gamegrene.com

On to outfitting a tiny little crossbow, as promised last time. In this case, I was lucky enough to have a nicely-sculpted hand crossbow to work with. However, an empty bow doesn't look quite as menacing as a loaded one, so I decided to give the little guy some ammo.

I started out by cutting the bolt shaft from a piece of polystyrene rod. Hobby shops (those dedicated more to train sets and RC cars) often carry small bags of them for reasonably cheap. I lucked into having some on hand that just fit into the slot sculpted on the bow. I eyeballed the length and trimmed it down carefully with a razor. Because I was feeling particularly devoted to detail, I notched in a little slit for the fletching and a little tiny nock at the back. I put a bit of Zap-A-Gap into place in the groove and gently placed the shaft.

When the glue had dried, I decided the crossbow needed a string as well. I wound a bit of extremely thin-gauge wire (picked up in the crafts section of one of the big stores) three or four times around one arm of the crossbow, strung it carefully through the nock, and again three or four times around the other arm, trying to keep things symmetrical. After a bit of tweaking, it looked fine. I dabbed a bit of Zap-A-Gap onto the contact points.

When the bow was strung, I added in the fletching. I cut out a tiny little piece of computer paper using a razor and once again dabbed a bit of Zap onto the join area. (I don't have any affiliation with the company; it's just good stuff.) I tweezed the fletching into position and once again let everything set up.

I thought I was done, but realized the whole thing was pointless (in the purely literal sense). The Marksman needed something that looked mean and barbed and unpleasant. Something like a fishhook. With a little judicious application of clippers, tweezers, and glue, I got my hook-point off the hook and onto the bolt.

I don't often game with my Mordheim gang, but this setup held together pretty well through a Demonless trip to Games Day in Baltimore and back (from central Pennsylvania) and then to a more successful outing at Origins. Alas, sometime on the trip back, my impromptu packing material snagged the hook and yanked it off.

Another outing with the bits box and some plastic rod produced Old Stickleskull, the spiny skeleton. I began by assembling the body from the GW Skeletal Regiment boxed set. I'd already made a couple skeletons in various odd poses, and I figured this one should be no different. Well, a bit different. I gave him an extra flail (using more or less the same techniques outlined in "Convert Or Be Darned To Heck #4") and then started drilling.

A set of tiny drill bits is a handy thing for the modeler to have. I picked mine up on the cheap at a flea market, but a likely online source would be Micro-Mark. They were fairly new at the time of this conversion, and I was itching to drill something.

I put in as many holes as I could stand, then glued in plastic rod using liquid styrene cement. Had I really been thinking things through, I might have used something more solid. Some of the spines on the back broke off as this guy rolled around in plastic bits limbo for quite some time. (I tried to work it into the story of the miniature, but it still looks half-assed.) Had I really really been thinking things through, I might have scratched in little tiny cracks around the rods. I should have sharpened them as well - they were envisioned as power sources or some such, but I've since been told that's not as cool as big mean spikes. Oh well, ideas for the next one.

The little guy on the base is a toothpick idol, more drill experimentation. I swear he looks better in person.

So why bother to do all this? A couple reasons come to mind:

One is the charge I get when people are interested. Comments like "You're so creative/imaginative/disturbing" push me further along in the hobby.

Another is pure-d difference. It's nice having unique stuff.

But both of these reasons play into a bigger one - this sort of conversion engenders still more creativity. Each of these pieces tells a story. I began with an idea in my head for the Marksman: he'd have a crossbow and a sword, and would look menacing and maybe a little cleaner than my other Mordheim pieces. I built the miniature around that image, then in turn the completed project gave me new ideas as to his character: a bit foppish and a little snobby. Brief, but not bad for a formerly stat-driven skirmish game piece.

Same goes for Old Stickleskull. I started out bored at the in-laws and ended up with a new and dangerous RPG nemesis, one of the Brown Bone Lords (the original idea for which came from an unmodified mini).

A common criticism I hear of miniatures in gaming is they stifle creativity. For me, they expand rather than limit gaming possibilities. And conversions open things up even further.