The Iron Fist II - Inquisitional Commando Reinforcements

A squad of five Inquisitional commandos is nice, but two squads is much better. Especially when you get some fancy weapons and a doctrine-spouting officer to boot.

Masters of the Hunt - Venator Leader & Champion

Much in the same way with my Brat gang at the end of last year, this post is something of a full stop to my Venator gang, a project that has spanned two years. I have rounded out the original 6-strong plastic group to include the 4 Marauder Venators and a bunch of other converted figures. I was however missing a dedicated leader and heavy weapon for the group, something I've now rectified.

Gamma World 'Woman Adventurer'

Every so often I spy a random figure on ebay that really appeals. Most recently it was a female figure in an asymmetric dress with a blaster pistol. I checked with the seller who assured me that it was 28mm scale, so I risked a couple of quid and bought it.

When it arrived, I was a little disappointed as the figure was closer to 25mm in scale. Some research revealed that she was a 'Woman Adventurer' from the Grenadier Gamma World range. Although a tad too small for an adult female, she could, with her round face, represent a young girl. So I painted her anyway!

Those space amazons are becoming quite a menace in many fringe settlements.

Proofs of Concept - How I Plan a Conversion

My approach to converting is twofold - some conversions I make up on the fly, using pieces from my bitzbox that look good together. Others I plan meticulously, especially when I'm looking to match something stylistically to an existing figure.

In my last blogpost I mentioned that I often create some very rough proofs of concept for conversions to help me decide what components I want to use. This is a very simple process, primarily using images from old catalogues (try Stuff of Legends for catalogue images) and roughly manipulating them in MS Paint before I start any cutting, or in some cases, before I've bought the models I intend to convert.

To illustrate how the process works, below are some rough concepts for my Adeptus Arbites captain.

You can see that I was experimenting with a number of different looks using components from a variety of different figures (in this case I think it was Imperial Psykers, Arbites and Space Marines. I decided that the bare-headed #3 was the direction I wanted to go, which resulted in a pretty intimidating hard-as-nails captain:

You can see I altered his equipment for in-game functionality on the final model.