Assault Parties (take 3)
On one of the rare occasions that I visit Facebook I was perusing the Victory Without Quarter page, and saw some beautiful 28mm storming party figures. In amongst the pictures were three figures carrying a ladder. Obviously a storming party needs ladders, but I don't have any! An idea germinated...
Could I make a ladder party? Where any figures suitable to chopped and changed into what I wanted. I've got some ladders tucked into a corner of my Château Hougomont model, might have some spares somewhere.
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The 'raw materials' |
Couldn't find any ladders, they were from Magister Militum, who have now shut up shop. So no more available from that source, PP make a pack, but I didn't really want to spend the best part of £10 on just a pack of ladders (the £4.50 post and packing charge deterring me from placing an order). So two were recovered from Hougomont (nobody will miss them, I'm sure)
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The Scots pikeman: before (l) and after(r), obviously still needs a head |
The pikeman was easy enough. Cleaned up, he was decapitated, and his drawn sword removed. His right arm was moulded to his body, so I carefully cut between arm and body. Gentle cleaning of the cut with a fine X-Acto blade separated the arm from the body, an even gentler twist with pliers brought his elbow and forearm out and up. Result! A new head was added. Then a little rounding out of things, and a sword hilt added to his scabbard with greenstuff. He also needed a bag adding as he has a cross belt that doesn't go anywhere, it has nothing hanging from it at all.
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The standard bearer: before (l) and after(r), obviously still needs a head |
The standard bearer was clearly going to be a tougher nut to crack. Decapitated and his flag pole removed. Then drastic measures. His right arm was cut off completely at the shoulder, cleaned up and a flat face cut to allow me to glue it into the position I wanted. I was going to pin the arm in place, but as I will need to fill in some pretty large gaps with greenstuff, I thought the greenstuff would hold everything in place once set.
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Varnish looks a bit too shiny, might need redoing |
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Parliament's ladder |
If you think I am making this look easy, it wasn't. This is the edited version. The pikeman was easy enough, and the first standard bearer went smoothly. But then I took a break, thankfully I had a number of the standard bearers in my spares box. Second finished standard bearer not as good as the first, but once the ladder is in place he looks better.
In a bout of procrastination/task avoidance* (delete as appropriate) I was looking at the composition of my assault parties - 4 petard teams but only 1 ladder. That's very unbalanced. Surely I will need 4 ladder parties per army...
* I'm really dragging my feet painting Napoleonics, but W3K I jump at the chance
Excellent work.
ReplyDeleteThanks Dex
DeleteNice bit of conversion work - they will do perfctly.
ReplyDeleteThanks for your kind words Codsticker.
Delete