I picked up most of the Foundry Street Violence figures (and any other figures that looked appropriate, e.g.West Wind for vampires and monsters) and set about turning them into vampire and demon hunters. For the most part this involved removing machine guns, rifles and pistols and replacing them with bows, crossbows, pistol crossbows, swords, axes and halberds (basically anything that looked good). I have quite a lot of more traditional post apocalyptic gangers painted as well, so guns are available if required.
Along with the civilians and non-military fighters (who I'll cover in future posts), one of the groups I envisaged was an elite military fighting force.
For these I turned to GW's Cadians. They're not ideal (I could live without the shoulder pads), but they don't stand out too much, and converting the plastic was easier than the metal Foundry figures. Most of the replacement weapons were from GW's Empire State Troops boxed set.
The first job was to remove the eagles from the Cadians - GW does like its iconography. Once that was done, I set about posing the figures and finding weapons that looked appropriate.
The simplest conversion involved converting laser rifles into crossbows by chopping off various bits, gouging out a channel in the top of the barrel for the bolt and making the bow bit (apparently called a prod or lath) from brass strip.
Figures with crossbows
The rest of the conversions mainly involved swapping Cadian hands for bow and sword hands from the state troops figures. I also attached swords to most of the figures, and bowcases to the bow armed figures. Belts to attach the swords and cases were made from green stuff.
Figures with bows
and a rear view of the figure, showing bowcase
Figures with swords
I added a flamethrower, built straight from the box. The only addition was a sword, just to keep things consistent.
Group shots
Finally, a couple of group shots of the unit. Not quite sure how one guy managed to get into both pictures :-)
One of my plans was to build a couple of heavy support weapons for the unit. The first one was going to be a giant crossbow, and the second a giant flamethrower of some sort. I got bogged down with these - constantly tweaking the design, struggling to figure out how to attach the prod to the body of the bow etc. As a result, these are still languishing on the workbench (actually in plastic bags at the back of a drawer fairly close to the workbench). I dig them out every couple of years, so maybe I'll have another look soon.
The relevance of the post title? In homage to the GW Grey Knights (I have the originals, never really liked the new ones), I named the unit the Grey Knights. For anybody feeling cheated at this point, hopefully a picture of one of the original Citadel Grey Knights will appease you.
Grey Knight Terminator
On a non-figure related note, I'd like to wish everyone a Happy New Year and best wishes for 2011.