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Author Topic: Dwarf Ballista - LOTR Conversion  (Read 2422 times)

Offline nervisfr

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Dwarf Ballista - LOTR Conversion
« on: April 05, 2013, 03:12:44 PM »
 Next step, the Dwarfs. My son (10 years old) get some interest into the dwarfs for LOTR, especially with The Hobbit and the dwarfs in action all along the movie.
With the silly prices politic of GW, i'm try to do my best to find a way to turn around the problem, by conversion of course !  ;D

i'll show you how to get a ballista fit for LOTR dwarf (and the crews) for nearly something, in comparison of the big amount of money asked by GW for a simple artillery piece.... :'(

The base of the conversion : A bolt thrower from Minifigs ref AFA1 ! Cost : £ 4.95
Mine are bought in the early 80's when i start wargaming.
here it is, with a metal LOTR dwarf for scale comparison :



and the original of GW :




Now, let's go for the work conversion !




Frenchy Eric, aka Ch'ti Eric or Re-Animator
"J'ai bon caractere mais j'ai le glaive vengeur et le bras seculier"

http://chti-reanimator59.blogspot.fr[

Offline nervisfr

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Re: Dwarf Ballista - LOTR Conversion
« Reply #1 on: April 06, 2013, 08:32:34 AM »
for information, you CAN see at irregular miniatures and Black Tree Design for cheap models of field ballista.

Offline nervisfr

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Re: Dwarf Ballista - LOTR Conversion
« Reply #2 on: April 06, 2013, 02:56:24 PM »
So, here we are :

First, we keep the more interesting pieces from the original Minifigs ballista. The low part of the thrower axis is disgarded to look closer to the GW model.



Then we get all the pieces to make our ballista looking like a GW one, at better price of course  lol

that give us the following artillery piece :



Now, we have a ballista but we need two crewmen  to operated it. no problem !
Why to spend money on metal dwarf when you have some plastic ones that you won't use because you dont like them or you don't list them in your army list ?

I choose the plastic archers  for the mission ! I prefer to use the rangers for shooting troop in my dwarf army so i have too much classical dwarf archers in my plastic stock.

The secret here, is to look at the poses and imagine what can turn them into what you want.
For my two conversions of ballista, i choose two poses of firing archers for the ballista operators and two loading archers for the ballista loaders.

the team One and Two (before conversion work on the crewmen)  :P :





It's time to make the conversion work on the crewmen.
As all my conversions on plastic figurines, i use only modelling glue (Revell pin bottle) and cutter. I don't like milliput or green for a plastic conversion. I prefer to fill gap with plastic pieces, and melting them with a massive use of modelling glue.

Most of the job depend about the cut work and sculpting with the cutter the plastic parts.
For example, the bag for the ballista crewman is made with a sleeves, cut off from an ork arm of WH fantasy found my spare bits stock  ;D the sleeves is up side down to become a bag ! simple isn't it ?  :?

The bows are cut off form the hands and the belts are resculpted with the cutter. The GW plastic is very easy to handle for this purpose. The part of the armours needed a resculpting too in the same manner. One crewman, is armed with an axe, provided by a dwarf ranger.
At the end of the brain storming, you get this :



Two teams of Dwarf Ballista, ready to battle......at a ridiculous price :



Hope this little tutorial could help you !

Offline mweaver

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Re: Dwarf Ballista - LOTR Conversion
« Reply #3 on: April 07, 2013, 04:18:14 PM »
Nice-looking conversions!


Offline Sangennaru

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Re: Dwarf Ballista - LOTR Conversion
« Reply #4 on: April 07, 2013, 04:36:49 PM »
Nice-looking conversions!



i'd say more "nice sculpts!!" :)

 

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