The most disappointing part of the Adepticon Fantasy tournament this year for me lay in my relatively low appearance score. I received an 18 out of 25 and I really feel I can do better. Looking over the scoring section I'm pretty certain I lacked in 2-3 areas; Conversions, Freehand, and Display. Now I'm working on my army for next year and trying hard to come up with some good ways to improve my scores. So let's start with Conversions this week. Particularly, lets go over the largest conversion I've ever attempted.
First up I'm considering taking a Screaming Bell. The Bell offers up a few things for the Skaven army with the most important being that it makes a unit unbreakable. In the past I haven't had much luck with the Screaming Bell, but I'm really going to try and alter my play style a bit to compensate.
Now, no ordinary Screaming Bell will do for Clan Quark. In an effort to make up some appearance points and just because it's cool, I'm going to convert up a Screaming Bell fit for a seer in the service of Clan Quark. So what is the plan? Well, while at Adepticon I picked up a Marienburg Landship from Forgeworld. So that's where I plan to start.
Originally I was just going to add in a Screaming Bell kit but some friends and acquaintances have given me some pretty cool ideas and it's grown over time. To date it has grown to include the original Landship and screaming bell kits, a Doomwheel, a jezzail, bits left over from my other plague furnace and screaming bell, and a few other bits and baubles.
This is a rough position of the Landship Bell minus the side panels (so I could figure out details). In the front of the Landship is a Rat Ogre pulling on the Landship. The front wheels will have the external warp generator from the Doomwheel while a jezzail will replace the cannon on the front under deck. The pillars holding the bell up will replace the mast of the Landship with the crow's nest. Due to height issues I will need to extend the pillars somehow but that shouldn't be too hard.
The back wheels are converted using Doomwheel Zzzap generators and, yes, I have the Doomwheel rats inside the wheels. I was hoping to use the actual Doomwheel wheels but they slightly too small to fit the interior of the Landship wheels and far too narrow. I may still attempt to use Doomwheel but I will need to buy a new kit.
Here is a rough approximation of the back end of the Landship Bell (minus the side-panels, obviously). The Doomwheel banner will fly at the top while the pumper from the back of the Doomwheel will be working the engine.
I plan to try and remove all the Empire shields from the side of the Landship and replace them with Skaven shields. The hardest part of this step will be finding large enough shields.
This conversion has a number of complexities that must be thought out and overcome. First and foremost I really need to figure out how the Landship Bell will fit onto the same size base as the normal Screaming Bell. With the Rat Ogre pulling the entire model will be far too long to fit on the base. So I may make that Rat Ogre detachable and only for display purposes. The Landship Bell will still hang over the front, but it should be by an acceptable amount.
That's the Update this time around. I'm going to start soaking the resin parts tomorrow and they should be ready to work with by the following weekend. Then it's just a matter of cleaning up the remaining flash, piecing bits together, and making everything work out. So stay tuned!