Welsh Lord On Foot

For some time now, I've been wanting to convert a dismounted version of the rather fab Gripping Beast mounted Welsh Lord vignette piece that I use as my army general in my British/Welsh Age of Arthur army. You see, I rather fancy a rock-hard foot Teulu unit to give me different tactical options to the usual all-out 'banzai' cavalry charge that is beginning to characterise some of my games...(oops..giving all my secrets away... :-) )

So, after an email to Darren at GB central, I managed to negotiate a mixed pack of figures to do the job. You see, being a bit anal about it, I wanted the figure to literally look like he'd just stepped off his horse, so no difference in armour or clothing or equipment at all...tricky, you'll be saying...but no...not really. So, here's what I did...

This is the master figure that I started with: he's from a Teulu character pack...


However, he's got no shield, is bareheaded and the helmet he's carrying is the wrong one!! Also, he's got no splint armour on his legs... Ok...so, I need a new head and probably a new left arm, as trying to just remove the helmet will be tricky...Ok..no problem:



So, I sawed off the head and the left arm. I cut the arm off under the shoulder armour and then sawed very gently on the helmet where it joins the body. Remarkably, after the smallest of cuts, the whole helmet just came away!! The great God of converting was certainly with me that time!!

Then I just went to the other figures I had been given and as you'll see from the pics, chose the matching head and a good left arm to replace what I'd just chopped away...See below...


The head swap guy is from a 'standing Teulu' pack and the arm swap guy is from a Combrogi foot command pack. I fixed the head in place by glueing and pinning and the arm I just glued, as it was glued both under the shoulder armour and along the side of the body. In both cases, the joins were tidied up with a tiny bit of Greenstuff. While the Greenstuff was out, I also added splint armour to the lower legs. Before I did this though, I chopped the model off its base, as I wanted to create a scenic base with the lord standing on a slab of rock and its cast base rather got in the way. Unfortunately, while chopping, the left foot not only left the base, but also the model's lower leg!!! Bugger!!!
This necessitated a quick drill, pin and glue operation, before glueing the model to the slab of rock (actually a piece of 'slate gravel' type stuff that I ...err...'liberated' from the next door neighbour's front drive when he wasn't looking!) Repair completed, I set to work creating the splint armour with the aforementioned Greenstuff, also using it to bolster the join between the stone and the 20mm plastic base.
Now, I know that a lot of Age of Arthur players are basing all their characters on huge round vignette bases. They look bloody great when they do that, but I'm a bit of a pilchard on the wargaming front and, unless the character is actually sitting right in amongst his unit where he should be, I get ever so confused...so I've stuck to my 20mm base and will sit him squarely in the middle of his Teulu with his army standard right next to him on one side and his bard on the other!! Sad, but it helps me keep track of who's fighting who, etc...

After that, I found my last spare Foundry Arthurian shield and a GB sword and undercoated the lot. The shield I left separate until after the main model had been painted.

I then painted him using exactly the same colour scheme as the mounted variant, sticking the shield on last. And here he is in all his glory...






I hope you'll agree that he looks rather fab. I particularly like the effect of the stone on the base...very 'Welsh' and raises him up so that he stands head and shoulders above and slightly in front of his Teulu. They will not be painted for a while as this is my last major paintjob before I get married...3 weeks from today!!! Look out for the foot Teulu, complete with this chap, probably in September...