It is so easy, quick and lends such a air of ownership to my units that I simply cant resist. Thus, when confronted with the relatively narrow selection of torso poses offered in the kit I decided that no two figures would be the same, even if I had to go to Frankenstein levels of body part swapping. This was further complicated by The Housemartin's request that they fall into four readily identifiable groups, one of which was a semi-regular unit (and would thus be more alike than different). Much head-scratching and chin-rubbing ensued as I perused the available parts. I sorted the torsos into three groups (having already built the musket armed troops) and spent some time studying the selection of arms and weapons. The Housemartin added another complication by requesting that one of the units (all were of ten figures) be armed entirely with swords. I was forced to conclude that some major surgery would be in order.
after assembling one each of the "standard" poses I was unhappy with the way that the figure held the weapon, a quick fix is to cut off the hand and re-position the angle at which the weapon is held, or move it to an entirely new arm
the swordsmen were particularly bad as there was only one arm holding a sword in the kit
a lot of arm and weapon swaps ensured that each figure was different
the next big problem was that the over-arm spear was held at a weird angle that pointed away from the direction that the body was moving, fortunately a simple cut at the wrist and a rotation of the way the spear pointed solved this for most figures
swords and spears are so limiting, I decided that some figures needed a mace, so I cut a spear down to what seemed like a good length for a mace, and then popped the end off of a quiver
after the cutting was one I had this, a mace kit
a tad of further trimming to make sure the head was squarely on the handle
and ta-da! a mace
none of the provided shield-arms gave a dynamic enough pose for this fellow about to heave that mighty spear, so I a grabbed a bowman's arm, pared away the bow so that he would now be holding his shield well away as a counterbalance
confronted with a shortage of swords I carved one out of a spear,this took longer than I thought,
in retrospect I should have dug around in the spares box for a sword or two
Having now created thirty more individual figures I will now endeavor to paint them so that they retain their rugged personas while still looking like they belong to some sort of unit. Wish me luck.
Excellent conversion work.
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