MINIATURES What to do with extra Warhammer bits?

[earle]

before the recent GW price increase, i would occasionally pic up a warhammer box of plastic minis to use in my 3e d&d games. i know some people aren't fans of the hulking orcs and cartoony goblins, but i think they're a blast.

a box of, for example, night goblins ran around $20 (i think the price is $25 now), and it contained enough pieces to make 20 goblins. pretty much the same ratio for orc warband, zombies, skaven, chaos knights, etc. all in all (after a few 10% discounts here and there, and not including a few mistaken overpriced purchases) i ended up paying around $1 per mini.

now, you can find metal minis for around $1 each as well if you look hard enough, but still, i've been pretty happy with the bang i've gotten for my buck with warhammer fantasy boxes.

but i'm ALWAYS trying to find a way to get ahead, or to get a better deal.

see, each box contains just enough torsos and legs to make a set number of minis -- however, there are always extra arms, heads, shields, etc. i think i have enough heads and arms together to make about 50 more minis.

so what i'm missing, of course, are torsos and legs. i can't stand to see them lying there unused.

extra shields can be used to mark an area on the map where a pc drops his shield. the same with swords, axes, polearms, bows, etc (most of these can be carved off the plastic arm pretty easily, and with a little filing, make nice dungeon treasures or map markers).

heads and arms can make nice and gruesome remains of PREVIOUS adventurers.

but i still have the desire to turn this mass of limbs and heads into more fantasy fodder.

i picked up a bag of army men (50 for 50 cents), but they were too large, and the plastic was too tough to make modification a worthwhile project.

i could pick up some sculpey and build some torsos and arms, but i'm not sure about my sculpting skill. it would be a fun project (and that's what really matters), but i'm afraid it might end up flying in the face of my cheapass budget.

does anyone know where or if one can purchase warhammer / GW mini torsos and legs? maybe defective sets or remainders?

or perhaps a source of cheap army men or fantasy warriors that would be the right scale, so that the only real modification i would need to do is cutting off the arms and heads?

thanks -- and any ideas or opinions are welcome.

-e

 

[Mark]

I agree that those boxed sets were a pretty darned good deal. If you can get some extra mileage out of the leftover bits, that would be great!

I think the Green Stuff (sculpey) is the way to go. I've not tried it myself, and it might be quite a bit harder than I imagine, but your post has given me the inspiration to give it a shot.

You'll maybe want to consider picking up a bag of cheap bases if this is the method you decide to use. Maybe someone else has some good ideas along the line of what to use instead of regular bases, also.

I'll try to keep an eye on this thread and see what other solutions are offered but to keep in the budget, buying lots of other things, only to chop them up, doesn't seem like the way to go. *shrug*

 

[Holy Bovine]

If you live near Toronto or Baltimore wait for the GW Games Day - they have a massive bin of bits parts that you can buy by the pound (something like 50 cents a pound or less). They will allow some scrounging through it but not a whole lot (shouldn't be a big problem to get legs and torsos though).

Otherwise you can try GW Mail Order (but that would probably be too expensive for what you want).

I too have a box (actually two big boxes) of bits and pieces that i save for conversions adn such - I haven't found a cheap way to convert those extra arms and heads to full fledged minitures though.

 

[Thorntangle]

In the world of miniatures and modeling, excess pieces are the mother of invention. Sometimes excess bitz never get used, sometimes they are the basis of a new conversion or diorama.

I think you will have a hard time finding torsos to make more minis. GW doesn't sell defects, remainders or individual plastic parts off the sprue. But, you can never have too many body parts, especially for making gruesome decorations. Keep them and eventually your bitz collection will grow and then you will always have just the right piece for a conversion later on.

 

[D'karr]

Make the pieces

I'm not a sculptor, but I've tried to make torsos, heads, arms, etc. out of "green putty." I have not been very successful.

One thing I would recommend is taking one of the mini's torsos that you already have and creating a mold of it. Then you can create as many torsos as you want. I would recommend this for personal use only since most of the designs of these things is probably copyrighted.

To learn how to make molds go here.

The tutorial will teach you how to make a mold of almost anything you might want to cast.

Good luck.

 

[Wicht]

I save all my bits and use them later in conversions and for scenery. The skeleton bits are especially great for this as you can always find a place to stick an extra skull in almost any fantasy modeling project - but then again the same can be true of normal heads.

 

[Gizzard]

I think the same thought occurs to everyone who has a bunch of spare GW sprues leftover. A friend of mine is enjoys sculpting, converting and moldmaking; but I can see from his example that there is a lot of effort involved. In the end, its probably both cheaper and a lot less work to buy a second box of Goblins on sale somewhere than to try to get into moldmaking.

On the other hand, if you really want to use up those extra Goblin heads you can convert up a tribe of Goblin-Ettins.

 

[KingThorvar]

I always keep them for conversions.. if you want to get rid of them, sell them on ebay.. I always search for bits online.

 

[hellbender]

Two other sources:

GW mailorder sells sprues for most pieces. www.games-workshop.com

or, place an ad on Bartertown: www.bartertown.org


hellbender

 

[Number47]

Take a bunch of heads and embed them in putty. Instant gibbering mouther/chaos beast mini! No sculpting ability necessary!

Take the leftover arms and such and glue into a throne or something. It will look properly gruesome once painted.