Kit Bashing

One of my favorite aspects of the game is customizing miniatures to reflect the force posibilities. What you see is what you get in tournament rules. So, Convert your way to victory.

This picture was my latest inspiration for a project. The plan was to make some scratch-built figures for the Triad Cavalry troops. First Ed. Warzone has stats for the troops, but no mini's for them were ever released.
I aquired a GW mounted figure with a horse and rider. Then I opened it and threw it away. The horse, bigger than the pathetic pony the mounted venusian marshal rides, was still too small to look good.

The horses I settled on using are a near-perfect size, and were taken from a Dollar Sore package of Cowboys and indians. I don't know what to do with all those off-scale plastic men now, but I'll think of something eventually. There was also a covered wagon, a mat, and two horses in the package. All that for a dollar can't be beat!
This Picture shows the mounted (currently finished but unpainted) Triad troops next to a normal Triad figure for scale.

The figures were made entirely from Milliput, which for the most part I find easier to work with than the well-known 'green stuff'. Though similar, the consistancy between them is different and Milliput works better with water to smooth surfaces and help adhesion.
For more information on sculpting mini's from scratch, I suggest you check out my Milliput Man page or visit some sites on my Link List. (The War Factory is a very good source for information)

We all know everything looks better when painted, but I'm really happy with how these figures turned out so far. The horses' gas-masks were dead easy to do, and the hardest aspect of the mini's were probably their hands and weapons. The swords were made seperately, modelled roughly, allowed to partially harden, then were carved to have edges. I built a small wire length into the figures' hands to help attach and keep the weapons on. A drop of CA (crazy glue) didn't hurt there eaither.

The sword handles were sculpted individually on the end of a length of wire. That allowed for finer work to be done (the skull pommels) and ensured a problem-free removal and re-attachment to the wire in the miniature's hand after the handle dried. The flocked base was done with PVA (white) glue and used coffee grinds. The paint job will follow the ones I allready use on my Luthran Triad figures. Gritty browns and greys / black with s touch of details in blue / green or red (bandanas and kilts).