A Converted Try

I've mentioned before that there's a role-play based reason behind my army.  It's now reached the point where I actually have an army, so it's perhaps time to address this reason and add it to my shambling horde.  This reason has a name.

Eichengard.

OK, that's a name that will mean precisely bugger all to anyone who's not Andy, Andy, Lindsay or Dan.  Eichengard is my character in Andy's WFRP campaign who, for reasons I am not yet sure we fully understand, began manifesting necromancy spontaneously.  This went on for a while, resulting in him developing an allergy to sunlight and a personality best described as "-5% to all fellowship tests".  Then various things happened to limit the worst aspects of the necromancy, then we went into spaaaaaaaaaaaaaace and the whole thing became a touch irrelevant.  (Until we returned, anyway.  God knows what's going to happen this Sunday.)

So, when it came to choosing a WFB army, I picked the undead witht he thought of having an alternate reality Eichengard leading them.  A reality where he went fully down the path of corruption and dhar.  A reality where he still had his sunlight issues and no hair, thanks to an inopportunely timed Tzeentch's curse.  Hence the "no vampires" rule I'm working with.  Eichengard also had a variety of spells for skellies, zombies and spirits, but nothing beastial, thus explaining the "no beasts" rule.

Now, as mentioned in the previous post, I've realised I could do with an extra wizard in my army.  I've had my eye on a conversion for Eichengard for a while, so now seemed like as good an opportunity as any.  The thing is, because he was never a magister character, nor really a proper necromancy, I want my Eichengard mini to represent that.  He should be Eichengard, not some wizard.  He should be wearing a frock coat and carrying pistols and a rapier, not garbed in robes with books and a staff.  So there's going to be a bit of work involved in this.  Thankfully, I found a nice starting model.

Older than I would expect a Witch Hunter to live to be.

That's an Empire Witch Hunter.  He's bastard hard and armed to the teeth.  He's also got a lot to recommend him as a base for Eichengard.  Frock coat? Check.  Pistols?  Check.  Lots of skull iconography? Check.  He's got a few problems.  For all that's a sweet hat, Eichengard was never a hat wearer.  He shouldn't have any hair either, including facial hair, and that collar is too large for my tastes.  Plus Eichengard is ambidextrous and often wields pistol and sword, which I'd like to include on my model.  So there's some cutting to be done.

Step One: Surgery

Before

The bad news is your head's going to have to come off. The good news is that you're a finecast model and thus easy to chop up.  Hack, slice, slice.  And your left arm too, I'm afraid.  Snip, slice, chop.

After.  Still a sweet hat, though.

The head I just lopped off, as there was no plausible way to remove it without damaging it.  The arm I took rather more care over, as I wanted to reuse the arm from the wrist to the shoulder.  I would have tried to keep the hand too, but I had to slice it from the holster and had to choose between keeping the gun intact or the hand.  As I have spare hands in my bits box, but no guns, the choice was obvious.

Step Two: Replacement Parts

Now I need a new head - subtype bald human - and a new hand - ideally one holding something.  Thankfully, I have a lot of zombie spares, and couple of the bits will work fine.

You can't see it, but the head is pulling a funny face.

The head goes on easily and fits like a dream.  It's even slightly oversized, which is useful as it makes the mini look like a slightly short person, which happens to fit Eichengard down to the ground.  The arm is somewhat less successful as it is at this point that I realise I need a left hand, not a right one.  Doh!  Fortunately, I have a large supply of identical left hands holding things from the zombie command sprues, of which each box of zombies provides about five for some reason.  This is just as well, as I make a hash of cutting the first one and have to have another go.  The end result is a model that looks kind of goofy at this stage.

You can see the funny face much better here. It's a side effect of using zombie bits.

Step Three: Green Stuff

There are a few things that need re-modelled here.  Firstly, a couple of bits of the arm and coat need repaired from surgery.  Then there's the much more significant job of covering Eichengard's face.  At the time that I imagine this Eichengard from having diverged from "real" Eichengard, he was wrapping his face and head in cloth to ward off the sun.  So we need face wraps - which will also cover up that silly expression.

Looks a bit like a green Santa beard.

The effect I'm going for is improvised cloth wrappings.  More through luck than judgement I somehow manage to achieve a near enough approximation of what I was aiming for.  (Thanks largely to Andy Law's excellent tip of using a wet modelling tool, which makes working with Green Stuff massively easier.)

Next we need a fencing blade.  Andy had previously joked that a rapier to scale in WFB would need to be the size of a pin.  Funny you should mention that, Andy...

Fringe swag from Hitch and Mitch's Stinky Show (3 stars).

A handy pin.

"Snip" go the pliers, "ping!" goes the pin, "bugger" goes me.  A couple of minutes searching the floor results in my finding the pin and adding it, and a dod of green stuff, to Eichengard's left hand to produce a pretty spiffy rapier.

Even more beardy, but now with pointy thing.

Then it's a case of altering the scabbard on his back to fit with Eichengard's personal equipment (it needs to look a little like either a bushel of wheat or a lady's pubes - either will do) and some smoothing of the Green Stuff on the front and he's ready to base.

Wheaty.

I don't know what it is that is "FREE", but Eichengard would like to call your attention to it.

Step Four: Dinner

I converted this from some pasta, some vegetables and some bread into a very fine roast veg lasagne with salad and garlic bread.  Yum.

Step Five: Paint

Prior to this, I've been pretty pleased with how things went.  This stage, I'm just OK with.  A better painter could have done a lot better job, but fuck it, I don't really care.

Eichengard, ready to lead the armies of the dead to ultimate victory.

That said, I like how the green and silver waistcoat came out, and the dirty wraps around his head and face worked well.  Plus, he's got an expression of slightly dismayed horror, as if he can't quite work out how he ended up leading an army of undead to conquer the Old World, which seems entirely in character for Eichengard.  (As an aside, Eichengard is the reason my army colours are green and red, as he's from the ruling family of Talabecland, whose colours are green and red.)

Previous Points Painted: 700

Eichengard (a level 2 necromancer): 100
Downgrade master necromancer to level 1 necromancer: -100

New Points Painted Total: 700 (but with more flexibility)

Ultimately, once I've got the army to support it, Eichengard will be my general and a level 4 master necromancer.  As such, he'll cost a base 200, and likely carry a few magic items to boot.  Thus, he's really worth anything from 65 points (a level 1 necromancer) to 300 (level 4 plus 100 points of magical gubbins).  Between my two wizards and my Cairn Wraith unit, I've now got a lot of flexibility building up in my non-core army.

Up next: more core units.  Goody.