Rifgit Snapjaw - Orc boss on wyvern

My Orctober tribute to Gork and Mork is this Orc boss on Wyvern who will be commandeering my Orc army. 

His name: Rifgit Snapjaw. His mount is an ancient wyvern named Cymmodus, Destroyer of Men. Rifgit gained acclaim, notoriety and respect amongst his unruly greenskin subjects by hunting down Cymmodus. You see, Cymmodus was a young dragon (merely 300 years old by his own admission) who spent his adolescence terrorizing the badlands and incinerating the local flora and fauna. This included villages inhabited by orc clans. Since birth, Rifgit was raised by the big 'un elders of the Boghat clan to be a killing machine, designed with the sole purpose of hunting and destroying Cymmodus. Rifgit grew to be a fierce orc with remarkable combat prowess. Being an orc, however, his only weakness was his dim wittedness. Like all dragons, Cymmodus on the other hand was a learned creature whose intelligence far outmatched that of the greenskin brute. Consequently, Rifgit had little hope of catching the beast, let alone subjugating him to serve as his mount. As fate would have it, however, Rifgit came across Cymmodus one day in the local forest. The dragon had feasted on the wrong kind of mushrooms and lay sprawled out across the forest awake but paralyzed. Rifgit could barely believe his luck. Surely this was a sign from Gork. Or was it Mork?

Either way, the orc offered Cymmodus the choice between a swift death, or life as his subject. Being a young dragon with many millennia of pillaging ahead of him, Cymmodus took the second option. After all, how hard would it be to turn the table on Rifgit? Cymmodus would easily outlive the daft orc at worst, or perhaps Rifgit would suffer an unfortunate fall from great height in the midst of battle...

I’ve wanted a Nick Bibby wyvern, but I refuse to sell any of my organs to be able to acquire one of these sought-after models. Furthermore, I don’t cherish the idea of constructing wing membranes for the model. Luckily, I found  this little gem of a Wyvern from Mierce Miniatures, which has a very Nick Bibby vibe to it, IMO. Since it is huge, I had to find a suitable orc to ride it, and I thought that the Orc I chose looked menacing enough.

Orc minion shown for scale alone. He knows it, as you can tell from the humiliated look on his face

I enjoyed painting these guys, and I think that the airbrush played a big part of it. It has given me the courage to tackle big models again without being disheartened at the get-go.

The wyvern was so big that I had to model a base for it. The rock is a platform made of cork that sits on a 50mm base.

Happy Orctober painting to all!