Another kitbash

I began another small Blood Bowl kitbash/conversion project this week.

It’s not finished, but in the interests of getting some writing on this blog, I thought I’d share the work-in-progress on another Blood Bowl conversion I’ve started.

Just as with my Averon Stormsire kitbash, this one was triggered by ending up with multiples of the same miniature and feeling happy enough if I lost one in a failed attempt at kitbashing. Another Stormcast Eternal, this time it's the turn of the Knight Arcanum. 

This is a model that I first got through the Stormbringer partworks magazine — I’ve found it an excellent source of cheap minis — and had already picked up a second copy to build with the alternate head. This week though, I chanced on a real ebay bargain and ended up with two more.

The Celestial Spear

I had been on the lookout for an Yndrasta mini for a while, which is annoyingly only sold as part of quite expensive sets: the £77.50 Thunderstrike Command, the £87.50 Spearhead: Stormcast Eternals and previously in the huge Dominion set. I don’t need the other minis in those sets, so had held off until coming across an ebay auction for the Stormcast half of Dominion plus some other bits and bobs.

Astonishingly (to me), I was the only one to bid and so I got it for the starting price of £36!

Yndrasta, the Celestial Spear acquired, I now had a bunch of other minis too — effectively for free. And in among the Dominion set is a Knight Arcanum. Even better, the seller had two of them in the sale: one built and one still on-sprue.

Moar Stormcast Blood Bowl

Sifting through the box once it arrived, the right arm had popped off the built Knight Arcanum (it’s a push-fit model) and retrieving it, the open hand triggered a thought. Hands are one of the main issues converting non-Blood Bowl models to Blood Bowl players: they're usually holding weapons.

So even one open hand is now enough to have me quickly wonder whether a model might work in Blood Bowl.

With 4 copies now in my possession, it felt pretty safe to give this one a go. The Knight Arcanum is a slighter figure than many Stormcast, so she’s not quite so obviously huge compared to Human players (there’s still a clear size difference, but I’m fine with it) and the pose looked like it should work well.

The kitbash

The already-built mini in my ebay haul thankfully hadn’t been glued together, so I decided to work with that one.

First up, I cut away the sword from the tasset: not an easy job and not an overly pretty result. Next, I removed the book hanging from the waist on the other side. As this is a push-fit piece, it left a pretty gaping hole in the model that I would need to deal with.

The staff doesn’t make sense for a Blood Bowl player, so that needed to come off too. I contemplated sourcing another left hand properly without a weapon but in the end decided to give it a go just cutting away the staff and trying to make the hand look at natural as possible, banking on it not looking too bad once painted. The angle at the elbow though was too clearly in position for holding a staff, so I carefully cut the forearm away, removed some of the elbow to make a shallower angle and then reattached the forearm again.

The difficult lower half

With those changes made, I could get a sense for the model as a Blood Bowl player. Overall it was looking decent, but the legs were a bit of a mess. The hole on the right thigh was a problem and the scruffy tasset on the right wasn’t great.

I also wasn’t sure about keeping the robe. It doesn’t scream ‘sports star’, although I did like it on the Stormsire model. For a little while I contemplated swapping out the legs entirely before deciding that could be an attempt for another day.

Instead, I needed to tidy up the legs as they were and in time-honoured lazy fashion, I bodged it. I found a couple of pouch-type items from other models and used them to cover over the gap and the messier side of the tasset where the sword used to hang.

Basing

Next up, basing. The Knight Arcanum comes with a moulded base piece: some ruined paving that slopes gently forward. As with the previous conversions, I wanted to make sure this ended up on a 32mm base to match other players rather than the huge 40mm base Stormcast usually come on.

The moulded floor piece could sit on a 32mm base, overhanging slightly but nothing too extreme. Setting it all up though, it didn’t feel like it would fit with my other human Blood Bowl players.

Adding movement

What I did like was the idea of raising the model a bit to give a bit more dynamism to the pose. Here I worked through a few options with trial-and-error, and I wish I’d taken photos along the way to share the process.

I thought I’d try to construct a rock or two for her to be pushing off from and cut out a section of old sprue frame with a few angles sprouting from it, including a cylindrical post sticking out from the middle. This I drilled a hole in to match the push-fit peg on the models right foot, so the model could be anchored to the base.

With some judicious clipping and scraping to the sprue, it began to look less like manufactured plastic and vaguely more rocky outcrop-/ruin-like.

The pose of the model doesn’t carry all that much forward momentum though and especially pushing off from its right foot felt wrong.

A different approach

By this time I had already glued the ‘rocks’ to the base and drilled a hole for the foot peg. I decided to leave that be for the time-being while I rethought the overall pose.

With my first set of Vindictors, I hadn’t been happy with the positioning of one of the more dynamic models: a male Vindictor charging forward with spear thrust forward. The model and pose are great, but the mini has one of those hex pegs to fit in the base where each move is a 60° angle change.

After playing around with it, I found that rotating so the trailing leg actually hung off the back of the base opened the whole model up: the trailing foot was no longer on the ground but was in air to show movement, while the model being right on the edge of the base left the space he’s charging into clearer visually.

Doing something similar with the Knight Arcanum began to feel right.

Shifting so she was pushing off the left rather than right foot helped, but the model is still designed to be standing still rather than in motion. Using one of the foot pegs I had clipped off earlier, I cut a shallow angle across it to create a tiny platform that would angle the character forward and suddenly it looked way more like someone playing a sport.

Now, this is still far from ideal. The model isn’t meant to be running and that is kind of obvious when you look this closely, but my hope is that once painted it won’t be obvious on the tabletop.

I did consider trying to swap the feet for those from another Vindictor model that’s running, to get the correct bend at the toes, but again decided for simplicity this time through. Once I’ve painted and fully based it up with some grass, it shouldn’t look too bad.

Ball holder

As you may have noticed from the images above, I still made use of my scruffy ‘rocks’ that were originally a platform for the character itself. Blood Bowl bases usually have a hole at one edge so you can peg in a ball model when that character is carrying the ball in a game.

I had used a standard 32mm base as the BB versions also have a slot that I didn’t want to have to fill in. Now that I wasn’t using the mount for the character though, it looked kinda cool as a holder for the ball. The pegs are a little wider for the ball models but a quick swap to a larger drill bit quickly solved that problem. 

This was a nice bit of serendipity and shows that sometimes just playing around without a strict plan can open up new ideas.

Next steps

The conversion is just about done now, bar a few details, so next is to get it painted up. I’ll have to decide on a colour scheme which usually holds me up for a good while.

With this one banked, I think I might also have a go at a more full-on kitbash with another of the spare models: swap some properly-dynamic feet or perhaps swap out the legs entirely and cut away the tall armour collar to expose that cool head a bit more.

Time will tell whether I get around to that.