Wednesday, June 19, 2013

Warhammer skinks as 1/72 lizardmen

Update: see painted lizardmen here!

I've been working on building and basing some Warhammer skinks and other lizardmen to use as 1/72 scale lizardmen. This isn't a new idea: Kris mentions it in his blog post on 1/72 scale gaming, as does Ron at his 1/72 fantasy blog (both are great inspirations for this project of mine, so thanks guys!). I've taken the idea a bit further and started making a whole squad of cold-blooded RPG antagonists.

These archers are from the 1996 edition of Warhammer. They can still be found for pretty cheap on eBay if you're patient. To their left is a Klak the kobold sorcerer figure from the Castle Ravenloft board game, here fitting right in with the 1/72 lizardmen crowd.

Some newer Warhammer minis; these are mostly Stegadon riders I got from Hoard o Bits. These are about the right size, but the hands and weapons are off, especially the shaman figure's totem. There's not much we can do about the hands, but we can fix the weapons.

I just used some leftover Italeri Barbarian spears. For the totem, I used some decapitated skulls from Caesar Miniatures undead set and some feathers taken from the original totem.

Here are the new spears. I just removed all or part of the original weapons, drilled holes with a pin vice, and inserted the new spear. The shafts of the original and replacement spears are about the same size, but the spearheads look like they are in the same scale as Sven, now that they are not the size of Sven's head.

These big guys are saurus warriors from the older Warhammer edition. They work well as large 1/72 bruisers, but I decided they ought to be wielding the same quasi-Aztec macuahuitl as the newer figures instead of their original scythe-like weapons.

Luckily I had a few large macuahuitl bits left over. I kept part of the bits' arms attached and carved them to a point, then drilled a hole in the saurus' hand, filled with glue, and pushed the new weapon into place.
I could do a whole tutorial on how I based these, but I'll spare you and keep it quick: I just glued some styrene disks to the washer, put pins in the miniatures feet, drilled holes in the base to match, and effectively pinned the base and miniature together, along with some superglue.

I'll paint these up in the next month, if I don't get distracted by something else.


4 comments:

  1. They certainly fit scale wise. I´ve just had a read of your arcane legions post...quite a lot of the figs look better than I realised.

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    1. Thanks Paul! Yep, some of those Arcane Legions figures are among my favorites, especially when repainted.

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  2. Look sweet! I've been looking for a decent 20mm solution for lizardmen for ages! You sir are a genius. (love the zombie tutorial too!)

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    1. *blushes* Thanks! Like I said, Kris and Ron had the basic idea first; I just ran with it. The idea for the zombies was all me, though :).

      Hopefully the lizarddudes will be painted within a couple week. These WH figures, especially the newer ones, have lots of little details that are kind of fun but time-consuming to paint.

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