Minotaur conversion wip

I am at the stage where I am hating this beastie and feel tempted to smash him. However, I find that sticking with an idea, at least to the point where it counts as having tried it out, is best when doing extensive conversion. After all, these things are not meant to fit together.

Head is gw. The rest parts unknown.

Chaos Dwarf Team IX

Sometimes it can be frustrating to sit there wondering "What IS that bit?" when you see cool miniatures on pages.

I do not generally mind sharing my recipes, but I am prone to faulty memory in old age, and I don't label my bits with some sort of elaborate system. So there may be times when I am stumped as to where I got something, and people can just correct me or help me with that if they feel up to the task.

Here we go:

Hobgoblins.
Mantic ghoul bodies. Trimmed spikes off, warped some by bending their limbs.
Heads from GW goblins and gretchins.
GW ork pads.

Chaos dwarves.
Avatars of War berserker bodies, arms and hands. A few beards (head removed).
GW chaos marauder pads.
GW chaos warrior and chaos knight heads.
GW skaven claw hands.

Bull centaurs.
Mantic Abyssal Half-breed bodies.
Avatars of War berserker arms.
GW marauder torso.
GW marauder torso pads.
GW chaos warrior/knight heads.
GW skaven claw hand.

I'll leave the mino out for now. Subject to change.

A few words of advice for those thinking of walking this dark path in my footsteps.

1. Prepare to fil a lot of gaps in the mantic bulls. They were shite to be honest. The detail is poor on the front, the halves seemed slightly warped too. Don't discover something like this when you've smeared glue on. I may even add some details to them (skulls, maybe those bags of severed heads that all sorts of villainous miniatures carry these days). I like the sculpt a lot, but the quality of the casting is as poor as one might fear with plastic.

2. Don't bother sculpting anything on dwarf or bull centaur torsos. Cover it with beard. I sculpted lovely fat bellies on my bull centaurs, so they'd fit the bull body more snuggly, and no one will ever be able to see that. Wasted effort.

3. Hobgoblins could be done with other goblin heads, obviously. I chose to keep mine similar looking by using a limited range of heads that I had left over. In other news: Goblin heads are frigging huge. Gnobblar heads were a possibility, but I stuck to my original idea.

4. Skaven hands. Some may not like them. I convinced myself, but they are of course totally frivolous.

5. Pin the heads, pinhead. Especially the chaos knight heads CAN get knocked off otherwise if you drop your miniature. Which I did. A few times.

Cost: 3 (relatively high, many boxes involved, lots left over)
Complexity: 2 (it was easy, sculpting beards is not that hard)
Satisfaction: 4 (works well if you ask me)

I may change that "complexity" score, if I include the mino I am sculpting now. The current choice was just a weapon snip job.

Chaos Dwarf Team VIII

Group photo of the lads.

I am quite pleased. Normally I would make chaos dwarves or dwarves a bit stockier, especially with halflings getting bigger and bigger, but I am not unhappy with this built.

Working on another minotaur just to test my skills a little and use up some odd bits.

Chaos Dwarf Team VII

Last hobgobs are done. Need a little trimming, but more or less ready to go.

No identical players, mantic ghouls with gw heads.

Thoughts about minotaurs

Even though I have padded him up for Blood Bowl, I am not sure about that mino. I think it's a great miniature, even if he does stretch his arms out in a way that... Well, he'll require a counter to go down.

I am toying with the idea of building a better one. It may just be my ego demanding that I have a more unique mino, seeing as it is always going to be a focal point, but still. The motive doesn't seem all that important if it produces a cool big guy, so I may take a look at what I have in terms of parts.

Hobgobs are nearly alle done. Pictures later.

Chaos Dwarf Team VI

Mess with the bull, you get the horns...

Dwarf for comparison. Mino obviously needs a bigger base and some pads. Maybe a breathmint too.

Chaos Dwarf Team V

Minotaurs. Here are two wildly different ones. It would wrong to say that either fits the team, but which is less of a missfit?

I did consider making some little alterations to make either share SOME feature with its team mates. It seems a sure way to make oneself one retarded mini though. A beard? A chaos helmet? No one wins here, I fear.

Also here is the last dwarf. He drinks, he tackles. We all have friends like that.

Colour schemes

As anybody who knows me will attest... I start new projects all the time and rarely finish the last ten percent or so.

But if I do paint these chaos dwarves, what colour(s) should I then pick?

Suggest.

Chaos Dwarf Team IV

Just some more pics of the two bull centaurs.

Chaos Dwarf Team III

Here are the bull centaurs. These are notoriously difficult to find in decent sculpts or sizes, imo.

Mine are not so bullish. Their horns are really just part of their helmets. Some of the dwarves on foot even have bigger horns on their helmets! Well boohoo. I like them because they fit in with the others and fit a standard base.

Chaos Dwarf Team II

Here are the actual chaos dwarves. Are they still called blockers? They look like they block a lot and listen to Black Sabbath. Or at least that was the idea and what inspired me.

I do not like chaos dwarves with big hats. I don't hate people who do, but it's not for me. I like the whole "tainted by chaos" which I believe was the original idea (kinda like humans, only with dwarves. Pretty basic.)... I am not a big fan of the "big tusks in my lower jaw, a love for bulls, braided beards and bright colours". How does that not end up somewhat ridiculous?

I like the whole "binding daemons into machines" thing, but I also like the faceless, menacing helmets, hint of barbarian and more utilitarian fashion styles. I for one would never play a kind of football with a hat like a giant onion on my head.

There's only five here. One little guy was having his beard groomed still.

 



Here are some with braided beards. It's not that element I hate about the big hat dwarves specifically. Maybe it's when it goes with the big hats.



Chaos Dwarf Team I

First up a chaos dwarf project. It is not created for any specific purpose, and I do not particularly plan to play these for anything either.

I find that while there are a few decent chaos dwarves available, there are some atrociously poor hobgoblins on offer. Smurf hats, weird "look at me dancing"-poses, strange sizes... I have seen interesting conversions too, but just because hobgobs are sneaky, they shouldn't be "bigger night goblins" as far as I am concerned. So I am going with a sort of... Sneaky mongoloid. Who LIKES hobgoblins anyway? Spikes on the body have since been trimmed. WTF were they anyway?

 

First two hobgoblins are done, and I have the bits for the rest. I think…
The dwarves are sculpted, but need hands and pads.

Bull centaurs… have bits and ideas.

Minotaur. Needs pads.