06/11/2018

Gladiators of Khorne

Inspiration not always comes at once. Sometimes you fiddle with some strange ideas that never come to fruition and the result you try to achieve remains on the edge of your own perception, hidden and unreachable. As all of you know, Muses can be elusive. That happened to me this time with the Khorne band for Shadespire. I wasn't able to find that touch I was looking for, just to make the band look different. Fortunately a friend pointed out the right choice and then it all was 'oh, why didn't I think of that!'

Gladiator heads by MaxMini
They suited the theme perfectly and fitted the minis, so very little conversions would be needed this time.

Minimum mandatory conversion
I took out most of the spikes. I mean, Chaos doesn't have to mean spikes everywhere. It can, and it's cool, yeah, whatever. But please, allow me the option of not having Chaos hedgehogs.
I didn't want to replace the weapons, as tempting as the idea was. Given that the game relies on individual characters, I wanted the minis to remain recognizable at first sight when consulting the cards and stuff. So no weapon swapping nor new poses.

Not all the ideas were good (remember what I told about the Muses?). I tried to make different helmets, so the five minis weren't mere clones, but it proved tricky.

Didn't find the way to make it work properly
So I finally took the easy way :P


I tried it again with the boss:


Once again, the open helmet didn't work
But remember, I do not fail, I just find different ways that won't work. If the quote is really from Edison, then a light bulb went on over my head. I remembered I had this:

From The Hobbit box
Would this work...?

Well, it works for me
The next one was hard. Not only I hollowed the helmet, but had to take the crest out:

Also sculpted the skull jaw so it was a closed helmet
On the other side, the last one was pretty easy.

No, not Chtulhu, those are chains. Chainmail, you know
Well, so now I had the five minis, time to spill some paint on them.

On their way
The pic doesn't show (you know my awesome photo skills, ahem...), but all of them have different skin tones. I also made some work on the bases. The original ones show a cracked desert, but I put some Das and used the rolling pin I used for the boards, so now the bases are consistent with that.

Let's see the final work:





Blood for the Blood God!
Just an example on the board:

Background still pending

I hope I can show pics of these and the undead sigmarites on a couple of boards... on a game! Hopefully anytime soon... (That means months, ahem, but whatever...)

28 comments:

  1. Super cool! The gladiator helmets (Thraex/Thracian style?) certainly fit the muscle bound fighters for blood and glory.

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    1. Thank you! I think they match the bodies and give a nice new interpretation of the minis. Once I new what I was going to do it all was pretty straightforward.

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  2. Gibbet cages are the best flourishes for a grim-dark diorama. The gladiators turned out brilliantly as well, with amazing green-stuff action as always! Cheers!

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    1. Thanks! I hope they show that grim looking I was aiming at. I tried to show that Chaos can exist out of mere northern barbarians too!

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  3. Very clever Suber! My boys and I have been getting into Shadespire and it's lots of fun. I've got the orcs on the painting table at the moment. Also working on a board, but sadly it will be much plainer than yours, which I just love!

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    1. Thnaks! Oh, I'd love to see your work on that :)

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  4. Wooow! Finished ones look great!!!

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    1. Thanks! Easier than I expected, once I finally decided what to do on them!

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  5. Really cool conversions.
    Badass!

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    1. Thank you! It's funny to see how the minis change with just a head swap and how the whole interpretation flips to some other thing :)

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  6. Bad ass coversions, really unique stuff!

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    1. Thanks! They were reasonably simple to do, the hardest part was to visualize the thing before starting, I wasn't sure of what were they going to look like in the end!

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  7. Oh man, great idea and execution !

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    1. Merci! They have a distinctive look, which was my main goal here. Now I'm really looking forward to playing!

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  8. Te han quedado muy bien, además también te servirán para una banda de luchadores del pozo de mordheim

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    1. Gracias, la verdad es que las cabezas han dado bastante más juego del que esperaba, y con muy poco trabajo han quedado todas diferentes, así que la verdad es que me quedo satisfecho.

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  9. They look awesome dude. Very fitting conversions!

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    1. Thanks! I think I could maybe call them the Gladiators of Publius Khornelius...? Hmmm...

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  10. Great conversion work and lovely painting!
    Best Iain

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    1. Thanks! It's a shame that the shitty pics don't show all the minis have to offer, but in the end I did enjoy working on them :)

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  11. Different, unique and such a great idea. I like your take on them, it enhances the barbarian look GW decided to give them.

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    1. Thanks! I wasn't convinced at first, it took me some time to visualize what I was trying to do, but once I begun it all came together smoothly :)

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    1. ¡Gracias! ¡Bueno, al menos he conseguido que se vean diferentes!

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  13. Latest addition looks right at home with the rest and all of them look fantastic.

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    1. Thanks! Changes are minimum, the striking poses work really fine, so almost everything would have worked on them.

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  14. I got a little chill when I saw the animal skull helmet conversion worked so well - inspired mad genius! Well done Suber-duber :D

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    1. Haha, thanks! I was pretty scared about the final result on my first take on that one, bur well, it finally worked! Phew!

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