The Oppo: Bonehead's Lost, Damned and in all likelihood Disappointed

[Bonehead]

Thanks for saying so, Brother A. Much appreciated. I'm pleased to report that it's also pretty easy too, and somewhere in the log is a guide. 

Also very grateful to notice you've made your own log. Loving it so far! 

Your vehicle conversions are just amazing. Got to bow to your skill there; masterful work. 

[Brother Anderson]

On 7/19/2025 at 9:30 PM, Bonehead said:

Thanks for saying so, Brother A. Much appreciated. I'm pleased to report that it's also pretty easy too, and somewhere in the log is a guide. 

Also very grateful to notice you've made your own log. Loving it so far! 

Your vehicle conversions are just amazing. Got to bow to your skill there; masterful work. 

 

Ooh that's great news, I'll look back through the archives! 

 

Thank you that's very kind of you to say, I think with traitor guard a pathological inability to stick to the instructions comes with the territory 

[Bonehead]

I'm beginning to suspect old Papa Nurgle might have claimed this one some how.

Or to put it another way, God F****** ***n it, how in the sh****ng f***holes does this manage to come back again? It's even worse than it was before!

If I fix this a third time and it comes back, I'm drop kicking the bas**** thing out the window.

[Bonehead]

Went to Bring Out Your Lead today for a change of scenery and a distraction from my varnish bloom woes. It was fun to see a bunch of old models in their natural environment; that is, being stared at by a bunch of nerds. Bunch of games going on all over the shop too, it was good to see.

I had a sneaky ulterior motive, I was hoping to find someone who might be persuaded to buy my old RT/2nd ed orks, but it wasn't really that kind of do, so they stayed in the car. You're not allowed to trade on the premises, but there's no rule against doing it on the street outside, which is not unusual, but I didn't feel like trying.

Instead, I picked up some Foundry models. I've been looking for extra models to go with the scavvies I already have to make a rabble of nurgle cultists; it's hard to find better models than scavvies for the job that fit the scale, but they're not easy to come by and not cheap when they do turn up. In particular the zombies, which are in my opinion the best zombies GW ever did, can be very hard to get more than one or two of without spending a fortune.

Among these lot are some civilian looters/rioters; with some part-swapping between these and some scavvies, it should be possible to bulk up the mob by a little. Similarly the cowboy zombies will largely do pretty well as ordinary zombies once the cowboy guns are got rid of. One or two of them might be a bit too wild west, but at least five of the seven will work.

Meanwhile the plague doctors are the foundation for an idea I have; I was thinking I needed Vraks-style Enforcers to go with the Kur Guards. Faceless, draconian authoritarians who enforce the Kur strict anti-mutation policy. Any Guardsman or -woman found with visible mutation is sent in disgrace to the Punitary Corps to be used as expendable shock troops, in the hope of atoning for their sin of indiscipline. I'm particularly happy with that bit of lore because it embodies the moronic double-think hypocrisy of true fascists; the way complete sh**heels like Mussolini's lot had to have almost a collective psychosis of self denial in order to believe they were the good guys.

I think the doctor-association of the models is going to hopefully give the right flavour to the otherwise sinister weirdness.

Cheers everyone

 

 

 

[Tallarn Commander]

Yes, groupthink is a key component in many totalitarian societies.

 

I had forgotten about Scabbies. Those were good sculpts—very fluid and dynamic. I look forward to seeing the Cultists and Enforcers.

 

 

Edited August 11 by Tallarn Commander

[Dr_Ruminahui]

Some really neat models you picked up there - looking forward to seeing what you do with the ladies in Edwardian dresses in particular.

[Bonehead]

Well, listen. I know I said I was going to work on the Khorne cultists next, but I really want a few more of the 2nd ed cultists befoe I'm ready to work on those, and they're harder to get hold of than a tiger's scrotum. I was trolling through the eBay that they have now the other day and I didn't find any cultists selling for anything les than daylight robbery, but I did happen across some scavvies that were going cheap due to mild damage, and honestly my first thought was 'I'm planning mild damage in the form of cenversions anyway' so I snapped them up.

They arrived today and I fancied working on some metal models again, so I fetched out the Foundry models yobbos I got at BOYL and planned a conversion or two. Here are the various guitly parties:

Now, two of these are pretty much useless, they just don't look properly convertable. The guy holding the TV has a really extremely vacant expression on his face so I figure he'll make a perfectly good zombie. I'll make his clothes look all ragged and it'll be fine. Maybe turn his toes inward for a more classic zombie pose. The skateboard guy is just going to end up a spare though. Maybe in ten years he'll be useful for something, but I doubt it.

With those two out of consideration, here's every model I have pegged to be nurgle cultists, including some of the fanatic era scavvy models which are frankly not very good at all, in my opinion, but they're better than nothing. I think it really shows that the fanatic range were largely sculpted by trainees; the poses tend to be awkward and the detail is often pretty dodgy. Regardless, they should chop up and convert just as well as any other metal model; thankfully their poses aren't especially 'closed', so it should be easy to hack arms off and substantially change them.

Also included among the generally superior '95 scavvies are two of the RT-era ones; very glad to have those, they're great models and fit in very well. I'd love to have some of the marauder ones that came out at around about the same time, but they're more like dragon scrotums when it comes to laying hands on them. Probably going to have to let that dream go. More reasonably, I might be able to round up the last couple of scavvy sculpts that I don't yet have and score a few more duplicates for converting. Maybe one or two old zombie figures from the late '80s metals.

Top left in the above photo are a couple of North Star Frostgrave models. Can't remember what they're called, but they have a very nurglesque bloated appearance, so they fit right in. I might make them sorcerors, thye have the right look for it.

Anyway, holding the models side by side got a few neurons fizzling. I have a few duplicates of certain scavvy sculpts, and you know how I feel about duplicates. We're not doing that, so I laid out my duplicates and had a think about potential matching poses and such. Like this:

Many moons ago I noted that the scavvy sculpt that I have three of here was going to be a useful one to have multiple copies of, because his arms would be pretty easy to remove without messing up much body detail, making him easy to repose with new arms and weapons; the same goes for the one I have two of top left.

On the other hand, I wasn't planning to bag another copy of the guy with the shotgun pointed up, but for a fiver, why not. As it turns out, he was the first one I thought of a good conversion for:

As you can see, the lad I'm dubbing 'Mr Molotov' has a broadly similar leg pose, and once I saw it, I knew I could do a little swap to make my shotgun guy more unique and mr Molotov more of a scavvy. Classic footswap. That's a thing, right? Well, it is now, I've done four of them at this point, as you will see.

The question is of course, will the change of footwear make enough difference on its own, and the answer is no. It does make a pretty dramatic difference to mr Molotov though; he's gone from very unremarkable civilian clothes to looking quite different just by losing the boots:

Bare feet tell a big story, which is of course the exact reason gw sculpted them on the scavvies in the first place. As a first change to mr Molotov, it makes a big difference right away. 

Meanwhile, whoever I bought the scavvies from kind of made my mind up for me when it came to the change in pose for the shotgun-pointed-up guy; they cut off most of the shotgun before I got anywhere near him, so doing nothing wiht him wasn't an option. It took me a minute or two but eventually enough neurons fired to make me remember the banner top with the fly face icon that I'd removed from the tunnel cultist models some few (hundred) pages back. So I did a little drilling, and voila:

The figure also had a hunchback, which I removed too. It should completely change his silhouette, once he gets a head, anyway. As you can see, I removed his head too. I wanted it for a different model:

You may have also noticed that mr Molotov's trouser cuffs are more ragged than previously too- that's another easily achieved scavvy signifier. There's a lot more work to do on this guy yet though. The scavvies' third common feature is long coats, generally at the rear, and the fourth is a load of pouches strung on rope belts. Lots of rope in general, in fact; improvised weapon slings, belts, shoulder straps. That'll be a job for green stuff to take care of. Before that, I want to finish the poses and especially get the heads properly mounted and re-scuplted. Thanks to his hunchback, the donor model's head is short of rear detail:

That's going to need looking at. I might give him a pistol in his free hand too, we'll see.

Meanwhile, one of the other thugs/rioters got new feet, courtesy of another pair trimmed from some VM legs on a Mari guardsman, who needed boots:

This one was a bit dodgy. I almost didn't use him due to the uneven sculpting of his legs. The leg on the left of the picture has its knee lower than the other, and the bulging calf on the back of the trouser leg emphasized the diffrence a lot. But I did a whole bunch of filing on the back that you can't see and while it's still non-ideal, it was good enough.

I forgot to photo the process, but I also tattered up his trousers, beheaded and de-armed him and another scavvy, who incidentally received his shoes, which makes them basically just donor torsos ready to receive new arms, weapons and heads. I'm planning to use VM 'universal bare rifle arms' and then possibly sculpt a bit of ragged sleeve over the top, but for the moment, our four models are looking like this:

As you can see, the street bases have made a reappearance. Remember, dumb cultists in the streets, moderately less dumb traitor guard in the rubble.

Again, the scavvy's head will go on the Foundry rioter/thug and there'll also be plenty of greenstuff. For the two now headless scavvies, I'm not 100% sure what heads they'll end up with. I have a good selection to choose from, so I may take the liberty of working out an arm pose first on the one guy at least. The banner guy needs a good characterful head, I know that much, but I'm not sure which. I have a bunch of aftermarket ones, as well as spare hooded redemptionist ones and verious others. There'll be something right in amongst them.

Anyway, good to be back to doing what the log started out with; lots of converting metal models, which is my happy place.

 

[Dr_Ruminahui]

I really like the merging of the two model sets - you might want to go one farther, though, and removed the moloctov guy's petrol bomb and swap it with a scavy pistol or melee weapon (with the bottle going to a scavy) - that lets you even up the features a bit more between the two groups of models and make each of them more unique (in terms of their own range).  Your banner guy is ace so far as well.

 

Really like your call on the tv guy - he'll make a great zombie and I think the inturned feet is a great idea.

 

As for the scateboard guy, I think he would make a great corpse/casualty if cut off his base, laid on his back (or front), his scateboard hidden or removed, his outstretched arm rotated and made to grip the shaft of a rifle, and with maybe a head swap.

 

Can't recall the RT scavies - do you think you could throw up a closeup of the two? 

Edited August 19 by Dr_Ruminahui

[Bonehead]

Well Doctor, I did in fact completely forget to get close-ups of the RT era guys (in fact technically I think they're more accurately called Confrontation-era guys) but by accident I did get shots of them anyway.

As for the skate guy, to be honest I think it's a crap model, so I'm not wasting any time on him. I've found that Foundry do a few more sets that look like more of a match for the scavvies' styling, largely in their Victorian range. I think I'd rather dedicate the time to working on converting those.

Talking of which, I took advantage of the uk holiday today to crack on with some more such work. First up was a bit of foot-swapping to make some more unique and frankly kind of weird bodies:

That's them not pinned or glued, but you get the idea. Actual pinning and gluing, on the legs and the arms (from an entirely different donor scavvy) got me here:

Obviously a fair bit of green stuff work is going to be called for, but I figure i'll get a bunch of models into a state where they need it rather than do them one at a time.

Meanwhile, the scavvy half of this particular Frankenstein's nightmare donated his head to the banner guy:

And I found a nurgle-appropriate fat guy head form the Maxmini Evil heads set, which might be one of the MVPs of this entire log:

I'll have a go at giving him a traditional big nurgle belly when I come to do the green stuff, but I already like how his one leg looks malformed and his head is just kind of wrong-looking. I like the B-movie mutant feel of the scavvy models and I think this is the right energy.

Towards the right is one of the Confrontation Scavvies. You don't need me to tell you which it is, the Jes Goodwin genius speaks for itself. I did fetch out some Victoria Minis 'universal bare rifle arms' and a pose immediately suggested itself, so he's got a shotgun now and is waiting for some greenstuff ragged sleeves:

Forgot how bad my camera is after nightfall.

Anyway, I have a couple of Frostgrave heads in ugly conical mask/hat things that look very much like the nurgle cultists in the Adrian Smith painting I posted at the start of the log, so those will go on a couple of these converted bodies- I'm going for a much more overtly corrupted look with these ones, so I'll also be getting some use out of the tentacles and whatnot I bought a while back:

I'm quite taken with the idea of, instead of giving mr Molotov a gun in his free hand, choping it off and giving him a tentacle instead. I'm going to have to sculpt on a lot of extra ragged detail on him to tie him in with the scavvies, and a big mutation ought to really help.

Caught in shot purely by chance is the other Confrontation guy. Another Goodwin sculpt, and another great model in my book. I might buy one more of each of these to convert the crap out of, I think they'll reward the effort.

Also in shot is a selection of random guns and such. I really want to have as few duplicate weapons as possible in this set of cultists, I want them to look completely shambolic. 

 

 

[Tallarn Commander]

I look forward to seeing the tentacle. And Victoria Minnies bits sure are great for sprucing up Traitor Guard, eh.

[Bonehead]

4 hours ago, Tallarn Commander said:

I look forward to seeing the tentacle. And Victoria Minnies bits sure are great for sprucing up Traitor Guard, eh.

Well, I have if anything overdelivered. Because I have a lot of choices, as far as tentacles go, so I mocked up a bunch of options:

Quite a few choices. We will of course gloss over the idea of how he flicked the lighter to ignite the petrol bomb. The double-barrel was just on the desk and it kind of worked, although the preposterously short forearm he has would need a lot of work. Personally, I think I like the bottom tentacle best. It really gives the figure a sense of dynamism.

That's not the only tentacle i've been busy fitting this afternoon though. Tentacles are established as a very nurgly mutation, so I'm going to be adding a lot as I model up these lot.

Did you spot it? No, it's pretty hard to see from this angle. But, I am very pleased with how the two further completed poses have come out. Cone hat-boy in the centre has a certain arrogance of manner that's very like the Adrian Smith picture, and the one on the end now has a naturalistic sort of 'lookout' pose that's a lot better then I thought I was going to be able to manage, given the dodgy donor figure. It looks good from the side, too:

There's the tentacle! I knew I left it somewhere around here. When I sculpt on some ragged sleeves and a fat nurgle belly it should be easy to have that just emerging from the sleeve alongside the arm. 

I need to get some more models to turn into scavvy-alikes, this is proving to be too much fun to just stick with the ones I have here. More scavvies and more Foundry models, I think. and I ought to have a look at some other ranges too.

Reckon I ought to add a few tentacles to the other models too; not all of them, but a good number. I think the banner-guy definitely needs at least one.

On the subject of new models, I made it to payday with a ton more in the old bank than I expected; saved most of it, but I did splash out on the best deal going on eBay for some Cawdors:

That brings me up to around forty of them, I think. That should be a ton of fun to convert up into a sinister Tzeentch cult. Mutations, new poses, lots of fun for future me.

Wheeeeee

 

 

[Gnasher]

Edit : You bloody posted whilst I was typing bollocksing me post!

 

Me too, good to see you back on the metal tools! I especially like your banner conversion, that's ace mate! Cant't fault it.

 

Big Ead is weirdly disturbing.....

Edited 11 hours ago by Gnasher