Warrior Ancient and Medieval Rules

A while back, someone wrote to the list about doing conversions, and got
a number of really good replies (Al Lougheed's sticks in my mind) but I
wanted to add a few words. By way of explanation, I started playing
Warhammer 40K in the early 90's and that game requires more extensive
conversions than any other I know, and I've learned a lot from it that I
now bring back to historicals.
I am currently building a Scythian army from Foundry figures for
Warrior. The figures themselves are excellent, but there are only about
15 variations on the cavalry, and for an army that will have somewhere
around 150 cav, that seems too few, so I decided to do a bunch of
conversions. In addition, recent archaeology has revealed some stuff
that was probably unknown to the Perry brothers when they did the
sculpting. I provide all this background because this is no infrequent
occurrence for any player building anew army; often research and
aesthetics point us towards figures that flat out don't exist or that
exist but aren't "quite right." I thought I'd write a quick note on
some of the conversions I'm doing as examples, and give some tips. I do
not set myself up as an expert; I know there's folks out there with
wider experience of conversion than me, but here goes.
I'll start with the Scythian CinC (the King.) The Foundry CinC fig
is superb, in a tall helmet with lamellar armour and so on, all based on
a specific grave find in the Altai made in the '60s. The problem is
that most people think that helmet and panoply was religious or
symbolic. I wanted my King to represent the early 5th C. BC, when the
Scythians were fighting the Persians. So I wanted him in a Greek style
helmet. I accomplished this by cutting the head off an early Spartan
hoplite (checking first that the figure scale matched between the two;
you have to watch this with all ranges, even Foundry) and with great
trepidation, I took the head off the King and put it aside (it's a great
helmet, and it will end up on someone.) I removed the heads with a
small hobby saw. These come in various sizes and brands, but they are
all about 6 inches long, have a plastic backbone and handle and the
blade is very thin and has very, very small teeth. Most good hobby
stores carry them. It is important to use a razor saw because the cut
itself is thin and doesn't cause you to lose much metal, and because the
cut is straight.
I then took a swiss file and dressed both the Spartan head and the
king's neck flat. I took a pin vice (not a vice at all, but a manual
drill bit holder for drills smaller than 1/16th) and drilled a hole in
both the King's neck and the Spartan head. (NB, get a drill index full
of drills to go with your pin vice and buy steel, brass and styrene wire
to match a couple of your drill sizes. The match does NOT have to be
perfect, but it has to be close, and the wire HAS to be smaller than the
hole. This may sound obvious, but... All those kinds of wire, and the
pin vice and the drills should be available at a good hobby store or
model railroad store. I don't reccomend useing a dremel tool or similar
for pinning.) Now I cut a tiny pin (styrene, in this case) put it in
the holes without glue to make sure the neck and head matched, and set
them aside.
Another thing you need; Green Stuff. I don't reccomend the common
Squadron product, as it is toxic and eats styrene and is too goopy. I
reccomend the two part epoxy kind; one epoxy is yellow, the other is
blue. You mix the two by kneading them together in your hand. This is
easy to do and allows you to mix even the tiniest amount, with no clean
up. So at this point I mix a tiny pill of green stuff and insert it (on
the pin) onto the neck, and then put the Spartan head on top, making
sure that the pin is in the correct hole. Green stuff immediately is
forced out around the neck, but the joint is filled. Then I take a pin,
or a very small knife, and scrape loose the excess green stuff. In this
case, as I wanted my Scythian to have long hair coming out from under
his helmet in a most un-Greek way, I used the excess to create the hair
by flattening it along the King's back out fron under the helmet and
then pressing lines and waves into it with an Xacto knife. A further
tiny pill of Green stuff went under his chin and created a beard flowing
over the chest of his Lamellar armour. Finally, I made another pill of
Green Stuff, pressed it flat, and laid it over his gorytos (bow case)
and used the Xacto to trim it exactly away from all the areas that
should be cloth (I had a picture by me to make sure I got this right)
and then I used a small blade to score a series of lines and designs
into the gorytos to make it look like it was one of the Greek-made
beaten gold ones that show up in so many grave finds. The originals
depict scenes from the Iliad; my modeling skills do not extend to
representing the death of Achilles in 2mm of length, so I simply incised
some random designs inside a border. Finally, the King came with a
nifty mace that needed to be glued into his hand. After it came off
twice, I decided to pin the mace. This may sound really hard, as the
mace is very small indeed, but pin vice drills come in very small sizes;
I used one a little thinker than a piano wire and drilled through the
mace and the King's hand, and then pinned it. This took a few seconds
(really) and now the darned weapon will not come off every game.
Another figure presented a more typical modeling challenge; the
figure is holding a javelin (again, a mounted figure)in a position that
the sculptor probably intended to represent as the horseman throwing the
weapon. Sadly, whoever sculpted the figure had never seen a javelin
thrown from horseback, and the figure was very static. I took the
javelin arm off at the shoulder (razor saw) and cocked it back ten
degrees; straightened it (needle nose pliers with leather jaws) by a
fraction, and pinned it back using the pin vice and super glue. The
figure looked better, but still not perfect; so after some thought, I
cut the figure in half at the waist (razor saw) and pinned it back after
rotating the torso a few degrees. That may sound really complex and
dull, but it took less than fifteen minutes. I won't so this on every
figure, but twenty such conversions will double the 'random" postures of
the army and give me figures that look really right and really different
from most others.
Some conversions are required by army lists. Try finding a
Byzantine Peltastoi with spear, bow, and shield. In fact, try finding
late Byzantines at all; most are Nikaphoran at best. Ian Heath
illustrates some great late Byzantine helmets and equipment, and they do
exist in miniatures lines, often on late Russian and Hungarian figures;
another good place to cut heads off and move them. A few late Hungarian
heads on Nikephorean Cav makes a whole Nicean or Comnenan army look more
in-period. But back to the Peltastoi; granted, you can mix the bowmen
with some javelinemen figs to show your oponent what the unit has, but
conversion offers the opportunity to make them unique. On an archer
figure shooting, for instance, you can place a buckler on the figure's
belt, and place a small spear (made from wire) in the crook of his draw
elbow by drilling a small hole there and feeding the wire through; or
you can buy some spare bows (or make them) and glue them across the
backs of javelinmen (and use Green Stuff to make them quivers).
One of the most important things about doing a conversion is to
start with a good picture of the end result you want (like a picture in
an Osprey book) and to hunt the figure that gives you the best starting
point to build that figure. Two years ago, I built Jevon a unit of late
period Catalan Almughavars. I used a number of Italian City States
infantry as the better armoured types, but after long examination of the
period evidence, I decided that Foundry Thracians were the closest
figures to what I wanted. Way out of period (and this is my point; look
outside the normal figs ranges for the starting point) but with a lot of
sheepskin tunics and caps, they looked remarkably like the Ian Heath's
illustration of Catalans in Armies of the Middle Ages. I had to do some
head swaps and they needed a different weapons fit, but even for an 18
figure unit, I doubt this took me more than an evening.
It is useful to keep every bit you cut off. You never know when
that extra head will come in handy; and no weapon is ever wasted in the end.

To summarize;

Buy a small set of tools. You need a pin vice, drills to fit it,
matching wire sizes to make pins, a good razor saw, some two-part epoxy
resin, a set of Xacto knives, and some swiss files. Practice will tell
you what else you want; that's the basic set, and shouldn't run you more
than $40.00.

Get books on your army, and identify the troop types that you
either want to convert for fun, or need to convert because there isn't a
figure available. Get good pictures of the way you want the end result
to look and put them where you can glance at them while working.

A book on human (and horse) anatomy is a good idea; not required,
but once you decide to alter posture, you need to know where you are
going. This is doubly true with horses. Most of us can guess at how a
human looks; few of us have the experience with horses to really
understand what a rearing horse looks like.

Start small (head swaps) and work towards bigger. Altering costume
is the most difficult conversion of all and is extravagantly time
consuming; altering weapons is so easy that most of us do it without
thinking we're doing a conversion. But don't be afraid to experiment
wildly, because you only get the hang of the difficult stuff by pushing
the edge of the envelope.

I hope this helps somebody. Again, I'm no expert, but I do so much
conversion that I take for granted that it's as much a part of a new
army as scraping flash and priming.

Back to the Scythians... Cold Wars is coming...

Chris Cameron


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

[Doug]

AmazonMiniatures.com has the old QT line and they sell bags of heads,
weapons, bowcases etc. not to mention the various bodies.

I only wish the scans of the old catalog drawings were better
quality; I can't always tell if the figure has chain, lamellar, or
fur as a garment.
--

Doug
The price of freedom is infernal vigilantes

"Who are the militia? Are they not ourselves? Is it feared, then,
that we shall turn our arms each man against his own bosom? Congress
shall have no power to disarm the militia. Their swords, and every
other terrible implement of the soldier, are the birth-right of an
American ... The unlimited power of the sword is not in the hands of
either the federal or state governments, but where I trust in God it
will ever remain, in the hands of the People."- Tench Coxe, 1788.
http://www.constitution.org/mil/cs_milit.htm

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[Dave Smith]

--- In WarriorRules@yahoogroups.com, Christian and Sarah
<cgc.sjw@s...> wrote:

<snipped great conversion guide>


This is great stuff, and is spot on advice. I am having to 're-
arrange' some of my Old Glory Wallachians, since many of them look
like they have just returned from "the chiropracter from hell." A
lot of mad scientist Frankenstein stuff for this lot....which works
nicely into the whole Wallachian/Vlad Dracul stuff!

Dave