Converting
Centaurs
Centaurs and warhammer
Centaurs always fascinated me. Imagining the roar from a mob of stampeding hooves advancing towards a pike line will scare anyone. Add a hail of arrows to it and you’ll be running for sure. And even then you’ll be caught up and stabbed in the back by their spears. These guys were what I wanted to add to my beastmen army.
In Warhammer there are, at this moment, only three ways to include centaurs in your army. You have the bull centaurs in the chaos dwarves army, the dragon ogres in the beasts of chaos army and ….. the possibility to convert an existing unit into centaurs adding to the uniqueness of your armies.
Converting & cooking
A converted unit is not difficult to make. It is just like cooking; add something of yourself to a normal recipe, and you have your own very special food invented.
Even a small change adds something special to your models that make people remember them. A good colour scheme does wonders, especially when it is worked out through your whole army. A theme for your banners also makes a nice touch. But a real conversion is the supreme change. I added some putty on the backs of some wolfs. Now they look very scary, a bit like hyenas. All my elven steeds have a little horn added on their head. It makes them look more like the fairy creatures they should be.
Centaurs are my latest stage in developing units with a personal touch. Now I’m hoping that the beasts of chaos will contain centaurs. For the time being however, I’m using the unit with my orc army telling my opponents a story about a previous battle, where a powerful magician turned a unit of boar-boyz into horses. They never really recovered from that incident. And they will work fine in a “Greek mythology” dogs of war army.
Easy
It might seem difficult to convert a model. But it is easier than you think. Take for example a plastic regiment box. You have all the freedom to make little changes to the models. Add a bow instead of a sword. You just made your first conversion. Use a leftover head and glue it to the base of another unit. Spill some red paint over it, and you’ll see the result. Every time you can take it a little step further. Once the store I usually buy my models ran out of squigs. I needed just one, of a battle the next week. I took some clay, modelled it into a ball, and added the ends of toothpicks as it’s teeth. Without paint these conversions do not look very great, but that also counts for an unpainted plastic or metal model. And after painting, I know from experience, nobody can tell the difference between a converted model and an unconverted one. Often people ask me “where did you find this model? Is it from an older games workshop version?”.
And here the recipe for making a unit of centaurs:
Ingredients:
1) Some plastic horses. I took the elven (fast cavalry) horses, because they are one of the biggest available and do not have barding. Centaurs are creatures of nature, so they will not like using lots of barding. No ‘sissy’ high elves dresses, no super heavy chaos armour!
2) A boxed set of plastic orcs. The bodies of these guys fit perfectly on a horse’s neck. Furthermore they have this mean look, that’s great for a centaur.
3) Some kind of putty.
Cooking time:
It’s take some weeks to get the best result.
Method:
First I glued the horse bodies together and removed the saddles with a sharp knife. No man-thing is going to ride on MY back!. (Unless he’s dead of course. Hmmm…. this directly gave me the idea of giving one of the centaurs a dead body to carry with him.)
To add some variety I changed the position of the front legs of a few of the horses to give the impression they are jumping.
After that I added the Orc bodies. Some putty was needed to get a smooth connection between the horse body and the orc body.
The orcs wear some cool clothes, so I decided to leave these as they were. To avoid them looking like a very famous duck that only wears a jacket but no trousers some work was put in the designing of chain mail around the front legs of the horse. The secret to chain mail is using some old stockings. They have the perfect structure for chain mail. At first is looks silly, but after painting them …. Woow!
Then I added the heads. The position of the body was fixed so I didn’t run the risk of gluing the heads at the wrong angle. Some of the centaurs are fitted with a horse head to emphasize the fact that they are horse-people and many of the orc heads got a punk-like haircut resembling the manes of a horse. The occasional moustache or beard adds to the personality.
Next the arms in the right position and things begin to look good. The backs of the horses are ideal for carrying bags and weapons. I have kept lots of swords, bows and other stuff from other plastic regiment boxes. They come in handy now.
I painted the horses in many different colours with a few white marks on the legs and noses using a book about horses as a guide. The arms and heads of the orcs slowly change into flesh colours. This makes the models look more like a human upper part, and still makes the change between horse and man go smoothly. After putting on the basis colours I finished with some highlighting and inking to let the details stand out.
The bases are covered with lots grass, sand, pieces of wood and other stuff. A completely covered base makes your models stand out so much better and is so very ease to do!
Dwarven Airship
This ship is made out of balsa wood. The canon, anchor and propellor are modelship tools. The balloon is made out of 6 polyester balls covered with....toiletpaper.
Orc
Warboss on a Bison
I stole a Playmobil toy from my 2.5 year old son, and made it into an impressive steed for an Orc Warboss.
I hope this little article helps more people take up the challenge to convert their armies. After all it’s a “fantasy” wargame we play. So use your imagination and go wild!
