Turnipocalypse Now

Time for some more wretched survivors of the turnipocalypse. First up, here's another soldier. He has a Warlord Games commando body, Perry Napoleonics arms, and a head and gun-shield from Perry medievals. I took the opportunity to paint some insignia on the shield like that in the original Turnip 28 design sketches.

Gervaise Pavaise is the unit's sharpshooter, mainly because he has a rhyming name. Also, he might as well be doing something useful whilst cowering behind his huge metal shield.

Next, a couple of desperate survivors. This guy has a Perry body, a Warlord commando head (with painted-on beard!) and arms from the Frostgrave female wizards sprue. I painted him with a green jacket to distinguish him from the other useless chaff in the warband (and to enable him to fight them if needs be).

Jake Gripney is a brutal, sullen maniac whose hobbies include murder, theft and folk music. In his wanderings, he has buried many men and turnip-based monsters six feet under - which, in the case of the turnip monsters, probably wasn't a good idea.

I bought a child model from the local gaming shop. She was from the Nolzur's Marvellous Miniatures range and, like a lot of their character models, had a lot of mould lines and needed some cleaning up. I replaced her hand (it was holding an apple), with an old pistol I had lying around, and widened her sleeves with green stuff. Painting the grimy dress was enjoyable: painting the fiddly face, less so.

When Jake's sister was killed by bandits, her dying wish was for him to take care of her daughter Eliza. Assuming "take care of" meant "throw off a cliff", Jake happily agreed. Now that small mistake has  been cleared up, he's stuck with the little blighter.

But what sort of horrors will these ruthless scavengers face? Well, last week I ordered a model in a sale that might do the trick. It was an officer from a range called Precinct Omega, which I've never heard of before or since. The model turned out to be completely the wrong scale: much too tall and very spindly. It wouldn't pass as human, but... 

I happened to have the head from an ancient squig that I'd hacked off its body many years ago. I replaced the officer's head with the squig's, and produced a weird and nightmarish creature that looked like a cross between Rawhead Rex and one of those German nutcrackers that you see at Christmas. Perhaps inevitably, its head was painted as a massive turnip.

After monsters, cultists and demons, I think this is one of the most sinister models I've ever made. It really is quite creepy (as well as ridiculous).

There are many cautionary tales for children: indeed, the village of Blott hosts an annual contest, where the person who terrifies the most infants with their tale wins a handful of carrots. Many an adult still flinches at the thought of Doctor Nostrils, Wootie the Child-Scyther or the dreaded Dentistry Gnomes. Most stories are just nonsense intended to terrify children into shutting up, but a few may have a basis in fact...

Then I decided to give him stripey trousers.