Converting a Great Big Lizardman

 

"Across roaring rivers their warsong rang

'Skull, skull, skull, skull,' the Norsemen sang.

They looted Lustria, lizards they slew

Till the Slann sent soldiers to slice them in two.

The Norsemen fought fiercely but their gold-quest failed

When the thane Thag Thagssen on a tail was impaled."

- The Saga of Thag Thagssen.

Years ago - literally, it was at least a decade - I subscribed to the Kickstarter for the first wave of Reaper Bones models. This was, in retrospect, not my best purchase, as a lot of the models weren't much good. The bigger creatures were a little better, and among them was a "swamp troll". This thing looked weirdly like a stegosaurus, but with a troll's head.

I pulled this thing out of a long-forgotten box, washed off the dirt and fluff and decided to turn it into a kroxigor for the lizardmen warband I seem to be making (extremely slowly). I cut its head off and sculpted a new one, going for that slightly bovine, snake-shaped head that stegosaurs have.

I made a new tail, too. First, I made an rough armature out of a piece of twisted garden wire:

Then I sculpted over the tail, first in DAS clay to get the right shape, and then in green stuff for finer detail. I find it helps to put a thin layer of PVA glue over the clay once it's dried, to stop it flaking off onto the green stuff. 

I added tail-spikes from a wood elf plastic dryad and an ornamental tail-guard from a tyranid bit that was lying around. Other details were added from lizardmen leftovers, green stuff and random odds and ends.

Bright colours were called for, but I surprised myself by painting his skin a drab khaki. Still, blue armour and bright red back-plates set this off, along with gold ornaments. I added the skull of a conquistador to his base, along with a little snake made of green stuff. Invaders beware!

So that was my weekend (and most of my week)! All hail the serpent god!

A Few Lizardmen

 Here's another quick post. Many years ago, I had a lizardmen army for Warhammer Fantasy Battle (I still do have it, packed away in various boxes and drawers). I bought a ton of miniatures, but I never really finished them all. So, for no good reason, I took out a bunch of old models, put them on nice bases made of slate, and painted them jolly colours. Here they are.

This guy is an old plastic skink scout:

This is a lizardman warrior. He's not got a shield but he's unconverted. Because they had to rank up and were pretty large for their original square bases, the lizardmen are very "closed" models who hold their shields tight across their bodies, obscuring a lot of detail. which is basically why he hasn't got one.

This lizardman has a head and body from the old plastic Temple Guard. He looks as if he should be in a carnival in Rio, which I suppose is sort of accurate.

And here's another old plastic skink (the other, in fact, because there were only two poses). I painted him to resemble a poison arrow frog.

As ever, I feel that the concept of the lizardmen is slightly cooler than the miniatures. Personally, had it been me designing them, I would have made them less iguana and more old-school velociraptor. But it wasn't me.

It occurs to me that I've almost got the correct colours to have the Harmonious Convocation of Telitubbi!

Cold One Knights

 After the (comparative) success of the lizardmen salamander, I dug out some unfinished Cold One riders, which I think are currently called Saurus Knights. The models are at least 10 years and probably more like 15. I bought them to play Warhammer Fantasy Battle against a friend, and ended up with quite a large army - which I then forgot about. The knights came in a starter box, and weren't much good against my friend's High Elves, so I left them there, unfinished.

Dinosaurs are cool, and a small dinosaur riding a big dinosaur is a fundamentally excellent idea. Unfortunately, the more I painted the models, the less I liked them. For one thing, lizardmen Saurus are weirdly thin, and don't look tough or quick enough to take on chaos warriors and the like. For another, the models are detailed in a fiddly sort of way: you can paint the skin easily enough, but there are lots of bits and bobs that need to be finished and take ages. Also, the models are very "closed", in that the arms and shields cover a lot of the bodies, and the range of poses you can actually make (and still rank the models up) is pretty limited.

Anyhow, all that considered, I broke out the green, red and blue, and got to work. 

Here are some others:

And here's their boss:

I don't dislike them, but I'm not crazy about them, either. I reckon they'd make a decent enough unit, but I can't get terribly enthusiastic about these guys. Oh well - they'll be useful once Warhammer gets tired of this Sigmarine stuff and gets back to rectangular bases. 

Now then, more marines, I think.

Chaos Possessed Marines (and bonus dinosaur)

 The power of chaos is a curious thing, as Huey Lewis and The News nearly once said. It makes one man weep, it makes another man grow wings and three arms and go on a killing spree. Which, coincidentally, brings me onto this week's conversions: possessed Chaos space marines.

Possessed marines are great because so long as they look vicious and fairly mariney, they can be almost anything. I bought a set of possessed legs off ebay, and went to work with whatever I could find in the bits box.

As it happens, I decided to take to WIP pictures, but not only were they out of focus, but I then deleted two of them by mistake. Is it better to have three rubbish WIP pictures that none at all, or better to have three rubbish WIP pictures than five? Anyhow, enjoy:

This guy has a deamonette head, a big arm from an old chaos mutation sprue, and a left arm from some resin Necromunda Goliath arms I found on ebay.

This guy has bloodletter arms and sword, and a head from a fantasy Khorne bloodsecutor or something silly like that. A fat guy with a whip, anyhow.

This thing has a daemonette left arm, a right arm from some fantasy thing (it came with a load of other models, and it was broken even then!) and a head taken from the horn on the daemonette sprue.

Right then, paint.

On to the next two. The guy on the right, with the mallet, has a Goliath left arm (the one with the mallet) and a right arm made of two daemonette claws and half a chaos knight arm, which I'd chopped up sometime previously. His head is from a juggernaut rider, I think. A lot of these bits came in random bags.

And then there's their boss! This chap has an upper body from the chaos cultist flamer chap I cut up a few months back (I think he's called the firebrand). His arms are from a genestealer and his head is a cut down version of the same head I used on the guy with bloodletter arms. You can tell he's evil because he's about to play a massive chord on a church organ, hence his pose.

And here is a bonus dinosaur. Many years ago, I had a lizardmen army and often played against my friend's high elves. The only way of beating the elves was to buy huge amounts of skinks. Anyhow, I found a random box of skinks, and with them was this thing. I think it's a conversion of a very old Cold One. It looks like a fat velociraptor (Fat Raptor would be a good band name, I think). I seem to have added neck fans, rather like the Jurassic Park version of Dilophosaurus. Anyhow, I painted it. Here it is, bonus dinosaur:

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