Friday, August 30, 2013

To horse!

When I bought my first couple of 40mm Elastolin figures about 10 years ago I had no expectations of ever having enough to game with, it was just an indulgence, a few collectibles to go on a shelf because I had always wanted them.

Prince Michael, on horse and on foot. 40mm Elastolin conversions.

 It was a "right time right place" ebay purchase of a hundred gold vikings for ten Euros that suddenly changed that. I still didn't know what kind of games I was going to play with them but suddenly I was in a position where the occasional lot of cheap-ish broken figures and kits would allow me to convert and paint small wargame "armies". 

The making of a mounted prince. 

In 2009, when I was playing through Scenarios for All Ages, I came to a Scenario 18, skirmish scenario that called for small numbers of single figures. Most of my horse and musket figures were on multi-figure bases at the time and suddenly the Prince Valiant figures seemed like just the thing so I had a closer look at what I had on hand. One of the broken figures I had purchased was a Prince Arne who had lost his triangular medieval shield and had been given a round shield from a viking. I gave him a name and sent him into battle. Suddenly a character and story line and setting were created.

Prince Michael in his first battle.

As I was working on turning the layout for Hook's Farm into a Saxon raid scenario, it occurred to me again that sometimes it would be good to have a mounted version of Prince Michael. Turning to the spares box I dug out one of the Prince Arne kits that I snagged from Wally's Basement at Historicon 2011, one of the remaining gold vikings for his shield arm, and a spare horse. I was sifting through various mounted figures looking for a set of legs when I realized that I could use an old toy soldier converter trick, carve out the legs and tunic a bit and mount the prince directly. I should really have either bent the left leg for a stirrup-less grip on the horse or straightened the right leg to fit long, knightly, stirrups but I was afraid the result would be fragile and finicky and decided that I could get away with leaving things as they were.  A bit of putty to add a sleeve to the new arm, repair the tunic where it meets the horse and add a saddle, and he was ready for paint. 


11 comments:

  1. A testament to your ingenuity Ross. I look forward to seeing him on the field.

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  2. Very clever job - figures look excellent. I admit I was peering at the top picture, wondering where the conversion was, before I read the text.

    Do these pics also give a glimpse of your legendary budget acrylic paints? Such things don't seem to exist in the UK - well, only in bathroom shades.

    Cheers - Tony

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    1. Pastel uniforms are rare aren't they? Hard to believe they haven't wormed their way into craft shops over there. I used to be a bit self conscious barging in amongst the dried flowers, styrafoam shapes and packs of glitter in search of wargame supplies but then I wasn't comfortable the one time I wandered into a GW store either.

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  3. Great conversion Ross ,bring on the opposition...

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  4. Jolly nice indeed! And just the thing to have one on foot and one horsed.

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    1. It will but now I feel guily about not having more. I suspect I may have just eaten a peanut (metaphorically speaking)

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  5. Great conversion. Huzzah for craft acrylic paint. I have a project in the back of my mind for making a GW replacement chart. The only problem is I don't even know what the colors are after 20 years out of the hobby.

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    1. Unfortunately the craft paint folks seem to be able to tell when I find a shade I really like or perhaps its a coincidence that those get withdrawn?

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  6. Ross,

    Very nice conversion, really like the idea of having one each of the same figure, mouunted and on foot. Thunderbolt Mountain used the same idea with their King Arthur range a while back, and to my eyes, still the best medieval 25mm figures ever done.

    http://www.thunderboltmountain.com/collections/all/25mm-legendary-figures

    Got a good laugh of recognition out of your craft and GW store experiences. I too have stood out like a sore thumb in the checkout lines of Michaels and Jo-Ann Fabric stores, but they do have some very useful stuff.

    Regards,
    Steve

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