The Next More Miniature Conversions

I'm having a thought that I should turn "More Miniature Conversions" into a thing, and keep the trend going, sticking something different before it from now on. When my wife and I were first courting, we kept a "Wednesday" thing going on in our email subjects for quite awhile, so I have some faith in my ability (likely with her help) to keep it going for awhile. heh.

Anyway, in my last post I said that I'd post up the other miniature conversions I was working on, so here they are:

First up... The Pixies.

These are "Wasp" minis from Heroclix, repainted and rebased. The paint job isn't the greatest on these, for sure. They definitely need some touching up. The funny thing about these is that they are normal medium-sized minis, compared to D&D minis... so those are some pretty big pixies. heh. I used them in my last episode of D&D Encounters, and just told the players "This is what you'd see if you had a magnifying glass." :)

The funnier thing about it, is that I could have bought the same minis from a different set of Heroclix, and they would have been smaller. I actually am not sure how I missed that. I ordered a few of those this week, so I'll do the conversion on them too.

Next up... more Boggles.

These are pretty rough too, honestly, but good enough for now. They're rebased and repainted Mage Knight Squalid Gremlins. I hope to get a chance to clean them up a bit before they're needed.

Next... Xivorts.

In the Monster Manual 3 and the text of the Beyond the Crystal Cave module, Xivorts are blue-skinned goblins. So, I grabbed the Goblin Cutter minis from my copy of The Legend of Drizzt boardgame, primered and painted them up. Here's a sample:

Last, but not least...

In the regular Every-2nd-Saturday game I play in, we are the crew of an Astral Privateer Ship, and a member of our crew is Whizbang Whirclank, a modron. They don't make modron minis, so I thought I'd make one myself.

I made Whizbang by cutting up a Kythren mini from Mage Knight Sorcery, and combining it with the wings from another mini (who's name I cannot currently remember). A quick brush of Tin Bits paint, and some yellow for his eye, and he was done. This is probably my favorite mini conversion so far, and it was done mostly by the seat of my pants.

More Miniature Conversions

It's been awhile since I posted anything new.

I've been running the last three seasons of D&D Encounters, which has been a lot of fun. One of the challenges of the games has been coming up with miniatures for all the opponents the PCs encounter.

In the season before last, Dark Legacy of Evard, there were a few monsters that didn't have miniatures available, such as the medium-sized spider swarms, and there were others that required rare miniatures from older sets, which would have been a little expensive. So, I ended up making a few, and I turned to other existing sources for the others: The Castle Ravenloft boardgame, Mage Knight, Heroscape, and Horrorclix.

The ones I made:

The Spider Swarms

For these, I used some mold-making putty, pressed a Rot Scarab Swarm miniature into the surface until the bottom of the miniature was flush with the putty, and waited for it to set. I then pressed black clay into the mold, and baked the results. A quick brush of grey paint across it, and they were done, at least for the quick job I was doing (I was on my way out to the session at the time).

The Castle Ravenloft figures:

Deathjump Spiders, Frenzied Werewolf and Fell Court Ruffians.

I bought these from Auggie's Games*, who has taken apart several copies of the D&D boardgames, and is selling the pieces individually. I took a little longer to paint these, to make them look like the official miniatures.

The Horrorclix and Mage Knight figures:

Zombies and a Ghoul

These are Pod zombies from the Horrorclix game and a Marsh Zombie from Mage Knight. The Pod Zombies are simply rebased, but the Marsh Zombie has been rebased and repainted.

For the season after that, Lost Crown of Neverwinter, I was able to fill most of my miniature needs from the official mini sets, but there were a few that I used from the Castle Ravenloft and Wrath of Ashardalon boardgames, and from the Monsterpocalypse game.

The Castle Ravenloft figures:

Blazing Skeletons

These were already transparent blue, so all I did was paint the skeleton itself and the base with Chaos Black paint, and add some Red Ink to the fireball in its hands.

The Wrath of Ashardalon figure:

Seldra, the False Heir

This figure I'm fairly proud of, but my success with it is mostly just a fluke. It's a Keyleth figure from Wrath of Ashardalon, which comes in medium blue plastic. I originally just bought it because I liked the miniature, but my initial paint job wasn't very good. I soaked it in water for a day, then scrubbed the paint and primer off, and started over again. This was my first attempt at using inks on a figure. Diluted blue ink worked out very well for accenting the plates of her armor, but what worked out the best was her hair. I'd painted it a light yellow color, and was accenting it with a drybrush of orange, and it started to look really bad. As an experiment, I picked up some Chestnut Ink and just brushed it on undiluted. The result looked really good. So, I don't take any credit for how it turned out, but I'm really happy with how it turned out. heh.

The Monsterpocalypse figures:

Kraken Tentacles

These are from the Monsterpocalypse figure Ultra Ancient Asheroth. I found four of them on eBay, and I found the other four by lucking out on a discounted Monsterpocalypse "All Your Base" booster pack. I didn't do anything with them except to rebase them, but they worked out really well.

I needed one more set of tentacles, though, since I was supplying miniatures for both Encounters tables at the store I play at. So, I dug into my supplies and found I had one of these:

Which I then turned into this:

I didn't use the body for anything, but the tentacles saw duty at the other table.

This newest season of Encounters features a lot of fey creatures, and there aren't any D&D miniatures for them. Pixies, Xivorts, Boggles, Nymphs, and a medium-sized, horned, winged devil. I decided to use Will-o'-Wisps for Pixies (for now), and goblin minis stood in for Xivorts well enough, but there wasn't anything I could find that really fit with what Boggles look like. Not until I located the Gremlin figure from Horrorclix.

That's him on the left, and my repainted, rebased figures on the right:

Boggles

That's all I have done at the moment, but I'll have others done soon, and I'll post them up as well.

*I highly recommend Auggie's Games for your miniature needs. He has great prices and exceptional customer service. He's also on eBay.