Kitbashing a clownwizard
Detail pictures at the bottom, full army shots lower down.
In The Hobby™ of Warhammer “kitbashing” is using part of several model kits to build or customise a new model.
Why do it? Well, as a species whose doctors each have a long and weary list of implausible things people claim to have just been doing while naked, we may not have to look all that far beyond “because I can”.
But in the grim darkness of the forty first millennium, that human creative impulse to look at Thing A and think it would just about fit into Thing B is sublimated in the service of War.
So many clownparts.
Want to play a unit that doesn’t have a model? Feel the urge to give your general a gun so big you need to glue weights to the base so she doesn’t fall over? Just a bit bored and in possession of a kilo of spare Necron arms because the kits have so many options these days? It’s kitbashing time.
The Harlequins - my chosen squad of flouncy psychopaths - have seven unit types: four characters, the core troops, some skybikes, and two flavours of clown car. The cars are the same basic model with different guns, and one of the characters only has its own model because one of the troops in the box has a slightly fancier overcoat. This means that if you buy two Troupe boxes and only need one Troupe Master you don’t have a super distinctive model to lead your army. At some point Games Workshop will perhaps release a dedicated Troupe Master mini, but until then you either take what’s in the box or get creative with spare limbs.
The Aeldari by contrast - of whom the Harlequins are a sub-faction - have approximately eight billion models, many unchanged since the mid nineties. As some friends kindly bought me one of them for Christmas I thought it’d be fun to have a go at kitbashing a Troupe Master to lead my Harlequins army, The Masque 4Masc:
Kitbashing - also called converting or customising - is something I tried a decade ago, when the models were largely metal.
I sucked out loud:
(It was meant to be a wizard for a With Elf-heavy army of Dark Elves, botched out of a spare Hag Queen and a Wood Elf sorcerer. Can’t believe I’m actually showing y’all those…)
This time I thought it would be a little easier. Not least because the kits have so many redundant options now, so I was spoiled for choice for spares. Each Player in the Troupe comes with two masks, 2-3 choices for each arm, and you end up with a couple of spare heads. Having built twelve of the spiky little bastards, as well as a brace of Hurtling Skywankers there were plenty of things I could glue onto this dramatic flouncy boi:
Granted, the Aeldari Farseer would probably make a better Harlequin Shadowseer, but they already make a great model for that, and I’d just finished painting it.
Jester boy be fancy.
This looked like it would be fairly easy. The Farseer kit comes in sensible pieces, the head and arms were separate. It’s got a belt I can paint up like the Harlequin ones, and plenty of swoosh to the gown. Should be a doddle, right?
It actually nearly was.
The head went straight on. While the left arm (right in picture) needed quite a bit of filing down to fit into the socket this was time-consuming more than difficult. The other arm was just a question of measuring against the existing model and cutting at the right point.
I do wish I’d gone with a Harlequin’s Kiss instead of the sword, but because I’ve barely used swords for the other models, this did make him stand out more.
The problem was the chest-plate. That fussy intricate chest-plate. It’s a great sculpt and probably a delight to paint. But my murderclowns don’t go in for runes and twiddly bits. It had to go.
The first thought was to replace the torso front wholesale. I had a couple of spares because the Troupe kit leaves you with one over. But the size isn’t quite right, and by the time I’d trimmed one to fit it was horribly distorted. No dice. Not with my level of manual dexterity.
There was nothing for it, I had to file down the front and cover it with Green Stuff.
I loathe Green Stuff.
Green Stuff is two-part epoxy putty. It comes in a big strip that looks like candy. Do not eat the Green Stuff. It is also sticky and fiddly, and out of my comfort zone by a couple of astronomical units. It does, however, work wonders for small patch jobs on gaming miniatures, so I gritted my teeth, smeared a layer on, and tried to cover my sins by sculpting fabric folds.
Here’s the build:
Kinda worked. Bung on a couple of spare masks to distract they eye from the mistakes and the rest is paintwork.
I wanted our guy to stand out from the rest of the army while still looking part of it. I also wanted to lean in to the drama of the sculpt on the cloak while not drawing attention to the fact that the torso conversion is a bit messy. The Flip Belt (which is a fun point of detail on the other models) largely relies on willing suspension of disbelief around a stripe of paint, so I didn’t want to dwell on that either.
The rest of The Masque 4Masc have teal bodysuits with pink-to-red ombré overcoats, and floaty scarves and sashes in a range of effete pastels. For this guy I flipped it - a giant teal trenchcoat and pink undies.
I think he wears it well.
End to end it was an afternoon to build, and [mumble] to paint. I’m both proud of it and instantly embarrassed by some of the details now I see it in high-ish resolution pictures. I suspect that’s normal.
If I do another one (there’s a mini I have my eye on to kitbash into a new Shadowseer) I’ll definitely spend more time planning up front. If I specifically do another troupe master, I’ll probably start from a Solitaire or the knifey feller who knocks about with the magic nun.
