2 replies to this topic

[Grumbling Nickelbeard]

Hello!

 

I'm in that rather unenviable position of waiting for some kits to arrive (it'll be a long while yet, I'm quite remote) and trying to plan just what to do with them without seeing the sprues in person is a little frustrating. So I thought I'd reach out here not just for general conversion advice, but also to see if I might be lucky enough to find someone with some experience with the kits in question.

 

A bit of brief background: I'm building the core of my army around GW's latest Ironbreakers/Irondrakes and Longbeards/hammers kits which (considering I want to build 30, 20, 30 and 30 of each unit) are looking pricier than a gromril anvil. I need to find a way to save some money and, in light of Avatars of War's recent 25% sale, I got ordered some Kings Guard. Since I'm building my Hammerers entirely from the GW models, I will have a ton of Great Weapons and other Longbeards bitz by the bucketful. I'd have preferred to buy Ironshields but they shan't be available for a long while.

 

So here's what's stumping me: I have no idea what the Kings Guard sprue looks like. As far as I know, it's a plastic kit now (converted over from resin) but I don't know which parts are loose; are the arms, heads, etc separate on the sprue or do bodies come as a single cast?

 

This is somewhat important because I want to make two changes: first - the beards are much too short on the default heads, so I'd like to try for a head swap with the plastic Longbeards heads I'll have, or I'll have to do some greenstuffing. Second, I need to change their armament from hammers to great weapons; will the great weapon arms for Longbeards fit on these models? Can I convert them to get the arms to fit? Or am I going to have to cut the heads off of the hammers and replace them with axeheads?

 

Any advice would be most appreciated!

[Helblindi]

I have never seen the Kingsguard up close, but I've assembled AoW Berserkers and Quarrellers. In those kits, legs are separate from torso, and arms are also separate. The heads were separate from the torsos in the berserker box, but in the quarrellers, the were cast as a single part.

 

As for compatibility: AoW arms have a much flatter contact area as opposed to the GW ball and socket, so you'll have to do some cutting, but should be fine for the arms. For the heads, you need to keep in mind that the hammerer and longbeard heads are modelled to turn a bit to the left shoulder, and they fit perfectly on the shape of the intended torso armour. So that's gonna be an awkward fit, but if you're good with greenstuff, that might work.

Cutting off hammer heads and replacing them with axe heads seems possible, looking at the models. Maybe you'll need to do some pinning.

 

Finally, get some superglue. I love plastic glue on GW plastics, but they never work (in my experience) on non-GW plastic.

 

Good luck, and show us what you've come up with!

[Slembo]

the heads and the upper bodies are not separated in the aow kingsguard unfortunately. Mostly there are two loose arms with no hands that has to be attached to the hands grasping the weapon. On some of the models there is a clear indentation through the beard where the hammer handle should rest or it will look just weird, but there really is no choice as the beards are often bulkier than the short arms and get in the way. It was pure hell to put these little buggers together as I needed to glue and hold both shoulders and the weapon part fixed while the super glue cured, which of course took forever. Also you have to be really careful and check all miniatures beforehand to see which arms and weapons fit for that particular models and also have in mind that they are a pain to rank up. Besides that, in the end they are really good looking miniatures and a most impressive kingsguard or hammerer unit. They do not come on a sprue, all the parts are separated in little plastic bags already cut from the sprue for you so the package is just a little bigger than a DVDcase.

Edited by Slembo, 19 November 2017 - 10:35 AM.