Ulf the Finger-Eater

I had a particularly productive weekend in painting terms, finishing two minis!

This is the third manhunter mini I have painted, and second one completed (I'll get round to finishing the other soon, promise). This one is to represent "Ulf the Finger-Eater", my hero model for the current PP leauge at my FLGS. His name being taken from a children's book the girls love.

The first one I painted, in a more traditional brown scheme, can be found here. That one is also a good point of reference for the original axes.

The conversion on this guy is rather light. He has gained some bear traps, to represent his Bear Hunter ability, a medal, to represent Medal of Honour, and some new axes, to represent Hooked Blades.


New Axes

Bear trap

Medal

And then the painted version...

The axes are extras from the Devil Dog unit. The bear trap is from Yuri the Axe, and the medal is a decoration from the shaft of a GW Dwarven axe I bought as a possible conversion for the axes, but in the end didn't use.

The base is a scratch built, with wood chips and real lichen, which is a pain to paint, as it's so flexible. I may have to put a layer of varnish over its roots to fix it better in place.The arrows are just to show he's a hard-ass!

Another point for my league score, and once my hero buys the right advancements to go with his conversions, that'll be another 3 points. Onwards and upwards.

Gaston Crosse and his Vanguard

For my Christmas present this year, my good lady wife has bought me a place on a Meg Maples Painting Masterclass, which runs next weekend. I am very much looking forward to this, and for the class, I have a list of things we will be learning, so I have been going through my minis selecting a bunch that should be good to use. One set of minis I plan to use are Gaston Crosse, and his personal Vanguard.

I had originally bought this extra Vanguard to be built as a Khador Jack, as part of Zerkova's theme force the Hunting Wolves, where she has the ability to take re-purposed Llaellese Vanguards as Khador Jacks. I never did get round to that, though this project may inspire me to do another personal Vanguard for her.

Gaston takes vanguards at 1 point less than their normal cost, so it's pretty much a certainty when I take him I'll have at least one of these with him, and likely a Mule, given his skill set. However, since he gives Jacks longer range, I stuck the extra part from a Cygnar jack upgrade onto the barrel, to give it a more imposing look. Gaston is from a less than noble background, so these guys will have a much dirtier colour scheme than the rest of my Ashlynn Highborn list, but should fit in none-the-less. We will have to see what techniques I am practicing on them to know how they will finally turn out, but expect to see some 2 brush blending at least!

 

Mean looking little bugger isn't he!

Black Watch Conversions

I love that all the sculpts in a box of Spartan minis are different. I love a little less that I require 2 boxes to run a full unit. I trid to lessen this by doing a couple of conversions to the minis. The first was to make the piper mini. The second came as a follow on from this, as I had the 2 arms of the piper that I was now not using. This, mixed with one of the guns being a mis-cast, meant I did a little light chopping to the gun-less mini to give him new arms.

I am not a huge fan of the knife weilding look of one of the sculpts, but I figured this was a simple way to have a completed unit before waiting for a new gun part to be sent.  The only thing missing then from this figure, was a gun. The other knife weilding maniac has his slung across his back.  Again, luckily, there is another figure in the set who comes with a separate gun, with only a hand to be removed to make it a feasible conversion piece. Step in trust Insta-Mold, and new green-stuff gun, here we come. What's more, this mold will be useful for converting other non-Spartan minis into KoB troops, or even just as scenery for bases.

Stick it on the back of the converted mini, and hey-presto, he's ready to join the ranks.

Black Watch Infantry Piper Conversion

So, in my last post, I mentioned I was planning to convert one of my Infantrymen to a piper. With the help of the Victoria Miniatures Piper conversion kit. At first, I thought to use the running man as the base for the conversion, as his gun was a mis-cast anyway, but on closer inspection, he was not the prime candidate. The knife man seemed to have an overall better pose, with the reloading guy being next (at least his head is down, which might make it easier for him to reach the mouthpiece, but more on that later).

The only real thing I had to do for this was cut his left arm off, as his right arm already comes separately, so as far as conversions go, it's pretty simple. I blocked in the spaces between the body and the new arms with greenstuff, smoothed it out, and there you go.

The arms from Victoria Minis are not a perfect match however. They are for GW style 28mm heroic scale, and Spartan, although 32mm figs, they are pretty slim built and fine of feature. This means if you look closely, they piper has huge hands compared to his section mates.

The other issue with the arms was the cuffs. So I GSed in some new cuffs in an attempt to match with the rest of the section. They look pretty rough, but a coat of paint should help hide a multitude of sins in that department.

Lastly, the pipes come separate from the head in the conversion kit, therefore the mouthpiece doesn't reach the mouth. This means he's taking a pause from playing I guess, but it did mean I didn't have to re-sculpt the mouth to make him play. I have since looked up pictures of bagpipes, and it seems the actual mouthpiece is really long in real life, so maybe I'll redo this to get him mid-tune.

 

So on with the rest of the section. I foresee at least one other conversion with the minis I have, probably using the arms I cut off this gent to replace the mis-cast gun I received, along with a few bits and bobs on the rest of them, just to make the unit a little more unique.

Colore ton Monde, Aout: Damned Bugs!

The results are in for the July challenge. They can be found here. Some nice minis on display. I especially like the Iron Man paint job on Pulp City's Iron Train.  My entry can be found here.

This month's challenge is:

Satanées bébittes

Pour le mois d'août, nous vous invitons à peindre un truc nuisible, comme on en retrouve temps dans nos campagnes à ce temps-ci de l'année. Insectes, xénos, damnés: le thème est large et vôtre à interpréter.

Damned Bugs!

For the month of August, we invite you to paint a nuisance. Like we sometimes find in the countryside at this time of year. Insects, Xenos, damned: the theme is large and yours to interpret.

For this challenge I'm taking a very literal translation. I took this guy, from Reaper miniatures. I figured it would work for a swarm of scarab beetles. Why would I want a swarm of scarabs? Well, that's a question for another post (although one of the labels of this post may give a hint). However, by itself, it wasn't very swarm like. To which end, I sculpted a discarded pith helmet (another clue), and a few more beetles to add to the swarm. I was thankful the victim seems to be in rather modern clothes rather than fantasy gear, as that suits my purposes very well.

Horray for Instant Mold! 

Also, for those of you who are not yet followers of the blog Trouble At T'Mill, Mike's doing a prizedraw for his 50th birthday. Head on over and enter!

Father's Day Gift to Myself

A bit of an interim post, as I've been trying to write up a couple of battle reports for Dystopian Legions, after having had my first two games (at last).

Not that I don't love the hand made gifts the girls will give me on Sunday morning, and I'll sure as hell be taking the long lie that comes with it, but a neighbour told me of an offer at Canadian Tire this week, where I could pick up a Dremmel kit (rotary tool kit, as it's not actually a Dremmel (tm)) that normally goes for $150, for a mere $40. Not only that, but he offered to pick one up for me too. So, $40 later, here we are, a nice little gift to myself.

That's a lot of bits and pieces in that box there, there's even a little table clamp to fit to the kitchen table (no man cave in this house).

Now to go find some minis to chop up and convert!

Allegiant of the Order of the Fist conversion

In an interruption from my run of Dystopian Legions blogging, I bring you something that has been floundering in my bits box, but I brought out this week to finish off.

For my Amon theme list, I can take multiple Allegiants. Amon can have 4 monks, but I can't see myself ever running that many, but then again, I have yet to test them in MKII. I have one miniature based and undercoated, but the stock pose is uninspiring to say the least. I have therefore been looking for conversion ideas for the other two I have. So that I might differentiate between models on the field, and also, as I don't like fielding duplicate minis especially for solos.

With that, out came the bone-saw, and off came his leg!

starting point

point of no return

into position

bit of greenstuff

After that, all that remained was to place the fists in a realistic position in regards to the new leg position. I didn't like the way the left arm sits, it doesn't fit with the new leg position, as it looks like he'd be unbalanced. That seemed easy enough to fix with a little light filing and a pin wire to give it a new position. I filled in the space with some liquid greenstuff to complete the elbow.

And here's the original sculpt, for reference.

All that remains is a little more green stuff to round out the elbow, then it's into the paint queue for these guys.

For inspiration for other modifications for these figs, please refer to the following links. I may be following one of these for the 3rd and 4th monks.
Monk 1
Monk 2
Monk 3

Posted on the PP forums here.