The Bitz Bins

I know I mention the bins now and again.  I think most game stores have some version of the bitz bins.  People bring their unwanted bits and models into the store in exchange for credit, and the store re-sells them for a bit of profit.  The downside is it's a bit like a rummage sale and you’re working around poses, paint jobs, and leftovers.  The plus side is you’re usually getting them at a big discount.  Often 60-70% off.  Sometimes even more.

I know some people have this kind of phobia about using pre-owned models, but if you can get past that it’s possible to save a lot of money.  In the past ten years or so, here’s a few of the things I’ve found in the bitz bins of my local stores (first in San Diego, then later up here at my favorite store in Los Angeles)...

* an Eldar Avatar of Khaine—I don’t play Eldar, but I’ve always thought it would be neat to paint an Avatar like molten metal—darker on the outside, hotter closer to the core.  Kind of like the Balrog from Lord of the Rings.  He also had a Thousand Sons head in his hand, so a little glue remover and I had a spare trooper for my Thousand Sons army.  Bonus.

* three Krootoxes—a few editions back (when I had more disposable income) I had a very nice Kroot Mercenary army.  Now I just have a lot of Kroot, and the hopes that the upcoming Tau Codex will address the issue and make it a viable allied force, at least.  Still, three metal Krootoxen (Krootoxi??) were a nice bit of heavy firepower, especially at five bucks each.

* legs and torsos for about twenty-five Ork Boyz for my lovely lady, plus an unassembled Black Reach deffkopta.  If all this cost me ten bucks, I’d be amazed.

*a little over two dozen Catachans—their heads were crooked, and two or three needed their arms redone, but other than that they just needed paint.  They were put together with superglue, so on the really bad ones it just meant popping off a head or an arm, scraping it down, and then putting it back on with proper plastic glue.  I think that find cost me twenty dollars.

* a plastic Eldar Wraithlord—Again, I don’t play Eldar, but my friend Gillian does.  It was missing its weapons and posed a bit awkwardly, but other than that it was fine.  Well, it had a really awful paintjob.  She’s already salvaged it and sent it back out on the battlefield.

* parts for a solid Lizardman army – I don’t play Warhammer Fantasy, either.  I have no interest in it.  But, as I’ve mentioned before, I love the models and I have a long-time love of Lizardmen (reaching back to the Sleestak on Land of the Lost).  I found the parts to make a dozen Saurus warriors, a dozen skinks, a skink hero, an Oldblood on a cold one, a salamander, and even five of the Temple Warriors.  I just liked building and painting them.  I might do a whole post on these guys. 

* at least twenty assorted Dark Angels detail pieces for Marcus.

* a box’s worth of Bloodletters--  Alas, one had a twisted leg and two of them had one foot snapped off, so I only took home eight of them (and who wants a unit of eight Khorne demons...?).    They’ll make a great allied force for my World Eaters.  I used one of the old skeleton helmet horns and a skull to replace the missing foot on one of them.  They’re about half-painted and already itching to fight.

* probably a dozen Dark Eldar heads, arms, and detail pieces, not to mention a double-handful of the older bodies.

* a handful of Blood Angels pieces for Matt.

* parts for at least twenty zombies – These mixed with leftover Catachan parts to become a full squad of Catachan plague zombies.  Poor bastards...

* two Black Reach Space Marine captains.  One was really just the larger back half with legs and cape, but I've got a use for it.

* about fifty of the old Bretonnian bowmen, plus about two dozen detail elements from the new ones to make them pop—Even without playing it, I know enough about Fantasy to know the bowmen get mocked a lot.  I also know enough about math to know that anything is dangerous in large numbers.  Goblins, grots, Kroot, scouts, bowmen... anything.  More to the point, I just love the look of dozens and dozens of archers standing ready with their bows.

* just shy of a dozen Daemonettes.  These showed up a few at a time, usually in pieces, but I kept picking and saving them.  First it was just a few to add to my existing units.  Then it was a nice, Slaneeshi six of them.  Then nine (one with a standard).  Then eleven.  One more and I’ve got a nice group of allies for my Emperor’s Children.

* and tons and tons of bitz.  Almost anything you can imagine.  Shoulder pads, ammo pouches, canteens, purity seals, knives, daggers, bolters, holsters, sheaths, targeters, backpacks, banners, spare arms, spare heads, spare skulls, chains, spikes, tentacles, tails, wings, bases, and much, much more.

Now, don’t get me wrong.  I’m not saying your local bitz bins are going to be some kind of gold mine (again, this is ten years worth of finds), and they’re not really a place you can plan on finding something.  But for the hobbyist on a budget, it’s always worth taking some time and sifting through.  Sometimes you can find some fantastic, useful detail pieces.  Or models.  Or whole units.

And if your friendly local gaming store doesn’t have bins... why not?  It’s a win-win for everyone.

Big Slabs o' Meat Update

I just thought I’d toss up some shots of how the Grotesques ended up looking with a little paint on them.  Here they are with just two or three colors each.  Please keep in mind, I’ve said many, many times here that painting is not by strongest suit (in fact, I'd ask you to remind yourself of that quite often on these pages).  I’m also using up the last of my old paints, so feel free to grab the Citadel conversion chart if you want to follow along...

First, though, I wanted to show off this one last guy (who's still waiting on a perfect head).  I mentioned that I was going to go with two squads of four most of the time.  This is my other Aberration, the one who’ll probably end up with my ancient haemonuclous, Pyn (last week’s guy with the scissorhand will be with Rakarth most of the time).  Like all the Grotesques, he got a pile of spare vials and cylinders, and like the other Aberration he got one of the spare Talos racks to help mark him out.

I wanted to give him a venom blade to go with his close combat weapon.  It’s a cheap way to give an Aberration a little more punch in close combat.  I tried a few different things (including the blades off old Dark Eldar rifles) before I settled on these.  They’re some of the spare fins from the new Raider sets.  In this guy’s hands, they look like curving knives, which is perfect.  The pommel of each knife is actually an old Space Marine dagger.  I cut off the hilt, then cut the blade so its back sat against the guard.

So, as to painting... I primed the Grotesques black and then based their skin with Fortress Grey.  The next step will be a drybrush with Pallid Flesh and a very light brush of Skull White.  The loincloths will go red to tie them in with the rest of my army (I went with the Obsidian Rose Kabal color scheme).  Yeah, it's not much so far, but I just wanted to give a sense of how these guys would look with some paint on them.  

It’s worth noting that their pants are essentially just painted on.  The uneven texture of the Rat Ogres gives the appearance of ragged material, and once there’s a dark gray drybrush on some of the “bandages” at the ankles and thighs that’ll really sell it.  A wash of Nuln Oil should give them a semi-glossy, leathery appearance.

Hopefully next time these guys are seen, they’ll be doing awful things to Marc’s Orks.

By the way... I’ve lucked into a very nice contract with the Crown Publishing Group, but it does mean I’m going to be very busy for the next couple of months.  I’d hoped to do a paperhammer Destroyer Tank Hunter this month and maybe start a Warhound before the end of the year.  Alas, the Warhound’s definitely not going to happen now, and I might not get to the tank until the end of the year... and someone just tempted me with a new Thunderbolt template.  But I’m going to try to keep offering all my cheapskate ideas and tips on a semi-regular basis.

Big Slabs of Meat

So let’s talk about cheap meat.  Scratch-built Grotesques.

I like the whole Karnival of Pain idea.  It might not be a guaranteed win, but it is guaranteed to freak out my opponents at least once or thrice a game.  And in the group I play with we tend to value those dramatic moments and a well-themed army a little more than just a sledgehammer win (which can also be fun, granted).  If sixth edition is anything to go by, Games Workshop seems to value them, too.

Right up front, these are going to be cheap, not free.  I figure if I can make a Grotesque for one-half or one-third the price of the GW model, that’s fantastic.  That means I can make a viable squad for the price of one or two Finecast figures.

As the base for all these guys I used the plastic Rat Ogres that come with the Fantasy Isle of Blood set.  You can usually find them online for about eight bucks apiece at The WarStore’s Battlewagon Bitz, eBay, or any number of other places.  Right off the bat, that’s one-third the price of an actual Grotesque model.  These figs are already top-heavy with a lot of stitched-together muscles and some tubes, so they’re a great model to start with for Grotesques.

Now, in the interest of full disclosure, here’s another way I saved some money on this.  I got two Pain Engines for my birthday last year.  Like the Dark Eldar Kabalites, there are tons of extra bits on these sprues.  I ended up with lots of leftovers, almost all of which are the perfect size for Grotesques.  If you don’t have these already, check your local bitz bins, other friends who play Dark Eldar, or some of the places I just mentioned up above.

I ended up getting eight of the Rat Ogres.  I plan on splitting them into two squads of four, one of which will usually be Rakarth’s chosen.  I’m going to go over each pair of them so each set builds on the last one and gets a little more modified. 

This first pair is pretty much just a straight head swap.  Instead of the Rat Ogre head, I used some of the spare helmets from the Talos set.  It’s a little bit smaller than the Ogre head, which makes the body look even larger and more swollen in comparison, and they create an immediate link to "real" Dark Eldar models.  On the model with both arms down, it glues on with no problem.  On the model with one arm up, I used a tiny bit of green stuff (about half a pea) to fill in the little hole and let me straighten the head out a bit.  The only other thing I did was snip off the tail (which got used on the Khymera I built a while back) 

You could leave it like that and this is a fine Grotesque, but I decided to add on a few small details to push it just a bit more toward the Dark Eldar.  I had a bunch of little vials and injectors left from the Talos set.  Each Grotesque got one or two of those.  The little armor plate at the waist is a Fantasy Lizardman shoulder pad.  I found a ton of them in my local Bitz Bin for about a buck.  I added one to the wrists, too.

On the next pair, like any good haemonculous, I swapped and cut a bit more.  These guys use the big swords from the Ogre Bulls sprue—again, found in the bitz bin.  It's just a straight hand swap.  The wrist difference gets hidden by the Talos bracer. 

I also snipped off that built-in blade on the left arm and replaced it with a spare rending claw from a Tyranid Warrior (again, the bitz bins).  There are a few little spurs/ fins on the side of the claw that can come off it.  Once it’s flesh-colored, it should blend right in.

The Rat Ogre with its arm up also has a good-sized chunk of warpstone imbedded in his/ her/ its shoulder.  I debated what to do with that for a while and, in the end, decided to clip it off.  Once I scraped down the edges with my knife it actually looked a lot like a mess of big scars... which is just fine, as far as I'm concerned.

The third set gets even more changes.  I traded out the built-in blade for a liquefier gun from the Talos set.  This looks scary-great, I know (it freaks me out, too) but this was actually a very easy and simple conversion.  The Talos has a twin linked liquefier, so I only need half of it.  I used the one with the shorter hose.  I filed the butt/ back of the gun flat and it sat right up against the Grotesque’s wrist.  By sheer luck, the hose curves right down to his abdomen, as if the liquefier is sucking material out of his gut.  Which it’s supposed to be so... bonus.  

The scissorhand on the Aberration is actually a collection of Catachan swords and knives.  I cut off the hilts and glued them into a fan that looked a bit hand-ish.  Using a smaller blade for the thumb and reversing direction on it helps convey that look, too.  A Kroot shoulderpad as a central hub finished it off.  It gives the whole thing a very Edward Scissorhands sort of look, which is just... well, perfect.  He got the vial-covered Talos bracer to help hide the wrist join.  His gas-mask like helmet is the Talos helmet with the hoses on either side.  I just cut the hoses off and trimmed it down to the connectors.  It makes him stand out a bit more.  It makes me think of calling him Bane, too.

I also gave him one of the extended spines from the Talos.  It helps mark the Aberration as the character in the squad, and maybe the focus of just a little too much haemonculous attention.  I had to trim the middle post of the piece just a bit, and then I drilled holes for each of them.  For the most part, though, the curve on the spine-piece matches the curve of the Rat Ogre's back fairly well.  

Even if you had to buy all these online as bits, I think the average price for these guys is only about ten bucks.  Even less if you get the bits from your own collection or barter with friends.  So, they’re about 40% the price of the GW ones. 

Which is pretty cheap.

Kroot Taste Like Chicken

I have to throw out one more shameful plug for my new book, 14.  It hit the top 30 bestselling books on Audible.com last week.  Not top 30 Sci-Fi or top 30 horror—overall bestsellers (#27, with a brief peak at #26).  Check it out.  Lots of people are liking it, and you can listen to audiobooks while you build and paint toy soldiers.

As for this week’s little rant... you want to know what I use all the time as “counts as” models?  Kroot.  Kroot really don’t get enough respect from a modeling/ gaming viewpoint.

As anyone who played with the old Kroot Mercenary army list knows, they are what they eat.  Fluff-wise and rules-wise, this means Kroot are one of the few units in the entire game where it’s completely acceptable for them to have a shifting stat-line.

What does this mean for the clever, on-a-budget hobbyist?

Between their mercenary ways and their shifting stats, it means you can introduce Kroot into a lot of armies as very solid counts-as models.  Which is very cool because a box of a dozen Kroot is relatively cheap and comes with a ton of accessories.  Heck, you can go to BattleWagon Bits and buy four of them on the sprue, or try the Bitz Barn.

(apologies for the picture quality on some of these, by the way—my camera’s getting old and acting up. If I can get some better shots later, I'll replace these)

In my Inquisition force, (yes, I’m one of those oddballs still favoring the Inquisition over the Grey Knights) Leviticus Gul is a big-time radical who employs xenos mercenaries (among other things) in his fight against Chaos.  So in his squad of henchmen, his death cult assassins are all Kroot Carnivores that were remodeled to have two close combat weapons (and a pile more strapped to their harnesses).  It’s very easy to do.  One of the Kroot arms already comes holding a knife.  There’s also an arm holding a rifle by the barrel, and once you cut off the weapon around it, that leather-wrapped barrel is suddenly a leather wrapped handle for whatever you want to attach.  Their Krull-looking weapons are just the bladed Kroot rifle stocks glued together.

Helpful Hint – Kroot have a double thumb.  From a modeling point of view, that means their left and right hands are identical.  You can swap back and forth to get whatever grip/angle you want on whichever hand you want.  With their different gloves and bracers, it’s easy to hide the cuts, too.

           

Gul’s Vindicare assassin is a Kroot, too.  He’s based off the metal (now Finecast) Shaper model.  A tiny bit of wire as a pin let me double the length of a Kroot rifle, and a few Ork gun sights made it seem like a suitable Kroot super-sniper rifle (reminiscent of the one in The Adventures of Baron Munchausen).  His Exitus pistol--most likely retrieved from some unfortunate assassin he ate--is an Ork slugga with the glyphs filed off and a Space Marine targeter on top.  It replaced the knife the Shaper had in his left hand.

           

Let’s peer at the Dark Eldar Court of the Archon for a moment.  Kroot can make great stand-ins for Sslyth.  After all, they’re mercenaries, too, and while they don’t have four arms they are known for being blindingly fast, fluff-wise.  Any oddities in the stat line can be brushed off as your Kroot eating a Sslyth a few months back. 

I call him Sirpenntarr

I built some Kabalite armor for this guy using shoulder pads from the Hellions and the Fantasy Lizardmen, then loaded him up with a bunch of spare knives, blades, and holsters from both the Kroot and  Dark Eldar lines.  I strapped a splinter rifle across his back to add to the mercenary feel and also help represent the shardcarbine. 

Sslyth come on a 40mm base, which looks a little large, but there’s so much extra Dark Eldar stuff (new and old) floating around in bitz bins it would be easy to make a mini-diorama with the extra space which would tie him to the Dark Eldar even more.  Maybe some vehicle wreckage or bodies of various Dark Eldar warriors who failed to kill this mercenary’s employer

Using this same logic, by the way, you could use Kroothounds as Ur-Ghuls if you wanted to.  Their stat line wasn’t quite as mutable in the game—they’re supposed to be an evolutionary dead end, fluff-wise—but if you’re using Kroot as Sslyth you can probably say “counts-as by association.”  I’d just paint the hounds a ghastly green or blue-white and say they ate something that didn’t agree with them.  Or maybe agreed with them far too well...

I’ve also been playing with the idea of building a Kroot model to serve as a “counts as” Guardsman “Sly” Marbo.  With nothing more than a paintjob a Kroot could match any Imperial Guard paint scheme, and it wouldn’t be hard to rationalize it as a lone, deadly mercenary the army had managed to hire.  With a few extra bits or the right paint scheme, a Kroot could even make a passable Predator.  And what army wouldn’t want the Predator on their side...?

So next time you’re struggling for a counts as model, think of the Kroot.

Next up, one last conversion tip with the Orks, and then it’s time for a new Paperhammer project.

Commoragh’s Bargain Basement

So, while I was off not finishing the Baneblade/Plaguereaper, what else did I miss over the past year or so?

Grey Knights and Dark Eldar.  And I expect the Necron templates to start showing up any day now.  Releases that have gotten everyone I know pretty darn excited.  Well, Matt was really excited about the Blood Angels, but the rest of us weren’t.  Especially when he had the gall to start using those new rules with his army...

Anyway, I wanted to prattle on real quick about the Dark Eldar.  A lot of my friends and I had dozens of Dark Eldar sitting around,  The older, straight-backed ones that came with the third edition set.  And many of us had tried--really tried--to make a solid army out of them.

It never worked.  Yeah, I’ve seen the mathhammers and win-crazy guys argue that the old Dark Eldar worked fine as long as you make this list and do this and get these rolls.  Personally, I’ve always thought that any codex which only offers one viable army list is a failure.  That’s why I can’t wait for the new Chaos Legions Codex.

But I digress...

Here’s the cool thing.  The new Dark Eldar Kabalite sprue comes with tons of extras.  Two heavy weapons, two special weapons, and enough options for two or three different Archons.  Plus extra heads, knives, blades... tons of good stuff.  It is, in all fairness to Games Workshop, a spectacular set.  You can make ten Dark Eldar from the set and still have enough arms and heads for six more warriors.

So... guess what?

All the new arms fit on the old bodies.  No problems, no tweaks, nothing.  Take a pair of clippers to the head and carefull snip off the ball that fits in the neck socket--now those fit on the old bodies, too.  Alternately, use a sharp knife and a drill to make a tiny socket for the head.  And the spare back accessories like the flag, trophy rack, or grenade launchers?  Just file down that little nub and they’ll glue onto an old body just fine.  You can even use some of those extra daggers for more detail.  Essentially, it you’ve got those older bodies—you know, the one everyone was selling for pennies on the dollar or dumping in their bitz bins—you can get sixteen Dark Eldar out of each Kabalite ten pack.  And once they’re mixed in, they’re pretty much identical.  This photo is three Dark Eldar.  An all-new Kabalite.  One old body with new arms, head, and accessories. One’s an old warrior with just his head replaced.

You can also use the old splinter cannons, too.  I put matching blades on both the old and new cannon as an additional link-up between them.  With that and the overhand grip it’s pretty obvious they’re the same weapon.  Add on one of the new heads and it looks great.

Your old Raiders can get dressed up the same way.  Again, two easy head swaps and a dagger make the crew match your shiny new army.  Spare chains, blades, spikes, rifles--they all go on with no real problem.  I like to say my archaic-looking Raider is Urien Rakarth’s personal transport, but it would also work for any senior Dark Eldar--an Archon or a group of Trueborn, for example. 

Speaking of which, I also used the new Kabalite Warriors to make an all-plastic Archon for the army.  I used the Drachon helmet and trophy rack on a body with a splinter pistol and power sword.  Then I used the skull-cape from the Fantasy Chaos Marauder sprue.  All I needed to do was cut the very bottom point off the trophy rack and  file the center of the cape a tiny bit to make a deeper "drape" in it.  I glued a plastic dagger in front to match the metal (now Finecast) Archon, and also added some skulls-on-chains from the new Raider sprue.  A few tiny notches and pits in the sword will make it a fine huskblade once it’s got a bone paintjob.

The old bodies also made for fine Wyches.  I’m not too sure I’m going to use Wyches in my army, to be honest, but I figured I had the bodies so why not.  A few of the old Dark Eldar torsos are definitely female, and some of the leg sets have a bit of motion to them.  Bend them a bit and you’ll get even more.  And the old sets already come with the double-bladed punch dagger.  Some of the heads are leftover Kabalaite ones.  Some of them are from fantasy High Elves, I think (I found them in the bitz bin at my local store).  And a few are from my friend Jeff who bought two boxes of Wyches for himself.  The Hexatrix’s shoulderpad was from a Hellions set my lovely lady got me for my birthday.

And while we’re on the subject, lets talk Beastmasters.  All metal?  Dear God, a squad of these guys and their beasts will run you fifty bucks, minimum, and could hit $200.  For one squad!  Just use Hellions for Beastmasters.  That’s what I’ve done.  You’ll get five of them to a pack, and half of the Hellion heads already have monstrous-looking rebreathers on them.  Leave off the shoulder pads so they’re showing more skin, add some body paint, and they’ll be fine Beastmasters.  You can trim the blades off the hellglaive and just say it’s a big spear or animal-prod.  You could also add on a few Kroot or Ogre accessories so these guys can have random chunks of meat hanging from their belts.

I love the Clawed Fiend, but for a single model it’s just too expensive (money vs points).  I dug around in the bits bins at my local store and came up with the body and tail of a Fantasy Cold One (also available at BitzBarn).  I happened to have some of the old Cold One heads, so look at that.  Add on some Tyranid armor plates, an unusual color scheme, and I’ve got an alien velociraptor with a collar.  If that’s not a fine stand-in for a Clawed Fiend, I don’t know what is.

You can pay $15 apiece for Khymera or around $25 will get you ten Dire Wolves, which look like big zombie dogs.  You can even buy them individually online (BitzBarn again).  Replace their tongue and tail with Skaven tails, give them an alien paint scheme, and they’ll make for a fine pack of beasties.  Or just use them as is and tell your opponents the Beastmaster got them from Space Wolf nightmares.

Alternatively, there’s also a mention of “blade-legged Helspiders” in the Beastmaster entry, and there are tons and tons of spider models kicking around the Games Workshop lines.  Some of the larger goblin ones would make great counts-as Khymera (fast scuttling spiders could rate an invulnerable save).  Or, if you’ve got smaller spiders, you could also say the Helspiders are counts-as Razorwings.  They are blade-legged, after all.

For my own Razorwings, I used some old plastic bats I’ve had kicking around for years.  I think they’re from Warhammer Quest or something like that.  I altered the angles and heights a bit for variety and gave them another alien paintjob, trimming the wings and claws with boltgun and mithril.

Oh, and last but not least... pain tokens.  I saw a very cool article on the GW site about using piles of skulls or brass tubing and helmets.  All awesome if you can afford it.  I just used old Skeleton shields from the fantasy line.  They’re pretty much tokens already, and they’re marked with one skull, two crossed bones, or a skull and crossbones (three).  I dug up over a dozen of them, which means I can use them as either individual markers or accumulated counters.

So, tons of stuff for about $70 worth of new Dark Eldar (thank you, Neil at the WarStore) and a bunch of stuff I got for maybe $10 from the bits bins of my local store.

And sometime soon you’ll get to see my all-plastic Grotesques and Wracks.