This article mentions casting. spudWorks does not advocate wholesale casting of miniatures, especially for sale, but does stand by the belief that hobbyists have a right to cast details from miniatures to sculpt and make personal use of elsewhere.
I’ve mentioned before that it was the Ash Wastes that got me back into Necromunda after a… lengthy absence. I’d been thinking about it for a little while but, around that time, it was when the Dark Uprising box was the one that was being pushed and, if I’m honest, it was just too dark for me. And bloodthirsty cultists versus hive police… it just wasn’t my Necromunda.
Also, I’d read a lot about how you bought a box and it came with 2D rules but then you had to buy a bunch of books to get the 3D rules and the whole cost structure just kind of put me off.
But then they announced Ash Wastes. And there was a buggy. Versus giant cockroaches. And I was a fan of Mad Max going all the way back so, right away, I knew I was going to get this box, paycheck be damned.
I will write up a separate article about how the vehicles rules work but… in practice, at least with the people I played with, they were unfortunately underwhelming. So much so that a lot of people I know just don’t want anything to do with the Ash Wastes. Which is a real shame, in my mind, because even if the vehicle rules might be clunky, there are others that are less so… like the Waster’s Dirt Bike.
The Waster’s Dirt Bike isn’t a “vehicle”, not by the rules. It’s a “mount”.
See… the Waster’s Dirt Bike isn’t a “vehicle”, not by the rules. It’s a “mount”. Which means it changes some stats for the ganger who’s on it but it isn’t a full other set of rules.
Just to give a quick example: let’s say you shoot at a vehicle. First, you have to defeat the toughness of the side you’re shooting at. Then they get a basic vehicle save. If they fail that, then you roll location and severity dice which determines what part of the vehicle was hit and how badly. Then, based on that, it determines the status of the vehicle and “crew” and whether you have to spin out, stop, and on or on.
With mounts, they’re still just fighters, albeit on something that modifies their stats. And the most basic mount is the Waster’s Dirt Bike. It’s just your model, on a dirt bike. It does change the stats. Whatever their movement was before, it’s eight inches now. And it does make them subject to the “I Get Knocked Down” rule, which dictates whether being hit by something makes them fall to the ground and what damage they might take from that. But this is a far sight more simple than vehicle rules and, yet, something that can only be played out in the Ash Wastes.
And, lest you think, “So…?”
Consider this… all your juves, mounted on dirt bikes, doing eight inch moves per move action, armed with versatile weapons or even just stub guns, delivering drive-by attacks.
Pretty fucking cool, right?
That’s why, for most of my gangs, I inevitably end up getting an Atalan Jackal kit and turning two-four of the bikers into bikers for my new gang.
Now, it’s not a perfect process. The easiest I had doing it was with my Orlocks where I turned all four bikers into Orlock bikers for some reason. With the Orlocks, it was as simple as cutting off their legs below their jackets and smoothing the tops of the Jackal legs to sit flush. A little bit of green stuff as filler and done.
The funny thing is, if you look really closely, you can see that the scale of the Orlocks and the scale of the Jackals isn’t exactly the same. The Jackal legs are just a little bit too small. But, from table top distance, it’s relatively hard to see and, as I like to say, paint hides a myriad of sins.
From table top distance, it’s hard to see and… paint hides a myriad of sins.
Where converting was more of an issue was with the Escher. Ironically, the scale of the legs actually worked better for the Escher as they’re sculpted smaller than the Orlocks. But there wasn’t an obvious “hide” point for the join like there was with the Orlock jackets. Instead, this involved cutting a lot of Escher models in half at where their belt-line was and, again sanding down the trousers to be as flat as possible. But, for some of the angles, there just wasn’t getting a flush fit.
Fortunately, green stuff to the rescue here again in the absolute most basic sense. I rolled out several balls of green stuff into .75cm wide bands, no thicker than a fingernail and then let them cure for two hours. Once they’d started to harden enough that I wouldn’t leave fingerprints in the putty, I cut them to lengths and bent them around the bodies right at the join points for the model, fashioning “sashes” for the ladies lucky enough to be given bikes in the wasteland.
To add to the effect, I also cast several details from the Escher kit like feathers and buttons and then glued that on top so it pulled more from the standard look. A little blue stuff goes a long way and is cheap enough to just keep with your bits in case you want a cast of the same part again.
I wish I had more photos of the process but, hopefully, the end result makes it clear that it’s not at all impossible to do. And, in fact, should at least be attempted if only to give your gang a presence in the Ash Wastes.
