With the pleasantries out of the way we can begin,
I've had a smallish Eldar force for a couple years now (about twenty?), purchased off of eBay on a midnight whim. I only used them once or twice in a game, mainly due to the paint jobs they came with being so mediocre that they made me physically ill to look at! So I decided to cleanse them with fire!!!! Not real fire! Just Industrial grade paint stripper.......well it burns like fire when you get it on your fingers!
Anyway, with their shabby skin's removed, I then set about doing absolutely nothing with them for the next couple of years, while other -more important projects- captured my attention. Fast forward to the present & I've cleaned & based them all up bar five individuals. And it is these five that are the focus of today's blog post. For they are destined for some serious surgery. "What surgery?" You ask. Let me explain......
There's two duplicates in amongst the force, two Las-cannon & two Lasgun dudes. Now, not only did I not want two of the same posed minis in my force, I also wasn't happy about the slim choice of heavy weapons I had either. The old RT Eldar really suffered in this department IMO.
 |
| Here they are, the twin twin's. |
Now, as many of you may already know, GW were very good at making variant minis off of the same base sculpt. I'm not sure what the record for this was back in the day, but I think the RT Space Ork range might have had about five variants based off of the one mini? The Eldar were no different, in this particular case there were three minis based off of the one. See below for concrete proof of my assertion :)
 | ||||||||
| The guy on the left will be used as the "donor" mini. From which I'll reference to repair the others from. |
 |
| Can you see the similarities between these three? |
So, to remedy this situation I decided to convert up two of them to carry something more befitting a mercenary i.e. a Grenade Launcher or Plasma Cannon? I began by selecting the best cast of each duplicate & marked the worst one with a "D" for dud :)
 |
| The mark of shame :( |
Then I removed the offending weapon as carefully as I possibly could. I didn't want to create more sculpting/GS work than was necessary. I'm already "gifted" in that department enough as it is :)
 |
| "Aarrhhh, me arms!!!!!" |
 |
| "Where'd me arms go ya bastard?!!!" |
So, this is where I'm up to at this stage. I'm contemplating weather I should cast up a few sections of the minis to replace the damaged sections or if I should try my hand at sculpting? Not sure yet. I'll have to play around a bit first.
Cheers :)
This is right up my street! One of the joys of using the same dollies is that conversions become much simpler. In fact Jes Goodwin is so consistent with his RT Eldar and early Warhammer / Blood Bowl Elves, is that everything is pretty much interchangeable.
ReplyDeleteYou've put a really significant amount of thought into your cutting lines - hopefully you'll reap the benefits. I'd be looking to give one of your lads a shuriken cannon. Perhaps a multi-laser on the other? Looking forward to seeing where these go.
Yeah, it's actually quite surprising sometimes. Often you have to have a really close look to notice if they were made from the same sculpt! These three variants were no different either, I just stumbled across the fact while trying to figure out what to do with them :)
DeleteI hope my carving skill pays off too. I'm still playing around with heads, arms and chest configurations before I begin making the replacement bits.
Regarding the weapon choices, I'm consciously steering clear of the typical Eldar weapons. I want these guys to be as "merc" as can be....if that makes any sense? I'm going to paint them up as a rag tag outfit, no uniformity to their colour schemes, bar a couple of small elements to tie them together.
Thanks for your interest Axiom :)