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Author Topic: A Miscellany of Ingenious Scratchbuilds & Kitbashes:  (Read 23925 times)

Offline Padrissimus

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Re: A Miscellany of Ingenious Scratchbuilds
« Reply #15 on: October 30, 2019, 05:12:17 PM »
Thanks Gibby64.

4. Warplightning Cannon kit-bash

Sometimes I just kit-bash together the stuff the big company produces, like here when I jammed an old metal warplightning cannon barrel into the more modern plastic frame. The end result looks familiar to warhammerers, but strange at the same time.



Gotta love chains, eh?

Here it is being hauled by slaves (assisted by a rat ogre) down a giant underpass ...



Another angle ...



I borrowed the crewman from the wheel above for this scene!



(edit) Actually, now I think about it, I did more than just jam them together. There's a whole sort of 'engine' and warpstone steam device I fiddled about with for ages hidden beneath the crew-platform. As so often though you can't really see it in the end product. Oops!

You can kind-of see it in these two pics ...


 


Next time - something a lot more scratch-build than kit-bash, I think.
« Last Edit: October 31, 2019, 05:03:05 PM by Padrissimus »
My Tilean Campaign can be found at https://bigsmallworlds.com/

Offline Padrissimus

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Re: A Miscellany of Ingenious Scratchbuilds
« Reply #16 on: October 31, 2019, 05:02:16 PM »
I lied. I am gonna do a pure kit-bash this time, but as a change of pace it'll be a regiment of figures. I'll get back to the engines later.

5. Goblin Pirates

My goblin scallywags began as a unit of 25, carrying stolen pistols (in reality, stolen from other sprues). Here they are ranked up in their original fighting formation, although there are actually only 21 gobbos here, ‘cos (for the first time ever) I decided to use unit fillers to turn 21 gobbos into the footprint of 25.





Here is the command group. I didn’t go for loads of conversion, just trimming off some bits, like armour, and using Empire Pistolier sprue pistols, as well as Empire Free Company sprue cutlasses and boarding axes.



You might notice that when I took the photo I'd forgotten to paint the flesh on the decapitated head on the standard. Perhaps it's been boiled in cumin and turned that colour? I’ve painted it now.

Here are the two unit-fillers, being 2x2 bases which involve a table with a pistol being repaired and a ‘budge barrel’ (i.e. powder barrel) and chest being guarded. They were loads of fun to do, like little dioramas, which is why I do them much more often now …



And here’s most of the rest of the skullduggerers …



Later on, having watched them die too quickly on the field even for goblins, I decided to bulk them up to a strength of 40, so I painted a few extras. Here are the new scurvy scallywags:



I also made another pair of 2x2 base unit fillers as I was beginning to enjoy creating these. The first is my favourite unit filler yet - a mean-looking feller with his little pack of ship’s rats (he features prominently in a campaign story) …



The second is a pirate ‘standard’ - not the kind of standard with fluttering flags etc, but the kind of standard that means ‘commonplace’ – the burying a treasure chest. You can’t see it in the picture, but the hole goes deeper than the base’s surface. I cut a hole in the base then put plasticard at the bottom so that they have actually dug right through the base!



Here is the full regiment altogether, 8 by 5 …



And here's a non-GW pirate (can't recall the make as a friend gave me the figure) who may or may not be their leader. Sorry the pic is fuzzy!



I did take some pre-painting photos ...









Here’s a clumsily MSPainted version of the diggers



And some of them in a camp …



And here is a close up from a battle report in an actual game …


« Last Edit: October 31, 2019, 08:04:05 PM by Padrissimus »

Offline Padrissimus

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Re: A Miscellany of Ingenious Scratchbuilds & Kitbashes
« Reply #17 on: November 01, 2019, 06:56:19 PM »
6. Scratch-built Snotling Pump Wagon Version One
(AKA the ‘Pumpidoodie)

Now back to engines, this time of a novel and almost entirely scratch-built kind.

First, I stuck together several bits of plastic strip, black milliput (stubborn finger dye!), balsa wood, lollipop sticks, Ogre weapons, orc spear tips etc ...





Once I undercoated and put the big wheels in place, it started to look like something I was beginning to think was possibly ‘cool’, in a wacky-racers meets WFB way!



I loved the idea of a spiky roller. Not in a 'Saw III' sense, but in a crazy goblins of 'Labyrinth' sense.

Here is a pic to show the 'workings'. I do get the idea of pump handles/belts etc to drive the wheels and roller, but how they actually function is beyond me. Some sort of ratcheted gears or some like? I didn't let it bother me.



Here's the 'inventor' of the machine - or at least he claims to be, and his wee mates believe him. He's so clever he now wears wizardly robes, and he is so proud he feels it is quite permissible to stick a finger up at anyone.



Here the base is done, though it is very basic (like all my bases), ready for battle. The snotling crew have painted crude skulls hither and thither upon its frame to count up their 'kills'. The score is inaccurate - they can't really count that high so this is an underestimate. (This bit of background is wishful thinking on my behalf!)





Last of all, a pic of the pumpers a-pumping, from the bat rep of an actual game …



Another pumper will follow soon!

Offline Padrissimus

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Re: A Miscellany of Ingenious Scratchbuilds & Kitbashes
« Reply #18 on: November 02, 2019, 08:51:12 PM »
7. Scratch-built Snotling Pump Wagon Version Two

Having completed my first pumper, I embarked upon a second of a completely different design. (I really cannot see snotlings using the same design twice.)

Here the bits were being glued together - notice Ogre man-trap bits (hands removed) for the counts-as 'spiky roller'. Not so much 'spiky roller' as 'snappy spiker'! As ever, shields provide the smaller wheels.



The bits coming together nicely ...



Here undercoated and glued after any inward facing bits have been painted ...



This is the almost painted model, base yet to be done and snotling crew yet to be added.





Unlike the previous version, this has a big wheel at the front, and a high up pumping handle rather than a handle in the 'body' of the engine. There are two belts, but this time both are involved in turning the wheel, as there is no roller component to power. The 'snappy spiker' part doesn't need a belt, just a very brave snotling or two to re-set!

Now for the completed pics. Like their mates on the first machine, these guys are trying to record their kills ...



Here you can see how helpful these little fellers are to each other, one of them assisting the other up the ladder. Aww bless! (Mind you, he has no legs!)



Here is the power source - two keen snotlings, however one is getting distracted in the moment and pointing out a squirrel he has just seen ...



This one shows how this very, very, very complicated machine works (I still don't know how pumping a handle somehow turns a wheel only one way!) ...



And here is the painful part - for the enemy anyway ...



Finally, here it is in battle, in Autumn IC.2401, two miles west of Pavezzano, in southern Tilea, when the army of the VMC smashed Khurnag’s ‘Little Waagh’ …



Offline PhilB

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Re: A Miscellany of Ingenious Scratchbuilds & Kitbashes
« Reply #19 on: November 03, 2019, 10:24:16 AM »
So many pointy bits! That's gotta hurt!

Great work! Just discovered your thread and love the retro feel.

Offline Padrissimus

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Re: A Miscellany of Ingenious Scratchbuilds & Kitbashes
« Reply #20 on: November 03, 2019, 11:02:23 AM »
Thanks PhilB. I suppose I myself am retro, having done this sort of stuff since before 1st ed WFB in 1983, and so the 'feel' is me! (Oooerr!)

8. Some little fiddly Skaven 'ScratchKitBuildBashes'*
* This is a brand new term for models that are part scratch-build and part kit-bash. It just rolls off the tongue, don't it?

First a warpfire thrower. The crew are kits, their weapon made of bits of various stuff ...


Next a ratling gun, same method - cheap(er) plastic figures from the sprue, bash up the weapon ...


The above pair I like. I then started getting cocky and though I could save money by turning old 1:32nd scale Airfix WW2 American paratroopers (who else?) into Rat Ogres. This resulted ...


I was not at all convinced, but I needed some handlers and once again I used standard plastic skaven, but tried two different methods for the whips...


Despite the cost-cutting side of things starting to really show, being stubborn I thought I try a text model of a globadier bashed out of a plastic sprue skaven, again to save money on the metal ones. This time however, I knew I had gone wrong!


I had accidentally created a womble!

Being half Yorkshireman and half Scot, I refused to give up on my efforts to cut costs, and so when a campaign player needed an extra 9 jezzails I decided to really speed things up and came up with these to turn your average slave soldiers into warpfire teams for the table top ...





When I can find the pictures, or the figures and a camera, I will put up the pics of my 'properly' kit-bashed jezzails, of which I am actually proud! 


« Last Edit: November 03, 2019, 04:34:33 PM by Padrissimus »

Offline djbii

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Re: A Miscellany of Ingenious Scratchbuilds & Kitbashes
« Reply #21 on: November 04, 2019, 07:22:00 AM »
Lovin the bashin. Great work :-)
A life spent making mistakes is not only honorable but more useful than a life spent doing nothing.” –  George Bernard Shaw

https://hottnstuff.blogspot.com/ (was http://hitlh.blogspot.com.au/)

Offline Padrissimus

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Re: A Miscellany of Ingenious Scratchbuilds & Kitbashes
« Reply #22 on: November 04, 2019, 09:25:42 PM »
Thanks, djbii.

9. Undead Ogres
(Counts-as 'Crypt Horrors' in WFB 8th Ed)


Here are the completed (though un-based) undead ogres I made for the Tilean campaign. The background to them is that a Tilean lord (Lord Adolfo of Viadaza, an NPC), who has some orcen blood in his veins, becomes a vampire and not only raises the dead – having made things easier by cunningly allowing the Morrite clergy to go off on a crusade-like holy war – but also zombifies his current army, mainly marines and ogres. Due to his own corrupted blood he himself became a ‘counts as’ Strigoi.

I wanted the ogres to have Crypt Horror stats. Perhaps Lord Adolfo allowed his brutish warehouse guards and pit-fighting thugs to drink a tiny portion of his blood and so created his own version of these monstrous undead? That way they would become something like Crypt horrors rather than merely oversized zombies and also could maybe, in the far future, reinforce my own ogre army (as if they were some weird Ogre cult or clan allied to the army). Also whenever the vampire player in my campaign asked to borrow some ogres to bulk up his Crypt Horrors regiment, as he has on several previous occasions, I could now lend him some blue-skinned ogres that kind-of fit in with his blue-skinned horrors (making for better bat rep photos).

Several of these have decorative bones piercing their skins, an idea lifted from the official crypt horror models, and I tried to make these look more like vampire/ghoul ogres than rotting, zombie ogres.

Here is the unit as a whole:



Here is an ex-pit fighter. He has a chain attached to his skull – I reckon that might work with an ogre - and carries in his left hand a torn-up gravestone as a weapon. (The latter idea I got from reading the crypt horrors fluff in the most recent VC army book.)



The next must surely have a headache, which cannot exactly make him the most agreeable sort of fellow. His right weapon is a flail made of skulls from my bits box. (I had apparently already chopped one skull off for some other project!)



The next one has some ‘fun’ weapons – a beast’s jawbone and a big stick with a skeleton skewered on it.



This next guy is my favourite. I tried something I have never done before and made his flail with real chains, attaching two skulls and a meatier severed head. The chains actually swing about as you move the figure. Cool.



This next fellow has an ogre weapon and another weapon which I think is from an orc figure but is a wonderfully vicious looking thing that seems just right for such a creature.



The last is also inspired by the fluff from the VC army book, where it said that crypt horrors might use graveyard railings as weapons. This is a very tall railing, perhaps from next to a gate, and has been prettified up with some lovely skulls. This will count as a standard bearer if I use these as an unusual Ogre army unit.



Offline Padrissimus

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Re: A Miscellany of Ingenious Scratchbuilds & Kitbashes
« Reply #23 on: November 08, 2019, 05:32:42 PM »
10. Scratchbuilt Scraplauncher

I started with a plastic, toy rhino and lots of wooden sticks and chains. Some of the workings were made from plastic thingies from my bits box.



I gave it some thought (not a lot was necessary, really) as I wanted it to look like something that would work. Well, something that would work in a fantasy world. A huge weight provides the force to swing the arm, and a winch allows it to be re-set. The access ladder has a simpler and less sturdy winch to haul it up off the ground.



Several platforms allow the crew to get around on it, and to access the winches and the 'plate' that holds the missiles.



Here it is almost completed, with just a few little touches to sort, like the shield on the little box, and the base. I took a few differently angled shots so that you can (hopefully) see how the mechanism would work a little better than the pics above. Believe it or not, no word of a lie, when I first put it together it actually worked. When I pulled on the weight the arm shot up, and I could actually wind the winch and reset the weight. BUT when I painted (well, wood-stained - I got lazy on this one!) all the parts it seized up. This made me a bit sad, but I soon got over it when I remembered I wasn't 7 years old anymore, so marble chucking did not mean as much to me.







In the above pics I had forgotten to tie the two little sacks of ammunition to the side. These are an important finishing touch, for I was hoping this engine would shoot more than once per battle!



I want to better describe its mechanism, for the edification of any of all gnoblar 'engineers' out there. First, a picture to give an idea on the scale of the engine - the Ogres next to it show its relative size. It only just fits on its base - well, leg wise at least.



Now for the workings...

A huge lead weight hangs from the rope at the rear, leading up to the winching wheel, then around that and off to the front of the launching arm. When a certain spike is removed the lead weight drops, pulling the rope, spinning the wheel (in a satisfactorily dangerous manner for a gnoblar construct, for there are many ways a careless mountain goblin could die on this thing) and pulling the arm. Spinning about its axle the arm swings up and thus launches the scrap into the air. The gnoblars then have to wind the winching wheel to lift the weight and thus drop the arm back to be reloaded.





The other winch (you might be able to see) simply pulls the ladder up. The ladder helps more gnoblars climb up to replace the ones who most likely perish nearly every time this thing fires. Of course, being very neat and tidy little creatures, the gnoblars didn't want the ladder to drag along the ground when not in use.
« Last Edit: November 08, 2019, 05:50:35 PM by Padrissimus »

Offline Padrissimus

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Re: A Miscellany of Ingenious Scratchbuilds & Kitbashes
« Reply #24 on: November 09, 2019, 04:42:47 PM »
11. Scratchbuilt Luminark

As ever, and always so mote it be, I decided to scratch-build rather than buy. This time, a Luminark of a low fantasy design.

I started to get some fiddly bits of plastic from my bits box together, including some lens-like transparent bits of saved junk ...



This was to form the sequence of mirrors that would focus the deadly ray of burning light, both mundane and etheric!

Then I began to mount it on a platform, and started to give some thought as to how the crew would service and use the machine ...



And then I added the carriage and wheels that would allow it to move across the field of battle ...





Painted up I started to like it.





Especially how the light came through the four lenses.



One crewman, the engine's master, would be an old figure with an arm replaced ...



Two armoured horses would pull it ...



And with the second crewman fitted it was ready to go ...







Here it is being paraded through the streets by the fanatical Morrite sect the Disciplinati di Morr ...







And here is a battle report shot of the moment it first attempted to fire, and broke!



All that effort and the thing went kaput in its first campaign battle! Still, well worth it, I think!





Offline Supercollider

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Re: A Miscellany of Ingenious Scratchbuilds & Kitbashes
« Reply #25 on: November 11, 2019, 01:35:32 AM »
Great thread, very inventive inventions!

Offline Padrissimus

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Re: A Miscellany of Ingenious Scratchbuilds & Kitbashes
« Reply #26 on: November 11, 2019, 09:28:41 PM »
Thanks Supercollider.

12. My ‘Carroccio’ (i.e. war wagon/altar) kit-bash

I wanted a carroccio that had everything the ‘Treachery and Greed’ internet campaign Mercenary Company army list suggested: a Battle Standard, a minimum of 6 crew, religious trappings and the sort of firepower that allowed an equivalent of at least 6 handgun shots per turn. I also wanted some height so that it had a good LoS.

Here it is completed (un-crewed):



In this early incarnation the standard is an extra-fancy version of the Compagnia del Sole’s white rod and sun emblem (the simpler emblem used by the rest of the army is painted on some of the panels). Also, the golden statue of Myrmidia from outside Condlumar’s palace stands at the front. Two torches illuminate the goddess. In the Morrite version used in my current Tilean campaign, the standard has changed, the panels are repainted, and instead of a golden goddess statue there is a chest carrying holy relics.

The next pic’ from the old campaign includes the crew, including a priestess in her religious capacity (tending the statue with prayers):



There are six handgunners, four on the top, two in the ‘cage’, as well as three swivel guns, plus several optional stanchions (the red posts) for mounting them.



Bizarrely, the flag swivels, so I could re-position it for photos. The next shot shows into the ‘cage’ which is an iron-grilled area beneath the tower platform:



Luckily two guys were just short enough to stand in there, and I love the more three-dimensional image of them tucked away inside, sticking their guns through the grate:



I built it from a variety of old scenery left-overs (castle doors and windows), plus two horses I had spare, as well as plastic model shop tubes, and the wheels and yoke from the Black Coach model (which I have had unused for nearly 3 years now). The Morrite version has different horses, with metal armour barding on them – much more likely to survive battle.



The crossbow arm was cut with a scalpel to make the mount for the swivel guns - using the stirrup at the end of the crossbow to pass through the holes in the side of the guns.

The main body was built from lollipop sticks, with thin bits of plasticard stuck on top so that I could glue the gratings on. There was a LOT of chopping of plastic as most bits were the wrong size. Luckily the curving grate tops on the lower level match the wooden ones on the top level - because they were alternative components for the same holes in the castle scenery walls.



The only thing I bought were the swivels (model shop, model ship pieces), mainly ‘cos I couldn’t bring myself to break the ones I already had off their stands and leave my pirate army with three less!

Here you can see it 'on parade' through the streets in the old Treachery and Greed campaign, accompanied by Estalians ...



And here you can see its current form, fully Reman Morrite (with the arch-lector’s cross-keys banner) and now with its colourfully barded and protected horses.


« Last Edit: November 11, 2019, 09:33:43 PM by Padrissimus »

Offline Grumpy Gnome

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Re: A Miscellany of Ingenious Scratchbuilds & Kitbashes
« Reply #27 on: November 12, 2019, 02:16:55 PM »
Some genius work there!
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Offline Padrissimus

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Re: A Miscellany of Ingenious Scratchbuilds & Kitbashes
« Reply #28 on: November 13, 2019, 08:44:59 PM »
Thanks Rick W.

The next one is not genius, unless it is genius to be as cheap as possible!

(Unlucky) 13: The cheapest Giant Gorillas ever!

Buy some pound shop, incredibly cheap, gorillas. Base them, add weapons, scratch the plastic with a knife to give some basic impression of fur, re-shape an arm or two, and mess about a bit with armour and milliput ...



Scratch loads more to try to get some bloomin' fur effect to manifest, and add some wacky jungle bits ...



Paint in a cartoon fashion and Wa La!



(Hopefully this particular post is fun, if not exactly something anyone would want to mimic. Unless ... you are as 'cheap' as me!!!)



Offline Padrissimus

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Re: A Miscellany of Ingenious Scratchbuilds & Kitbashes
« Reply #29 on: November 15, 2019, 04:30:02 PM »
14. Scratch-built handguns for dwarfs.

Got the wrong Dwarfs? Are your models equipped with axes, swords or crossbows when you want handguns? Then get some bits of plastic, tubing and make your own handguns!

Parade.


March on!


Close up.


The guns were made of 'Plastruct' polystyrene tube mounted on polystyrene square cross-section rod with some fiddly bits stuck on to give the impression of a mechanism. Sometimes!

 

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