I have been collecting an Ork army on the side of my more immediate Flesh Tearers Marines effort and I seem to have run into a following problem.

I have amassed quite a bunch of boyz from my ebay purchases, and even nobz aren't a problem. The problem are gretchin. No, actually I wish they were. It is in fact the very absence of gretchin that is the problem.

It's pretty much impossible to buy them separately and lots only have one or two bases thrown in at best. Even buying Ork Warband packs from GW (which is actually nigh impossible as our stores don't sell Specialist Games and it's even impossible to get a shipment from GW online store to Lithuania) wouldn't solve the problem because those come with an appropriate amount of nobz and boyz too

So how do you people who played older versions of Epic, where to my understanding gretchin were pretty rare, get out of this conundrum?

Would it be acceptable to use older version boyz, that are actually quite a bit smaller than newer ones, to "count as" grotz? That would solve at least part of the issue as I have enough new models for my immediate use.

Also I have a really big bunch of Guardians that I have little use for, I might try gretchinifying them - though I don't expect the results to be pretty  

Perhaps base them 3 and 3 on a Ø20mm base?
Even 2 grotz and one ork?

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That actually sounds like a pretty neat idea.

i don't think anyone would mind you using small orks as grots!!!

after all there's a "counts as " rule in the rulebook!!!!

as long as you show you've tried to show that they are grots by giving them a different paint colour or modeling them in a different way it'll be fine.

p.s. section 6.2.1 if you wanted to know

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"Dyslexia is a Privilege, not a right"

Things get even worse when you then want to add grotz to your Big Guns as well.

I would recommend doing what ever works for you. If you have the older and smaller boyz then a few modifications can turn these into your grotz, base less to a stand and sprinkle in a few larger orks, runtherders etc.

Just as long as its easy for your opponent to work out what is what most epic players are laid back about what is placed infront of them.

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Yeah, I really love the counts-as section and I'd be willing to give the folks I play all manner of leeway with that, I just don't know what the accepted boundaries on that are (you don't find that in a rulebook).

I come from 40k which sports a number of less than reasonable people

heh...welcome to the world of Epic then!

Small boyz sounds like a good idea. or -if you really want ACTUAL grotz then you could try ChaosOrcs superstore online; he might ship out there...by which i mean lithuania!.

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You could always get some blobs of greenstuff or ... pinheads or something ... and paint them bright colours, use them to pad out your "grots" stands and say their squigs... or go for whole squigherds...

What everyone else said - stretch the grots you have as far as possible, adding in some of the older, smaller ork models and a character or two here and there as grotherders.

Personally, I base the grots differently than the boyz so they are easily distinguishable, e.g. if the boyz are on 20x20mm bases, the grots are on 10x40mm bases and vice versa.

Another thing you might consider would be guying some 6mm goblins from another supplier.  Irregular miniatures has a 6mm fantasy line though their quality varies widely from mini to mini and I don't know how good their goblins are.  Baccus has 6mm goblins as well.

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Neal

There's always rice!  
Afraid it's a worldwide problem, as you're seeing, I'm going to have to use the earlier, smaller orks to augment mine, that means all the old grot stands have to be dissassembled and spread out among stands, nightmare.

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I don't see why everyone complains about this. Four ork mobs need 24 stands of orks, 8 stands of gretchin and 8 stands of nobs. The ork warband box comes with 24 stands of orks, 8 stands of gretchin...and 4 stands of nobs. Huh? Due to the stupid packaging, I'd think that nobs would be the major issue. I myself had that problem until I came up with the idea of mixing meks, standard bearers and the other old "character" figures with the nobs.

Although yeah, if you want to add in crew for big guns, it's a problem. Or if you have a bucketful of those old orks from the first epic boxed sets, which had a huge amount of basic infantry for all races. But for anyone with current or the epic 40k infantry, not really.

Ah; but one of the most useful upgrades in an ork army is +2 Boyz with the accompanying +2 FREE grotz; being expendable they rock!
Take the classic Landa loadout of a normal warband with the above upgrade; it can take 4 casualties in an assault without even having to worry about it (the grots), and will trypically outnumber it's target too! In addition i've taken 'uge mobs before and added at least 6 grot stands and, having come under fire on turn one from a whole artillery company all that got blown to bits we're the grotz! Genius!
Thus; i hope one can appreciate how great these little guys are :-)

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As MoK pointed out the "its free"-part is what makes you realize you need more grots!

Ive got a large Netepic army of orks, and have found that the only reasonable solution is to use those older type ork boys for gretchin. My army is about 50/50 old boys v new ones, so that works out perfectly. As in my case they are painted in different colours, there will be no problem distinguishing them either.

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Not to mention the poor ole folks (like me) who had the older ork boxes, plenty of boyz, lotz of Nobs....and about two stands of blunderbutz wielding grotz, I had to get some of the newer boxes just for the gretchen!!!

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There's always Speed Freaks.....

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