Mean Streets: The Warriors & More (High Hats)

[Cat]

You are a machine! If I did as much X-acto knife work as you, my hands would be permanently covered in bandages... 

Umm, I do have some pretty good scars on my left hand fingers.  Whenever my spouse sees me getting out the bandaids, she asks rhetorically, "Did you just cut yourself again?"
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[Cat]

The Baseball Furies gang is now done and ready to rumble.  I had originally modified 12 figures for this gang, including the boss fighter Cobb the Catcher from the video game.  But when watching their movie fight scene at 1/8 speed on the DVD to catch all the face paint markings, discovered their were 12 distinct ones in the film.  It was easier to just modify one more figure from the leftovers in the Reviresco pack than to decide which warpaint option to not include.  So now, they are a gang of 13 — the whole movie cast plus Cobb.

After doing the video research for the painting, I also used green stuff to give them all longer hair than what had been on the original figures.

Their uniform, and sneakers, are made entirely possible by use of .005 Micron Art pens!  For the logo on their backs, I used a black pen to draw the outline, hit that with a light spray of Dullcote to set the ink, then after that dried, painted the tangerine patch.  The stripes and lettering are pen work.  For Cobb's reverse pinstripes, I drew thicker black lines, leaving narrower white strips between them.

Google-fu uncovered a retro-sneakers blog that had an entry on the sneakers of The Warriors!  This identified the Furies' footwear as Nike LD 1000 with the yellow painted on.  Starting with a white base, I painted the light yellow stripe on the uppers.  After that was dry, used a black pen to outline and shape the yellow, then a red pen to add the heel splotch and the Nike swoops on the sides, then back to the black pen to fill in around the red, leaving a thin white stripe on the bottom for the cushioned sole, and thin white padding around the sides of the ankles.  This got Dullcoted at the same time as the outline for the back patch, and when dry, I re-did over the red with a brighter red paint.  It was easy to re-follow the pen lines and keep it pretty tidy.

Also added 2 more figures to round out the Hidalgos to 12.  One of the packs of Shadowrun figures I've been using for conversion fodder had an elf in a beret with a sword that cut down nicely to a machete.  Some of the gangs are getting figures for an artist armed with spray paint for tagging missions.  The Hidalgos new artist was an easy conversion from a pirate figure found in the stash [Dixon, I think].  The star on the Puerto Rican flag bandana, like the back of the Hidalgos' vests, was done with a WW2 US white star decal.

[mikedemana]

LOVE IT! 

Converting figures is not necessarily my strength, so I really like what you've done with these. They are probably the most iconic gang from The Warriors, so it's great you have them ready for the tabletop.

Mike Demana
http://leadlegionaries.blogspot.com/

[Cat]

Thanks Mike!  I've enjoyed converting figures from even before I started gaming way back when.  The Furies were relatively easy work.  They were a soft metal, so it was quick to carve down the gloves into hands, and the arms could be repositioned just by bending with tweezers.

Next fully operational gang is The Lizzies.  This was really fun converting — I had never done such a large group of specific characters before.  It was a blast recreating the full gang in miniature.  This was primarily green stuff work to adjust shirt tail lengths as needed and to build up the big poofy perms.

The trusty Micron Art pens provided the full magic for doing the plaid shirt in style, and the logo monogram.

For the plaid, after the violet base coat had dried, I used a purple .005 pen to draw in the primary gridlines, then painted in the blue and red squares.   After that paint had dried, I went over it again with the purple pen to crisp up the outlines of the primary grid and to add the lines down and across the middle of all the squares.

Image google searching for reference pix also revealed that in the video game they get a logo on the back of their jackets that wasn't in the movie.  It added a nice splash of colour, so I went with that.  Painted the patch in white first, then hot pink, then after the paint had dried, drew in the monogram L with a black pen.

[mikedemana]

That's awesome. I never played the video game, so missed out on that as source material... 

I should pay you to convert another batch of Baseball Furies for me...I could get by with 6-8 figures. 

I can't wait to see you stage a game with all the different Warriors gangs on the tabletop!

Mike Demana
http://leadlegionaries.blogspot.com/

[Cat]

That's awesome. I never played the video game, so missed out on that as source material... 

I've never played the video game either.  (Or any other — I paint way too many miniatures to afford another time-sink hobby!)  Reviews of it are pretty meh, and the snippets I've seen on YouTube confirm this.  It doesn't capture any of the charm of the movie: the colours are very dark, the fights are blood-splattery, and the music is way off.  But it does have some handy modelling bits that I'm happy to steal.

Google-fuing for Warriors reference material led me to the fandom wiki which has a bunch of info on the movie, book, and game:
https://thewarriors.fandom.com/wiki/Main_page

[Cat]

Modelling work finished on the Warriors and Boppers, and reworked the Mollies aka Hell Cats.

The signature Warriors are all height adjusted now.  The character sculpts of "The Braves" set by Funky Skull are superb, with the exception that the figures are all fairly uniformly too tall — there's a little variance but they are all in the range of 29mm–31mm toe-to-eye.  The movie cast is much more varied, with Rembrandt and especially Cowboy being the shortest of them.

The four characters who are the tallest in the gang, I left at their original figure height.  The others I worked on in order of the next tallest then down, starting with Cochise, to make sure I got them all proportionally. Three got shortened by removing a slice of the waist just below the vest, then adding a crotch back into the dungarees with a bit of green putty so they didn't look like weird stick figures.  The figure for Rembrandt was a bit short and in a crouching position which helped, but the legs were far too long and looked off; so I took slices out at the knees to bring him down to proper size.  The figure for Cowboy was just ridiculously too tall; I started by taking as much out at the knees as I could, and then still had to shorten him at the waist too.

For minor adjustments, the seam lines on the pants were over-exaggerated, so I carved them off.  Also removed the top rocker that was cast on the back of the vests, it was too small to attempt putting the "Warriors" on it, so it had to go to give me a writing chance!

**edit**  Just spotted that Vermin's knees are riding kind of high after shortening him at the waist.  Took a file and knife to drop the thighs down lower so he doesn't look like a mutant.  WIP photos often help me spot things that need a little correcting.

Next up are the Boppers, which were a really fun modelling challenge.  I wasn't originally planning on them; but as I've been posting bits of the progress on this in the FB group for gaming at the FLGS (The Hobby Bunker, recently moved from Malden to Wakefield Mass) there's been a lot of interest piqued for playing the game because The Warriors.  So I've decided to play to the crowd and add more movie.

Rummaging about in the stash, I found some old Western gunfighter figures that would work pretty easily.  Had to cut coats down to vests, add neckties, and reduce some of the hats for a more urban look.  I also had some figures that would work if I added hats, or more easily found good heads with hats to swap in.  Gangster figures in fedoras seemed like a promising avenue, but would get expensive.  Then it dawned on me to check Atlantic Wargames new Partisans: French Resistance — bingo, and the aforementioned FLGS had it in stock too!

Not only were there plenty of fedorad heads in the box, the plastic figures convert easily enough into Boppers too; the plastic is much easier to carve into vests than metal cowboy coats.  With the fun of working in plastic, I wound up only doing 1 head swap onto a metal figure.  This was originally going to be a small gang of just the delegation of nine who went to the great conclave in the movie.  But the joy of working with plastic led to expanding up to a large gang of twelve, plus an optional leader swap pair of figures with knife or gun.

The plastic figures worked best for making the alternate leader poses.  The leader looking type at the front of the pack in the movie is shorter than the others, so cut this pair of figures down at the waist.

The arms with potato masher grenades worked great; drilled out the grenade ends to turn them into pipe fittings then added a length of brass wire to make nice kopfklopfers.

In the movie, we never see the Boppers fight, so that opened up freedom of weaponry.  Starting with the Western base figures gave the idea to arm some of them with bullwhips for a unique gang flavour.  I imagine these would provide great percussion for the gang's hip hop performances and a whole Rawhide and Ennio Morricone inspired set.
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If anybody is looking to build a Boppers gang, you could do it just with a box of these Resistance Fighters.  The new release of plastic gunfighters by Great Escape Games look like they would provide nice conversion fodder too.

Finally in this batch are the re-worked Mollies figures from Funky Skull.  Originally I was going to leave them all at their original heights.  But after finishing the Lizzies, this group of figures looked too much like the women's basketball team gang.  I thought about running with that idea, but opted instead to vary their height too.  Two figures with weapons down along their legs, and the roller skater, got left at original height.  Three got shortened by cutting slices out of the legs just below the skirt, and the two in dungarees got shortened at the knees.  They are now ready to proceed with painting as my own fictional Hell Cats gang.

[pistolpete]

Great work on the furies and looking forward to seeing the warriors done up.  Will you also be doing the “orphans”?

[Cat]

Great work on the furies and looking forward to seeing the warriors done up.  Will you also be doing the “orphans”?

Thanks!
 
I'm not sure on the Orphans.  Their outfits are kind of bland, and I haven't even gone hunting to see what I could find for scrawny figures in plain tee shirts.  On the plus side, having a gang that can place more figures on the table because they're whimpy fighters would be an interesting game option.
 
What I am eyeballing is the upcoming Great Escape Games plastic gunfighters sprues that have a number of heads with top hats, and the Ainsty Aggro minis that have a number of figures with suspenders...

[Cat]

*ponder* *ponder* 
Hmm, there are possibilities for the Orphans. 

Turnkey Miniatures has the old Mega Miniatures line, and there are a number of useful figures there.  However, Turnkey's web cart hasn't been operating.  I contacted them mid-March on FB and did get a reply that there had been a recent 'upgrade' form their vendor that caused the glitch and they would have it looked into.  But alackaday, radio silence since I last queried in early April.  I hope they come available again, as they have a number of useful civilian figures.  I'll try pinging again.

With a bit of work, the Reviresco baseball players would provide useful fodder too.  They were scrawnier than I would have liked for the Furies, but they are the only baseball players on the market this side of 35mm.  With their hats carved off and the figures mounted on 2.5mm thick stands instead of 3mm, they would at least look shorter than the Furies.

[aircav]

It’s great seeing all these gangs develop 

[mikedemana]

The Orphans would be a great gang to have on the tabletop, too. In my Mean Streets rules, you could even make them all "Wimps" so they're easy to beat up... 

Of course, that means you have to field a LOT of them to make it a fair game.

Mike Demana
http://leadlegionaries.blogspot.com/

[Cat]

A great many Wimps with barely any weapons between them.  The leader fearlessly brandishes a bent straight edge, the lieutenant has a short pipe with a very short bit of chain attached.  The rest are armed with a grim dedication to Stalin's axiom...
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I have in fact succumbed to working up a large mob of them.  Very slightly up-armed.  The lieutenant has traded pipe for tire iron, and two others have grabbed tire irons too.  It goes to reason that a large gang of wimps would excel at at least two types of missions: Hubcap Raids and Tagging.

Watching this clip, I never noticed before how much Ajax brightens up from his usual sullen demeanor when the Molotov got lit:

[mikedemana]

Love it! You always have to have one faction as the "militia" in a multiplayer game...not everyone gets to play the elites! 

Mike Demana
http://leadlegionaries.blogspot.com/

[pistolpete]

Heed the old adage “swarms win”