Tuesday 24 November 2020

Walking the Dusty Trails - a Wasteland Trader

After clearing up my hobby space last week, I found a couple of relatively old unfinished projects. I decided to tackle one of them and get it finished, rather than put it in another box to be found in another couple of years!


The project in question is a wasteland trader and his reptilian pack-beast. I originally converted this model back in 2015, and it has sat in various locations in my hobby room over the last 5 years. The trader is converted from an Otherworld NPC, and the pack-beast is a Rogue Trader space marine riding lizard (minus the marine and with lots of added gear).


You can see from the photos below that I had originally intended to include a female companion to the trader, but I have no idea where she has gone in the intervening time!



From the looks of it, I resculpted his boots, and replaced the sack in his left hand with the chain. He also got a pisol, goggles, new pouches and a rebreather.



I loaded up the pack-beast with a range of resin, plastic and metal pieces from my bits box. I'm not sure where many of them came from!



In terms of painting, I went for relatively naturalistic colours on the pack-beast. The orange and black spots are based on a species of leopard lizard.




The trader himself got a dash more colour, but still relatively muted, so he ties in visually with some of my other wasteland folk such as Pash Grolin, my nomadic rider, and my guilder caravan.



It would have been nice if I'd been able to find his companion and add her to the base, but on the flip side, I'm very happy to have finally got this figure out of the WIP pile and finished!


21 comments:

  1. Nice conversion - glad to see that you finally finished it!

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  2. Top drawer, mate. Now to dig out my own 'baggage bits' ;-)

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    1. Very much looking forward to seeing what you can cobble together!

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  3. For some reason weird pack animals always strike me as cool. The handler reminds me slightly of the Necromundan ash nomads. It's a very nice conversion. I had no idea that space marines rode lizards, though!

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    1. I was definitely after an ash waste nomad vibe, so I'm glad that comes through! The lizards were (I think) limited edition, intended for the RTB01 marines to ride. There are some painted examples over at Stuff of Legends: http://www.sodemons.com/rhrare/40krlizard/index.htm

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  4. I'm so obviously in love with this one I don't even know where to start. The composition is sweet (the other mini would have been the icing on the cake, but the merchant and the beast work really well just as they are); the kitbashing/converting work is seamless, as usual, not too simplistic, not overdone at all; and the paintjob is awesome, in your recognizable, fantastic style. An inspiring work for so many reasons!

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    1. Thanks Suber! I really wish I'd found the companion now, just to make you happy ;)

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  5. Impressive work axiom ... it's a pity you couldn't include the accompanying female figurine. It still looks fantastic though.

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    1. Thanks a lot! It's possible that I manage to track her down - I could always add her in :)

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  6. Hello Axiom! Your pictures look like come from a famous Sci Fi Trilogy of Georges Lucas... Rather inspiring :)

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    1. Thanks Nico! I guess I'm not the only one who sees that trilogy as being pretty definitive in terms of sci-fi imagery.

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  7. He's so great. You must have a really solid trading caravan now with everyone. Group photo time!

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    1. Thanks! I could do with a few more baggage beasts I think. You've got to have enough transportation for all those goods :)

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  8. I like to imagine that he continues to trade his wares in order to fund his travels, forever searching for his lost love.

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    1. That's the saddest love story this side of the Antioch Rim!

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