Gretchin or Grotz are basically a smaller subspecies of Orks, who are more cowardly than normal Orks and are usually used as living shields, to clear mine fields, are stepped on to get through difficult terrain, and sometimes even as emergency rations. Gretchins are quite low in the strict hierarchy of Ork society because of their small size (the lowest Orkoids being the Snotlings) and are often used for the dirtiest jobs like scavenging and being used as the football when the bigger Orks get bored.

Having bought the Stormclaw box set to expand my Space Wolf army and get Krom Dragongaze for the leader of the great company I am currently planning out (yes, I want to put together an entire company!), I have all the Orks left over. Having spent a long time painting Space Marine armour I thought I would take a break and give these guys who would otherwise sit in a box forever a lick of paint.

I set myself a challenge with this squad. As painting a 5 man unit can often take me weeks or months to complete, I limited myself to 20 colours and set myself a day to finish the entire unit. Not being an army I plan to collect I wasn't too worried if the quality of the paint job turned out lower than the rest of my work.

I did run a bit behind as I had to finish off the bases the next day, but for the models themselves I met the challenge keeping to the set range of colours and finishing them all in the same day, and even starting on some other Orks.

As Gretchin are meant to be one of the silliest looking units for the Orks, I made the skin nice and bright and used red as the main spot colour. The rest of the painting as dirty cloth or rusted metal, as I imagine they only ever get the worst scraps that are left behind by the rest of the Orks. All in all I think they came out just as well as anything else I've painted, so I'll probably use the same technique for the rest of the Orks in the box set.

Let me know what you think and if you have any similar painting techniques that helps you get your miniatures painted quickly.