Techno techno techno - Meching up Aenur

There's a fun little competition been running on one of the Facebook groups I'm a member of. The basic premise was to take the model of Aenur, the Mordheim Elf Hired Sword, and convert it to sci-fi. Entries are starting to roll in before the 30th September deadline, and seeing as I've just posted my resulting figure, I thought I'd share it here too.

Evo over at Port Imperiale very kindly donated an Aenur for my attention. If you're not familiar with the figure, this is what Aenur looks like unaltered:

My initial reaction was to do something Eldar-y, but then I decided I wanted to try and push things a little further from the original figure. After some thinking, I put together a little visual mock-up of what I wanted to try and do, in the form of an Adeptus Mechanicus tech priest:

I was aiming to evoke a couple of classic Adeptus Mechanicus references; firstly the bare-footed Tech Priest Schlan from the Rogue Trader Adventurers range:

 

 

Secondly, the creepy tattered and cable-festooned vision of John Blanche's illustration from the Rogue Trader rulebook:

 

The basic plan was to remove Aenur's sword arm, legs and body. His legs would be replaced with those of an old Warhammer Vampire Counts ghoul, while his arm would get a bionic replacement. Unfortunately I didn't take any WIP or unpainted pics, but suffice it to say, removing the legs and arm was a bit of a hassle, involving clippers, modelling knife and lots of swearing! I attempted to make the cloak more tattered by gouging out some tears with a modelling knife and clippers. I also made an error of scale judgement, and the Mechanicus power axe I bought for Aenur was HUGE, so that got abandoned in favour of a Skitarii rifle.

 

After all the chopping, it was a case of assembling and concealing the joins with greenstuff. I extended the hood, as well as adding a face mask and some small tubes. He received a new backpack complete with mechadendrites as a slightly more modern addition to the Tech Priest look.

 

Finally, the painting was kept to a very limited Blanchian palette - a deep red, a dirty yellow and some classic black and white checks!

 

The yellow loincloth attempts to evoke the labcoat of the tech priest in John Blanche's illustration above. 

I think I can confirm I really don't like doing checks!

 

Every good Tech Priest needs some mechadendrites to help with day-to-day tasks.

 

I suspect Tech Priest Ay-Nor will see some action as part of an Inquisimunda warband at some point in the future. I'm tempted to build a Mechanicus retinue around him perhaps.

 



Tech Priest Ay-Nor instructs his menials in the day's tasks.

 

Overall I'm satisfied with the results. The resulting figure is pretty close to what I originally planned, and suitably far enough away from Aenur. What do you think?

Elven Hired Sword Aenur       >       Tech Priest Ay-Nor

Here are some of the other Aenur alterations already shared:

Tau Fireblade by Adam Devitt

Alien Hunter by Miguel M. de Sousa

Wasteland Aenur by Ewal Clam