely in love with the chainsaw sound of the classic Boss HM-2 distortion pedal”, Gormley says, “Behringer makes a cheap clone that I could probably cannibalize and shove inside”.
This is far from the only custom project that Gormley has worked on. You’ll find more of his work on both Instagram and TikTok. Aside from his huge Ork army collection, since 2022 he’s been “dabbling in cosplay and prop-making”, working on a Diggaboss costume.
For the benefit of the youngsters in the crowd, ‘Diggas’ are humans who venerate and imitate Orks, making their only appearance in the 1997 wargame GorkaMorka. Since anyone who makes a Diggaboss costume is imitating an Ork, we’re not sure if this even counts as cosplay…
We find something heartening in Gormley’s DIY project. In a world where you can buy custom measuring tools, dice, and turn trackers for each and every Warhammer 40k faction (and even specific Space Marine Chapters) thanks to the secondary market, it’s nice to see high quality DIY is still alive and well. But then, we’d expect nothing less from the Orks.
For some more Orky DIY, check out this kitbashed army that used a bits box and $20 to make a full 2,000 point list, and this massive cardboard war-engine.
Source: Wargamer
