14086 Great Eagle + 77208 Anwyn - Iron Kingdoms Conversions

[Jordan Peacock]

14086 "Giant Eagle" (pewter) + 77208 "Anwyn, Elf Bard" (Bones plastic)

 

When I saw the figure for Anwyn, I immediately thought of Dahlia Hallyr from the Hordes game, and her pet Tatzylwurm, Skarath.  I had a mind to use her for my Iron Kingdoms campaign as an odd warlock encounter, and painted her up as a Nyss (winter elf) flutist.  (In the Iron Kingdoms Unleashed RPG, Nyss don't get to be warlocks, but neither do Iosans (high elves), so if Dahlia gets to be a special snowflake, surely some GM-invented NPC can be as well.)  And by painting her up pale and with dark hair and dark clothes, she could also stand in for an Infernal or Umbral in a pinch.

 

Now, in our Unleashed campaign, I'm on the other side of the GM screen, and the current GM has been going through my miniatures supply for encounters ... and sadly quite often having to use proxies, since I just don't happen to have EVERY POSSIBLE monster he can imagine.  Tsk!  I've used this as an excuse to dig through a lot of my miniatures of various large beasties that I've yet to assemble and paint up, and stick them on 30, 40, or 50mm round bases (with facing markings) so they're ready to go JUST IN CASE the GM has need of a giant bird or a pack of rats of unusual size, or a few grizzly bears, or what-have-you.  I picked up the Giant Eagle (14086) over a decade ago, with the vague idea of converting it as a phoenix for a World of Warcraft campaign I was running, but that wrapped up before I could get around to it, and the blister pack had difficulty holding together with the sheer WEIGHT of all those pewter pieces, so they ended up scattered around my minis box for years.  Just recently, I decided to take on a token effort of organizing my boxes of Reaper minis (mostly Bones, but still a few pewter packs, and also some assorted "bits"), trying to group together Bones by some sort of loose theme (e.g., bag o' undead) in Ziploc storage baggies.

 

In the process, I found a talon .. .then another talon, then a leg, then a tail fan, a couple of huge wings ... a body -- aha!  A whole giant eagle!  Before it could get scattered again, I decided to go ahead and try assembling it, and giving it a base.

 

 

 

I love the detail on this figure!  I suppose it's to be expected, given its large size, but I especially appreciate the fairly sensible order and symmetry of the wings.  (This is in contrast to the trouble I ran into when trying to paint feather patterns on the Vrock -- who, it turns out, DOES NOT have symmetrical wings.)

 

As is probably expected of a figure of this size, some putty was required to get the parts to fit.  Also, due to the sheer size, I ended up having to assemble it a bit at a time; gluing everything at once and expecting it to hold together despite its own weight was ... unrealistic.

 

One interesting detail I hadn't noticed before: The two talons/claws have "keyed" connections to the legs.  One of the joints has a triangular key, while the other is round, so there's no risk of getting right on left or left on right unless you determinedly file down the keys to fit the wrong way.  I'm not sure how much difference it would have made visually, but it was a nice bit of engineering.

 

If assembled as it comes out of the blister pack, the figure "stands" on its tail feathers, which are directly (and thinly) connected to a "slotta" style tab at the bottom.  At the angle it came in line with the tail feathers, assembling it on its original 40mm monster base would have the eagle leaning VERY far forward past the center of gravity, and topping forward; the only solution would seem to be to deliberately bend the figure pack on that point so that it's facing a little more upward, with its wings therefore being further back and closer to a point of balance in relation to the center of gravity.

 

Here, I tried to account for this by attaching the tab at the tail-feather base further toward the back of the base (50mm round lipped), and I used some putty to build up a bit of "foliage" around the joining point.  Still, that thin bit of metal has a bit of a challenge holding this much heavy pewter aloft, and I fear that at some point the tab is going to worry off and break.  Eventually, some amount of pinning and a creative means of providing additional support will likely be necessary.

 

Another challenge I had was that the combination of sharp highlights on the feathery texture and sheer weight of the model meant that in the process of handling the figure, paint on high points inevitably wore off (despite the best efforts of the base coat spray), so I had to keep going back and dry-brushing on more layers of white highlight -- and in one case it was bad enough that I had to paint the general area back to its base tone of grey, and then work back up to white highlights.  Just as soon as I had the figure "good enough" and snapped a figure of it, I took it aside and put on the first layer of some brush-on matte acrylic sealer.  I normally use a spray-on matte sealer, but I've found that sometimes results in an unfortunate "tacky" effect if the figures are plastic; I want to try out the matte sealer, to see just how "matte" it really is, and experiment with it on some of my painted Bones minis, to better protect the paint.

 

For Iron Kingdoms, I have it in mind (should I ever get back on the GM side of the screen) to use the stats for one of the griffons, and apply the "Large Creature" template to it as a baseline for the stats for this creature, as an encounter.  (I'll suggest as much to the GM -- he's a bit short on stats for monsters, as not much has really been published, and we can't easily "convert" the old d20 Monsternomicon over -- but it's of course his call whether we'll have need for one monster or another.)  Regardless, I'm sure I'll find use for a giant bird in SOME campaign or another.  :)

 

The giant eagle is big, wonderfully detailed, and impressive on the table.  I'd love to see this figure in Bones, though with the bendiness of Bones and the plastic still having a significant weight of its own when in bulky form, there would likely need to be some more structural support -- perhaps in the form of a "rocky outcropping" rising upward that just happens to "brush against" one of the claws, etc.

 

Anwyn is, of course, already in Bones.  :)  Dealing with flash is a bit challenging in spots, but I don't suppose it's especially noticeable.  It's a nicely detailed and posed figure that looks plausible as an adventurer bard type.  My paint job really didn't do it justice; there are lots of details that could be played with, with the puffy-sleeved blouse and little trim details.  I could probably make it more modest in attire by changing the midriff into a corset via creative painting, and if I wanted this to look more civilian, and less like a combatant, it looks like it would be a simple fix to trim off the dagger and scabbard strapped to the leg.  It's a nice and versatile enough piece that I might have to get another some day, depending upon what campaign settings we try in the future (and what sorts of character concepts the players come up with).  

 

The basic sculpt, if painted up differently, is (I think) a pretty good contender as a proxy for Dahlia Hallyr for Warmachine/Hordes -- though what to do about Skarath the many-eyed serpentine Tatzylwurm is much more of a challenge.

 

[tiniest rhombus]

They look awesome and omg I need that giant eagle!

 

Ahhhhhh it's a Garrity scuplt, no wonder I want it.

Edited January 13, 2016 by tiniest rhombus

[Mierot]

Beautiful! Good work on the feathers. Anwyn is one of my favorite bards.

[Glitterwolf]

Awesome, and I didn't realize how big that eagle was ...now I want one too!

[Jordan Peacock]

Beautiful! Good work on the feathers. Anwyn is one of my favorite bards.

 

This is one of those wonderful sculpts where the sculptor has practically done all the work for me: The feather "detail" is just a couple of base-coat sprays of white, then a thick wash of Apple Barrel "Denim Blue" (cool gray) craft acrylic paint, and then (after drying of course) dry-brushing with Apple Barrel "Snowflake White" acrylic paint (a fairly thick acrylic craft paint that works well for dry-brushing).  The only blending I had to do was in the detail work for the talons, eyes, and beak.

[Jordan Peacock]

Awesome, and I didn't realize how big that eagle was ...now I want one too!

 

That's a 50mm diameter base in the picture for the Great Eagle, and a 30mm diameter base for Anwyn.  I think the wing span is somewhere in the neighborhood of 10" from wingtip to wingtip.  When I get home, I'll have to measure it and see how close my eyeball estimate is.

 

EDIT: It's actually just shy of 8".  Oops.  So much for eyeballing it.

Edited January 14, 2016 by Jordan Peacock

[Guildenstern]

that is incredible o.O love how realistic it looks and goodness it's huge!

[Mad Jack]

 "Did you see the size of that chicken?!?!"

 

/Young Guns

 

Yeah, that's one big honking tweetybird right there. One of my win-the-lottery Someday projects is to get a dozen or so of those things and build a flight of eagle riders.

[Limey72]

You did an exceptional job on this Jordan, well done

[Chaoswolf]

This is very cool, nice job!

[Jordan Peacock]

 

Okay, somehow the view in the picture seems to be slightly different than my viewfinder.  Is that even possible with a digital camera?  Anyway, the wingspan of the Giant Eagle mini is close to somewhere between 7 3/4" and 7 7/8" (although the angling of this photo makes it appear to be smaller than that), despite my early eyeballing estimate of 10".

 

("It was THIS big!  {holds hands apart}  And it got away!")

 

 

The other thing of interest to me is that this is a picture of the Great Eagle after I applied some matte sealer.  I normally use Krylon spray-on non-yellowing matte acrylic (Oh how it pains me, all my old Warzone minis that I clear-coated with Wal-Mart store brand spray paint -- all that white gone YELLOW!) but the "matte" nonetheless has a noticeable shine that the camera picks up -- so I generally try to get all my shots of a finished mini in BEFORE I apply any clear coat.

 

Another problem is that I've been holding off on clear-coating my Bones minis, because sometimes they come out tacky-feeling.  I've had the same problem with some (but not all?!?) of the Super Dungeon Explore minis I painted for a friend of mine.  (The original core board game pieces and the lava-themed add-ons worked fine.  Nyan-Nyan and some other of the special "mini boss" figures ended up with sticky-figure syndrome something awful.)

 

 

I remember being told that if I want to base-coat "bendy" plastics, I should use a brush-on primer, as it's generally the propellant that does whatever bad mojo it does to the plastic to give it that tacky effect regardless of how many insulating layers of acrylic paint get added on.  Well, I thought I'd see if that extends to brush-on clear coat as well.

 

So far, so good.  In the last picture, the clear coat on Anwyn is still wet and it's not even half bad.  In the above picture of the Great Eagle, I slathered on enough of the matte sealer so I could actually pick the thing up without wearing high points of white acrylic off the feathers (which would happen SOMEWHERE with even a careful, light handling, never fail, pre-sealer).  It works!  But importantly for my tendency to take lots of pictures of my minis to post on the virtual fridge door, it doesn't look shiny on the figure itself.  Now, it DOES look a bit shiny on the base, where I suppose enough of it just accumulated from run-off from the figure, and on the relatively flat surface (and then especially in any recesses) it could pool up to sufficient thickness to get shiny.

 

I don't have as much problem with paint wearing off my Reaper Bones models as I do with metals, but after this experiment I think I'll be going back to give them some matte coats regardless.

[Wikkidcrow]

Nice

[Jordan Peacock]

So!  I finally got a chance to use the big birdy in an adventure as a special encounter atop a ruined castle tower.  (Its special attack: swooping in and grabbing whoever stuck his or her head up first, then dropping victim in the lake at the bottom of the tower, in a GM-hand-wavy-and-maybe-just-a-bit-silly interpretation of the grab-and-throw power attack rules.  And then, rather than killing the thing or letting it simply get away, one of the PCs did a crazy leap-of-faith off the tower onto the bird's back, knocked it out, then crash-landed with it into the lake, heroically saved it from drowning (being the only PC in the group who could actually swim worth anything), and then saved it for warbeast-training ... so it looks like it's going to be around for a while.

 

The problem is that I've discovered that the figure sags under its own weight.  It's sculpted to have a dramatic pose, as if it's sweeping in with talons open to snatch up some unlucky victim, with just the tip of its tail fan connecting to a tab to fit into the base.  The trouble is that, once assembled, it slowly bends at that point.  I've tried balancing it, but too far back and it won't stand up properly, the way I attached it to the base; the slightest amount forward, and if I come back in a couple of days, it has fallen forward on its face.  Sure, I could just keep the thing packed away in a foam-packed APC box, and straighten it out when needed, but I figured I needed another solution.

 

 

So, after that long prelude ... I just took some putty and made a "rock" on the base.  I textured it with a gratuitous sigil on the front in an attempt to give a suggestion of the sorts of engraved rocks associated with Circle Orboros.  

 

I actually did some quick putty work at the start of the game session, after straightening it out the first time.  The bending action was slow enough that the putty was able to cure while it was still upright, and it was still upright as of this morning, so I'll take that as a good sign.  I didn't go back to paint it until early this morning.  Also, the green paint I used is some sort of "neon" acrylic paint that ended up looking much brighter in the photo than it did to the naked eye.  I'm not sure how that works.