We’ve been dealing with a lot of heavy stuff here lately. Why we’re not playing other games. Disappointments with, leading to the discovery that, the new version of Necromunda is not that great. We’re defending Cursed City from streamers, taking the contrarian position that it is, in fact, fun. And then we started this week with a thinker about the dangers of playing the meta in a game.
Holy shit! Who would’ve thought we’d have so many deep thoughts on a pleasure time activity?
It’s almost… exhausting. So, since Thursday is supposed to be our craft and game focused day, let’s do something nice and light, for a change, and talk about some of the tiny, tiny little conversions that can make this hobby so much fun. Because each and every one, from a head swap to a weapon hand change to a small band of putty laid over a figure’s chest like a bandolier takes a mass produced piece of plastic and makes it uniquely yours.
So let’s un-fuck our heads today, stop thinking about what makes us unhappy with the hobby, and focus on the little things that bring joy.
These two ladies have been featured elsewhere on the site because they’re part of my favorite gang, the Escher. I’d been interested in Escher for a while but I wasn’t a fan of their heads. So the first thought was to do head-swaps and that worked really well. But then I got a little more ambitious. I already knew I didn’t want to do the standard power whip build for an Escher leader, so I cut it off and replaced it with a power sword instead. Because of the way the whip’s guard was over the hand, I didn’t even need to do a whole lot more than cut the old hand out of the sword and glue it on.
The Escher specialist was pretty much the same. I think she had been holding either a knife or a rapier and I just cut off the whole hand and replaced it with the hand already holding the power whip, taking a little bit of time to position it so it was visually interesting.
Unfortunately for her, while I loved the look of her, I found her to be kind of a waste as a specialist in N23. She might actually see more play in N26 given that anyone can have a power whip now.
Two more really simple changes for a leader and a ganger. In this case, as soon as I saw the new champions box and the weapons pack for the Enforcers get announced, I immediately knew that I wanted a leader with a shield. Didn’t know if it would be good or bad but I wanted it. Turns out, the arms for the champions weren’t compatible with the basic Enforcer weapons. Still, it was an easy fix. Cutting off the shield arm just above the wrist and then doing the reverse for the standard champions arm solved the problem pretty quick. Plus, I like the open stance and the leader basically daring someone to come at him.
The Enforcer juve was also super simple. I had a few credits left to spare in my list, so I decided to go with a juve (pre-N26) and an auto-pistol. I liked the stance with the flashlight, it reminded me of every cop show ever, but that was a subgun out of the box. A sharp knife and some plastic glue later, I had what I was looking for. And this is how you make your minis WYSIWYG with a tiny amount of effort!
These guys had been featured in several of my painting table updates because they were the last Goliaths I was painting. The cleaver conversion was just me looking to add a hand-flamer to my gang and wanting to re-use the arm that had the power hammer. But I already had a power hammer using that pose. So I snipped off the hammer part and attached a cleaver head instead, which is much better for a guy with a hand-flamer. And, just to give it something a little different, I also replaced the base of the handle that had been flat with a base that had a ring. For no other reason than I could. By the time I’d gotten around to piecing these dudes together, I will admit I’d gotten pretty comfortable with making conversions that used just a knife and some glue. I am not a sculptor but I can mix and match parts!
The grenade launcher guy was an even smaller conversion (excluding the head swaps for both). In this case, the grenade launcher came right off the weapon sprue. But the stub gun I wanted to give him as backup was attached to another arm that, for some reason was raised to the sky. It looked very odd on my other guy where I used it. So, instead, I found an arm that had a slightly more open position and also was generally aimed down. Positioning the head like I did makes it look like he’s launching grenades one moment and then popping guys charging him the next. But I did have to cut off the old gun and put on the new one. And, unless you really analyze it, I think no one would ever notice.
These were four fighters I converted up for my Outcast gang. The first is the leader, the Psyker Sarah, and she started life as a ‘Narker. Turns out, if you cut off the hands and attach Escher hands, it looks pretty okay! The sword hand works a little bit better but even some of the official weapon sprue weapons have scale issues. (I’m looking at you, Escher needle rifle!)
The two “Enforcers” are actually outcast champions and I gave them weapons off the Orlock weapon sprue because they looked the most generic, which is actually a good thing for champions who fight with whatever they can get their hands on. In the case of the female champion, I actually cast her prosthetic hand from the Escher Champion Weapons resin kit so I could use it here and, it’s not perfect but, as I like to say, paint hides a myriad of sins.
this was how I learned that most Warhammer stores have a bits bucket
The other champion had a belt sculpted onto him to serve as the device holding the boltgun to his back. He was a second version of the same champion, one who had acquired a melta gun but who still had his trusty boltgun. I wanted to represent that so I did the belt and the gun on his back while fitting the Orlock version of the melta into his hands. It actually worked surprisingly well!
Lastly, I had a hive scummer that I wanted to give two chainswords to. This is actually one of my earliest knife-and-glue conversions and was how I learned that most Warhammer stores have a bits bucket you can go through. The hive scum kit only comes with one chainsword but I thought it would be funny to give a scummer two so I dove into the bits and found myself a space marine chainsword. I very carefully cut the armored hand off the grip and then glued the grip onto a hand I’m pretty sure once held a sawed-off shotgun and, Bob’s your uncle, there he was. Not the most sophisticated conversion of all time and the scale might be a little off but, if anything it just lends to the jankiness of scummers so I actually kind of think it works.
And the very last one to show (this time around) is just the leader of my Orlocks. I’d been having fun putting power swords and plasma pistols into the hands of my Escher and Outcast champs so I thought it might be cool to do something similar for my Orlocks. Turns out, these biker boys don’t get power swords, which is okay, because chainswords just feel more “Orlock” anyway. The problem I had was that all the chainswords on the weapon sprue were on left hands and his left hand was busy with a plasma pistol. So… I found an arm that was in the right position, cut off what I think was a knife, and then glued on the chainsword blade. There wasn’t much more to it than that.
The main thing I’ve learned while doing all these tiny conversions is that allowing the glue to cure is of utmost importance! It’s easy to test something, think that it’s pretty solid and then go applying pressure when putting the arm on a body, say. But that’s also the surest way to have it pop off between your fingers. As much as I like to get some things done in a single hobby day, when doing hand swaps, giving it a day to cure really does have to be factored in.
It’s not the end of the world. If you do most of your conversions Saturday morning, you could glue them onto the main body Sunday morning, and have the mini primed by Sunday evening. And, hopefully, you’ve been painting something else during all the waiting!
Nothing Earth-shattering here. But hopefully something lighter to think about with pictures of actual models.
