Space Gits: How to Build and Paint Your First Drunk Orc Gang

Space Gits is the skirmish game from Mike Hutchinson, the designer behind Gaslands, and it does something I genuinely love: it commits completely to its own daft premise. You command a gang of drunk space orcs rioting through the megacity of Gnork, and the core mechanic matches the chaos. Instead of rolling dice in the traditional sense, you toss them and stack them. Your characters are deliberately hard to control because they are, canonically, smashed. It plays two to five people in thirty to sixty minutes, and it has a campaign system for extended play plus an optional drinking-game variant that I will leave to your own judgment.

The other thing that makes it brilliant for hobbyists: it is completely miniature-agnostic. Any 28mm-scale orc model works. Vintage metal, modern resin, heavily kitbashed nonsense, all of it is on the table. Mike Hutchinson has said as much in the design intent. That means your collection decisions are driven entirely by what you want to paint, which is exactly how it should be.

Free quick-start rules are available online alongside a gang-building app, so you can try the game before committing to the full rulebook. I'd grab those first and read through the gang structure before you even think about miniatures.

Building Your Gang

A basic Space Gits warband is small, which is good news for your painting queue. You are looking at a handful of infantry and potentially a vehicle or two depending on which rules you are using. Start with five or six foot soldiers and one character who functions as your gang leader before adding anything else.

For a ready-to-go starting mob, the Blak Orks Mob One, a squad of five resin models, gives you exactly that infantry core, and they already read as a coherent unit without needing to source and match five individual sculpts. If you want to push straight to a larger roster, the Blak Orks Mob Two, six resin orcs, rounds that out nicely. Mix the two mobs for variety without any visual inconsistency, since they share the same aesthetic language.

For your gang boss, you want something that reads immediately as the biggest and most dangerous thing on the table. Gharghkool Da Big Wrecka is exactly that kind of centrepiece sculpt, the sort of model where you spend twice as long on the base because everything else is already doing the work.

Painting the Gang

Space Gits rewards a fast, high-contrast paint job over anything precious. These are drunken rioters, not parade-ground soldiers. Lean into that.

I prime zenithal, black from below and grey or white from above with an airbrush or a rattle can held at forty-five degrees. That gives you a built-in lighting map before you touch a brush, and for orcs specifically it does a lot of the skin shading work for free.

For green skin I block in with something like Vallejo Model Color Goblin Green or a similar mid-tone, wash the whole thing with Biel-Tan Green mixed with a touch of Nuln Oil to push the shadows, then layer back up to the midtone and hit the raised areas with a highlight mixed with a little Ushabti Bone. Keep it snappy. Three steps and move on.

Metals on weapons and armour: base coat with Leadbelcher, wash with Nuln Oil, drybrush lightly with Stormhost Silver. For anything that should look battered and neglected, which is most of it on a Space Gits gang, stipple on some thinned Rhinox Hide before the silver drybrush to suggest rust and grime. Done.

Spot colours are where the gang identity comes from. Pick one accent, red or yellow or a bright orange, and use it consistently across the mob on pouches, straps, goggle lenses. That repetition is what makes a collection of individual models read as a faction.

Basing

Gnork is a megacity, so urban rubble is the obvious choice. Broken cork tile, small pieces of sprue, a little sand and fine grit, and you are most of the way there. Paint the base Mechanicus Standard Grey, wash with Nuln Oil, drybrush Dawnstone then a final very light pass of Administratum Grey. Add a tuft or two of dead grass to break up the monotony and call it finished.

Space Gits is a proper hobbyist game in the best sense: small warband, fast sessions, campaign progression, and total freedom over what lands on the table. Grab the quick-start rules, pick your mob, and get painting.