The Joy of Styrene

 

       So, I'm back at my Irish Dark Ages figures intending to finish off the first box as lightly-armed skirmishers and I will dedicate the next box to some close-ranked spearmen that can double as Welsh in a pinch. Before I even started I got the itch, that certain itch I suffer from whenever I'm dealing with plastic figures; the modification itch! I just knew that I couldn't build these as "out of the box" figures; they would need some cutting-up and new bits. For starters I wanted to add some archers to the mix, no, none of those deadly longbows from a few centuries later; just some run of the mill lads with bows. To this end I dug out one of the boxes of "donor bits" that I had placed aside when I had built some minis a few years back, the Gripping Beast Arab Light Cavalry box. I had built these as a largely spear-armed unit so there were plenty of spare arms holding bows still available. 

 

a spare-parts depot in disguise

 

spare arm with bow, ready to install

 now what can we do with that pesky arm that is already attached?

 

why, simply lop it off with a razor knife

 

I took the matching arm from the spares sprue too

 

now it looks as if he had just released an arrow

 

 

figure two, he loses his "issue" arm and gets a new one with a bow and a quiver

 (to round out the set) along with an arm that looks like he is reaching to draw another arrow forth

 

off to a decent start, I won't bore you with the gruesome details of 

the further chopping and hacking but suffice it to say that no one escaped the blade

 

five decidedly different figures all with the same starting torso and legs

 

the same story with this set

 

bare-chested boy was harder to work with, but some judicious 

trimming and bending produced acceptable results

 

with this set I nearly screwed-up and duplicated a pose but a wrist bend on one 

figure, and an arm lopping on the other, made them different enough to accept

 

pointing the separate heads in different directions changes the whole demeanor of the model

 

this set really does provide a large selection of options

 and also leaves a generous number of spare bits for future use