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
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)
:
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
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 !