Conversion ideas


  • I love how versatile the boxes in this set are, a friend is using the skeletons with 3d printed shields to make an Egyptian skeleton army since models for that are harder to come by now. What conversions and modifications have you tried using models from this line?



  • So far, some musket to pistol mods and some bit box add-ons to the lizardmen set for tribals/air pirate types for general industral fantasy gaming, plus I took some of the arms and even heads to make some historical scale mutants with WA's Afgahns and some Z-clip studio zombies.


  • Alright folks, first post, and I'm skipping introductions to dive in talks of conversions.

    Speaking of skeletons, these are some guys I assembled a while ago; they aren't extensively converted, just some tweaks here, and a reposition there - plus a head or weapon swap.
    While the picture isn't anything impressive in and of itself, it does show how different brands of skeletons compare, style and size wise.

    On the right, the iconic WGA skeleton champion with their signature helmet; the original falcata I changed with a more Celtic-like sword from the Oathmark kit.
    The spearman is WGA too, tweaked with an Oathmark helmet - to mark them as a leader for the spearmen unit.
    The model on the far left is an Oathmark skeleton with a shield swap from a goblin kit.
    Last and least, the Erehwon skeleton, which is the weediest and trickiest to assembled, but probably one of the most characterful.

    Personally I like how thick and relatively easy to build WGA skeletons are.
    Erehwon are very flimsy, but skulls are among the better proportioned and evil looking.
    Oathmark is probably the least inspired, and arms tend on the fragile side too, but heads add some variety to other kits.

    Size Comparison - Skeletons


  • The new Goth set preview looks like it has some great hand axes for simple hand swaps with the Halflings kit.  I've been looking for good ways to diversify the weapons on the halflings.


  • @Andrew Fernandez 
    Perry or old Fireforge?
    They'd probably more in scale with halfling arms.


  • @Araden Kwyll yeah the erewhon skeletons are super finniky. I remember they were another friend's first miniature Box and the difficulty of building them almost turned him off from minis forever 


  • @Ethan Gilbert 
    I had to assemble them in SLOW stages, and let them cure, or they'd collapse under their own weight.
    Which is a real bummer: they are very characterful and the skulls are among my favorites.


  • I have an article about converting Wargames Atlantic skeletons on my blog at http://dereksweetoys.com/fun-things-to-do-with-wargames-atlantic-skeleton-warriors/ 

     

     


  • @Derek H 
    Loving the use of living bodies to convert classical skeletons.
    Did something similar with Victrix Normans for my wights.


  • @Araden Kwyll you can't get more finicky to put together than the Zvezda ring of rule skeletons. Separate feet and hands. Days of my life I will never get back.


  • @Paul Lucey 
    Wow.
    Sounds nasty.

    Erehwon skeletons were notoriously fickle: separate feet, separate legs and torso, with joint in the lower spine.
    Head connected via a tiny neck nub to a shallow socket on the torso.

    Sure: this made them extremely poseable.
    But flimsy plastics made them frail too.

    I love the characterful heads.
    Something both WGA and Oathmark are somewhat lacking of.
    At least they are all styrene...


  • I've used the Lizard-Man gas masks for head-swaps of Reaper Bones ghasts to make Imps for a sort of tabletop DOOM-and-Quake project (Reaper's ghasts look a lot like DOOM Imps as-is, and the gas-masks added to a couple of them lend a bit of that weird industrial/demonic/fantasy thing those classic '90s video games had going on.)

    For the same DOOM-and-Quake project, I used the WA skeletons' skulls on the bodies of some Mantiic hard-plastic spectres of some sort - which out-of-the-box are some sort of tall, thin, zombie-scarecrow sort of critters.  With the skull heads, and some backpacks and shoulder armor from Iron-Core stormtroopers, they make great DOOM Revenants!  (The video game version is like a tall, thin, zombie-skeleton thing with heavy chest and shoulder armor, and rocket launchers on its shoulders... I haven't figured out a way to do the rocket launchers yet, but Iike them without!)

    They don't have any WA bits in them, but my favorite DOOM-and-Quake conversions so far would be 1) a mashup of a Reaper Bones "brain-in-a-jar" with some sort of smaller-scale battlemech body, the brain modified with grotesque little face and tiny arms, to form home-brew "Arachnotron" spider-demons, and 2) a mashup of a Reaper Bones "Maggotcrown Bonesack" (a hideous, bloated, undead zombie-skull-thing) with the gun-arms of another smaller-scale battlemech figure, with a scratch-built backpack, to form a home-brow "Mancubus" demon - both look strikingly close to their video-game counterparts, and the Mancubus, if anything, looks even more gross and horrifying in its scratch-built miniature form!  Runners-up are 3) a fat, ugly Reaper Bones flesh golem with a scratch-built chainsaw and a loose grenade launcher bit I came across somewhere, built into a Quake ogre, and 4) a Reaper bones armored minotaur skeleton, to which I added assorted greeblies and some sort of biomechanical gene-stealer gun, to make a scratch-built DOOM Cyber-Demon.

    I've got most of the other stuff sourced for that Doom-and-Quake project, mostly in the form of modified Reaper Bones models mixed with various wargaming bits, waiting on me to get around to ordering them, and/or doing a little scratch-building and sculpting here and there.  But, when I get done with that project, those Wargames Atlantic Cannon Fodder are in for a hell of a world of hurt!  🤬


  • @Yronimos Whateley 

    I am familiar with the Reaper models you mentioned.
    And your project sounds rad.

    I was considering assembling a Doom Revenant myself.
    Gasmasks on ghouls is something I should try too!


  • Currently trying to Persianize my Halflings. Will take any suggestions regarding this you may have! 


  • @Miyuso - check out what @David Musgrave has done with halfling war-balloons (link), what @Mac Coxhead has done with Dark Age Irish head-swaps onto viking halflings (link), and what @Grumpy Gnome is doing with some creative kitbashing for gnomish halflings (link).

    I think Persian and Afghan bits will probably mix pretty well with halflings, with a little creative modeling for some of the two-handed weapons - the key thing to bear in mind is that halfings have very short arms, so you'll probably want to trim off the halfling hands and human arms, and glue human hands onto halfling arms to make the weapons swaps work.

    I like the way Mac's mix of Dark Age Irish bits and halflings works out, and I think the upcoming WA Dark Ages Goths set looks like it'll include some great bits for halflings as well:  the head-swaps look much better than I expected!  Grumpy Gnome suggested using the WA Persians as a source of odd gnomish hats, which sounds like a fantastic idea, and I think they'll work great on your project.  The Persian bows and quivers can probably be adapted to work on the Halflings, with a little work. 

    The WA Afghan kits ought to mix in great with some Persianized Halflings - the turbans, swords and old-fashioned Afghan guns would make some very interesting Halfling soldiers, though adapting the guns to halflings might require some creative modeling - I've not tried it, but it would be an interesting project!  The little Afghan shields are perfectly sized for halflings.

    Northstar's Frostgrave Crewmen and Wizards I kits include some heads wearing turbans and some miscellaneous weaponry and spell-casting gear that might come in handy for your project as well.

    A little made-in-the-USA miniatures one-man cottage factory called Eccentric Miniatures makes and sells some great little injection-molded medieval knight kits and bits in a smallish (25mm-28mm) scale; some of the figures look a bit small compared to standard heroic-scale  fantasy miniatures, but the weapons sprues are full of small swords, hand-axes, shields, and maces that make for great weapons-swaps onto the halflings!  The heads from the knights and archers kits look pretty good on Halfling bodies, too, and the archer accessories (daggers, hatchets, quivers, bucklers, napsacks, and maybe the longbows) will work great with Halflings as well.  I think some of the maces and other bits might look good in a Persianized halfling army, and you might also want to check out the siege crossbows made by the same company - I think they might look brilliant in a Persianized halfling army (or any 28mm fantasy, Roman, Dark Ages, or Renaissance army for that matter!)

    Mantic has recently released some hard plastic halfling sets that look like they might mix well with WA's halflings; most of these have boots, helmets, and breastplate armor, which might work well for more heavily armored halflings; I think the weapons and top-hats and other heads look like they'd look great on rank-and-file halfling militia.

    Check out Reaper Bones plastic halfling miniatures, especially those sculpted by Bobby Jackson, for "hero" characters - these mostly have a traditional Tolkienesque look and feel to them, but it wouldn't be difficult to adapt most of them into rogues, leaders, and the like in a halfling army - they'll take head-swaps with Persians and Afghans pretty well, I think.

    You might be able to get some use out of some 1/72 scale Napoleonic or American Civil War artillary, which would be small for 28mm human characters, but right at home with a Persianized halfling artillary team.  Redbox makes a 1/72 16th-17th century Ottoman artillary set that should include some great guns, and the halfling-high figures might be a bit slender compared to halflings, but might include some great accessories to equip your halfling artillarists with.

    Between the Persian influence and David's halfling war balloons, I'm starting to get a real Adventures of Baron Munchausen vibe off of this project!  Sounds like it would be a blast!


  • @Yronimos Whateley thanks for the advice! I'm trying to build a Kings of War army that has both Humans and Halflings, so it'll be interesting to see how it turns out! 


  • @Miyuso you can get a pretty decent Rhordia army for KoW out of the WA range and a bit of kitbashing. 

    The Irish kit is great for lighter troops/peasants/berserkers, Romans for heavier infantry, persians for gunners or swordsmen.

    Mate used the spiders as basis for Large Cavalry and gripping beast, fireforge or oathmark have a variety of cavalry that all work well with the WA stuff


  • Thread necromancy - rise, rise from the grave! 

    It's been a copule years since I started on it, then shelved it for a while, but I dug out my box of souped-up Doom/Quake stuff and gave a few of the figures a little paint, starting with the Arachnotron Spider Masterminds, and a few (work-in-progress) Colonial Marines to go with an APC I cooked up from a model tank kit and some assorted "scratch" and "greeblies" from my bits-boxes::

    The Marines, their vehicle and other equipment will probably do multiple duties in various projects I'm half-heartedly working off and on with, including a G.I. Joe style skirmish game - I've got some sentry guns, self-propelled artillary drones, and a few other gizmos like that cooked up as well, along with some Iron Core guys armed with Kalashnikovs and half-painted along with with a mostly finished armored car - all in blue - to serve as C.O.B.R.A. terrorists.

    I have a few dozen models unpainted in a shoebox, mostly converted and waiting to be painted up as DOOM/Quake baddies, if I can overcome a little trouble getting the inertia to finish anything the last couple years.


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