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 August 26 by Gnasher

[Bonehead]

Always happy to mildly inconveninence you mate! Glad you like the banner guy- I reckon when he's done he'll be really great. I hope. Probably going to look for a few vaguely occult-looking bits to detail him with before I give him a hood and generally add more ragged fabric.

Very tired today, enrolment week at the colelge I work for, which is exhausting, and I've not been sleeping well. So I binned the 2nd job this afternoon and did a little more modelling while the inspiration was flowing. I noticed the second Confrontation scavvy was modelled with the the remains of some kind of greatcoat on him, and I'd been thinking the mob needed some kind of firepower, so I turned to one of my Old Reliables, the DKOK Weapons set.

The arms you get on these are in heavy coatsleeves, so I usually don't use them when I add these guns to my guard regiments, but the scale is better than the gw plastics for my taste. And yes, i do have more sets of these, and yes I did go in to WW and buy some as soon as I found out they were being discontinued, and furthermore yes I have given serious thought to just chucking a set or two up on ebay for triple what I bought them for. Next time I break the car, maybe.

Anyway, once the armoured shoulderpads were trimmed away I think they fitted really well on the model:

And though it seems just a preposterous amount of effort for so little reward, I did actually manage to save the shoulderpads and fit them on a Mari guardsman whose arms didn't have any moulded on. 

Anyway, you can't really see it in this photo, but I used the point of my knife to add a bunch of holes to the sleeves so they match the tattered base model.

Beside him in the photo is another scavvy I built today. A different model of lasgun from the previous one combined nicely with some VM arms to match the original model's pose nicely enough. I was mulling over giving him another evil cone head, but I only have one more and I thought he was a bit too similar to the other guy so I cast about in my bits boxes for an alternative. And found this:

From Maxmini, can't remember what the set's called. But I gave it a trim and it became this:

Managed to lose one tentacle on the floor somehow, but I think they really look good posed like this. They match the rest of the pose nicely. Anyway, he got a bit of green stuff, more or less to remind myself how to do it. Need to finish the back (hiding the tentacle) and do his legs a bit, but he's coming along nicely:

All of the ones that have seen even a mild bit of conversion need a some green stuff here or there, so it's worth getting my meagre skills warmed back up.

I really like how he's coming out. Hopefully it's a good omen for the others.

 

[Tallarn Commander]

Very creative. And I do love me some Maxmini heads. The company was gone for awhile. I’m glad they came back.

[Bonehead]

Not a busy day, following a very busy week. Got a hospital appintment tomorrow and the prep necessary has meant I couldn't do much of anything except sit about, so while doing that I did a bunch more modelling.

Naturally I took photos of everything, and they're mostly fine, but for some reason the lightin on this one just made it come out particularly well, in my opinion:

Great shot, on its own merits. It has that very satisfying sturation in the background that you have to be a real expert to consistently capture, which was obviously blind luck.

Bugger all use for showing off the scuplting I did though, so here's one with flash:

As you can see, there's been a fair bit of progress made with the old green stuff. Now I really can't claim to be much good with it at all, but the lucky thing from my perspective is that mostly with these models I was sculpting ragged fabric- so the fact I can't sculpt the proper way cloth lies very well at all is entirely negated by being able to poke a bunch of holes in it and drag out tattered, fraying ends. You'll hopefully see later on that I took the time to tear a bunch of three-circle Nurgle symbols in as many sleeves as I could remember to. So, not all of them, but some of them.

Here's a different angle:

You can see that captain gonkmask on the left there received a new trouser leg; I feel this really helps to differentiate him from the donor model, meaning I can convert up more. i'm pretty happy with the sleeves too. I did them one day at a time, so I wouldn't mess up one side while sculpting the other. I did this on the guy second left with the missing head, I messed up the back of his leg while doing his belly, so I generally avoided doing both sides of a model at the same time after that, which is why the guy far right has only one sleeve.

Third angle:

you can see I sculpted in a littl missing part of the banner bloke's jaw as well as filling in his trouser leg. The jaw got accidentally cut while I was beheading the donor model (conehead fatboy) and the trouser leg got filled in for the same reason as captain gonkmask. Meanwhile the Confrontation scavvy in the middle was lucky and got two good sleeves at the same time, before I changed my policy. I think his sleeves may be the best ones I've done.

As I think I said before, I think banner guy needs a mutation of some kind. I have some horrible fly-limbs, but I think they won't work on him, so it's probably more tentacles. I'm also pretty sure that the guy on the far right needs mutations as well as rope belts and pouches. One thing I think I might try to do is have his left fingers extend up and over the top of his gun, the pose just seems right for a small oddness like that, but otherwise he's too normal yet. I'll have a think on that.

Meanwhile, I took delivery of a second damaged copy of the three-armed mutant scavvy, and got to work in my usual way:

That boot is from a 3rd ed marine scout with heavy bolter- got a few of those knocking around, because I nicked allt he guns for my RT guard. it was in the right pose, so I put a pin in and on it went. Removing the head and arms and keeping them more or less fit for use was tricky, but freeing up the remaining arm and bending it upwards so it could hold a rifle was a total pain. Still, I got it done:

As you can see, I also removed the scavvy-characteristic large belt pouch and glued it to mr molotov. The strap I made for him is terrible though. I can and will do better.

You can also see the two Frostgrave wizards on the left in this photo. I'm not at all wrong about those making good nurgle sorcerors, am I? I can't remember what they're called but it's some thing like 'animalmancers'. You'll find them on the website if you look for them.

Here's some closer in shots that hopefully show off the scultping a little better:

Conehead fatboy's left sleeve isn't great, but I really didn't do myself any favours by not trimming down the raissed shoulder of the original model. It'll do. Gonkmask and banner guy's legs came out much better.

The last thing that got done was a whole bucnh of basing. As previousyl mentioned, I'm happy enough for one of each original sculpt to remain as they come, so those mostly got bases too. I also rememebered to try and align the bases properly so that when you position them all right, they look like they're pouring off the pavement/sidewalk accross the street:

That's fifteen of them based, and most of those ready for some paint. Guess that means I have to think about the colour scheme now. Damn it.

 

 

[Bonehead]

As I believe it's traditional to say, holy spinning truck christ has it been a few days. Without going into details, I feel like I aged a year this weekend. Don't get anaemia.

Anyway, I've been battering away at a load of other stuff; busy times at work, more recording sessions, finally getting round to the Boltgun DLC. But I did find a little time to make a little bit of progress, and a couple more models arrived.

I don't often like to brag, but this guy is clearly going to be a total triumph of a model when he's finished:

I mean, if you don't like that, do you like little models at all? The AK is from Anvil and the arm's another VM one. If that guy doesn't have b-movie baddie vibes, I don't know what does. He does need a head though, and I've been a bit stuck with that, but the models turning up has really given me a good idea, I think.

See, I got these Maxmini Zombie heads, hoping they'd make good mutated heads, but they're mostly too far gone down the 'full zombie' path for that.

Fortunately for me, the models that turned up are these ones:

That head on the right is bang on perfect for the job, i feel. And what do you know, I've got a bunch of spare zombie heads to replace it with. How convenient.

I've also found a rich vein of the old frateris militia models from 2nd/3rd ed online, and they're basically just default 'imperial citizen' but with a gun, so hopefully a few of those will fit in with this lot.

Not only that but I've found some models that i think might go with the 2nd ed cultists in the Khorne cult as well; they're blessedly cheap, £5 for three, so I'm going to pick some up. Brigade Models is the company and they're called 'Flesh Eaters' so it probably shouldn't come as a surprise that they'll do nicely as a bunch of vicious psychopaths...

[Gnasher]

That guy looks really on point, looking forward to seeing him having a head, top job as always!! 

[Bonehead]

Not been able to get much done the last few days- busy at work and then Silksong happened.

But the models I ordered as an experiment from Brigade Miniatures arrived and man, they're really good.

Here's two slightly different photos because I couldn't pick a favourite:

I think they're basically already ready to do work as insane mutated Khorne worshippers, but I'll do some converting regardless. Head swaps and whatnot to link them in with the rest of the Khorne boys.

Might have to take another gander at the rest of the range from Brigade, these are much better than I expected.

Still waiting on some more scavvy-adjacent models (frateris militia, I think) to turn up, and I've also been looking at old Marauder dark elf models. A talented sculptor on FB showed that they make great base models for scavvy conversions, and the older skronky faces kind of suit nurgle mutants too. So we'l be back to converting Nurgle boys in the next post, I think.

 

 

[Tallarn Commander]

These minnies certainly have a lot of character! Although the bloke on the right who is gripping his blade with his left hand is perpetrating a health and safety violation for sure. 

[Bonehead]

I'd be surprised if it doesn't mean a permanent warning on his file, now that you mention it.

In the meantime, the brave frateris militia have been stewing in meths to get the paint off:

And while they were doing that, some odd ducks arrived. They're more original Confrontation gang models and I was hoping they'd be suitable for turning into more nurgly boys, but honestly, I kind of like their extreme wierdness so much I don't want to convert them. So I think I'm going to try and get more from the range and maybe they can represent one of the loyalist regiments in the Augustine crusade. It'd be nice to have more than two loyalist regiments to photo up as the other side of the conflict. This is what they look like:

They have such a distinct style, it would be a shame to spoil it.

Most of the weekend I was working, but I did find a little time to finish off this lad, at least in basic terms:

Obviously he needs some green stuff but the overall pose is done and I'm happy with it. And the good thing is, with his arms both coming from this next guy, I can give the original ones back so the pair of them end up as unique poses. It'll look something like this:

Only more glued together, with a head and a probably a fat Nurgle belly.

Meanwhile, the frateris militia made it back out of the paint stripper and look like this:

The two bottom left came to me pre-converted and therefore, crucially, cheap. I kind of like the one with the shotgun, the head he's been given is pretty odd-looking but not in a bad way. Suits the scavvy look. He's definitely going to get his clothes ragged-ified and join the scavvies. 

I'm a little torn about the others though. I could definitely fold them into the Nurgle cultist mob with some conversion work to change the poses (which I think mostly look stupid, especially the one with the autopistol), make the clothes look ragged and so on. It would be relatively easy to cut most of them in half at the waist and graft on scavvy torsos, do some arm and foot swaps etc, add nurgle bellies and generally disgustify them.

But I could get quite a few more, they're not that expensive on eBay. Because they could also represent less a bunch of cultists and more a militia of ordinary Red Hand citizens. I mean, the Red Hand Dominate is a whole bunch of planets under the rule of Xia Hesh, not the imperium. It has to have a lot of relatively ordinary people doing relatively ordinary things like farming, working in warehouses, restaurants, driving trucks, whatever. The RHD is an entire multi-stellar empire with a loyal citizenry. The imperials aren't welcome in their crusade, by and large; bringing worlds into 'compliance' largely involves crushing them militarily, beheading and demolishing the local power structure, dragging the citizenry off into penal servitude and replacing the population with loyal imperial settlers. It does make sense that the locals would fight the imperials. And they can't all be in the Immortals cult, or sewer-dwelling Nurgle worshippers, psychotic Khorne worshippers or the Tzeentch cultists i keep threatening to make out of my collection of Cawdor gangers.

Speaking of which, this is they:

As you can see, I've got a fair old few of them. 35 models is a decent sized mob of cultists. I'm going to have a lot of fun converting these ones, I think, but at the rate I'm going it'll probably be next year that I get to them. The Nurgle and Khorne boys are in the queue first.

I did decide in the end that I'd ditch the existing paintjobs. It's just not linked enough to the existing paint schemes of the oppo, so the painted ones are enjoying a methylated spirit bath. I'll probably have a go at something with some vibrant yellows and reds, with brown belts and pouches, etc. Or possibly a very dark scheme, to contrast with the gullible Immortals? Tzeentch is for clever plotters, so perhaps they should be more subdued, fitting for ambushers. Yeah, I like that idea a lot. Anyway, there's plenty of time to dwell on it.

 

Let me know what you think about the militia Frateris models, anyway. Citizen militia or more Nurgly boys?

Hell, let me know what you think about any of it.

 

[Tallarn Commander]

I'd say Red Hand Dominate citizen Militia. But that's just my druthers.

 

I wonder if these miniatures from Warlord Games, the Stargrave Scavengers, would fit into one of your armies:

 

https://us.warlordgames.com/products/stargrave-scavengers

 

 

[Dr_Ruminahui]

I think this is a real opportunity to preserve a unit that is pretty unique among GW figures - one of (essentially) armed civilians.  I think you can find cultisty guys from a wide variety of sources, while civilians are virtually unavailable from GW and tend to be very time period specific in other ranges.  Plus, if gives you a place to put your scateboarder. 

[Bonehead]

4 hours ago, Tallarn Commander said:

I'd say Red Hand Dominate citizen Militia. But that's just my druthers.

 

I wonder if these miniatures from Warlord Games, the Stargrave Scavengers, would fit into one of your armies:

 

https://us.warlordgames.com/products/stargrave-scavengers

 

 

I have been thinking about those guys for a while, yeah. They could very well be the very thing to bulk out the nurgle cultist numbers a bit. I appreciate the reminder!

4 hours ago, Dr_Ruminahui said:

I think this is a real opportunity to preserve a unit that is pretty unique among GW figures - one of (essentially) armed civilians.  I think you can find cultisty guys from a wide variety of sources, while civilians are virtually unavailable from GW and tend to be very time period specific in other ranges.  Plus, if gives you a place to put your scateboarder. 

Well, if I'm honest, this is me we're talking about so the level of 'preservation' is likely to be negligible. They're going to get cut up and converted no matter what happens, I don't really like the poses. But I think the wieght of opinion is certainly pushing them towards a citizen militia, and I don't mind that at all. Also one of them appears to have the face of Bruce Campbell, which is endearingly weird.

 

 

[Dr_Ruminahui]

Yeah, I didn't mean "preserve" in the strict sense, just in retaining them in that role.  No way do you want 2/3 of a squad stabbing the sky with their knives - though it does seem on brand for your force.  

 

As for the Bruce Campbell face, this is the era when the pop culture references were thinly veiled - Marbo is just Rambo in reverse, for one - so I'm not too surprised that they might try to replicate his features, given him being a pop culture entity (icon is probably too strong, but if you were a geek at the time, you knew who Bruce Campbell was) in that era for his roles in the Evil Dead movies.  I'm actually more surprised that they made his face recognizable, given the technology of the time.

Edited Tuesday at 06:59 PM by Dr_Ruminahui