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Author Topic: Making halberdiers with shouldered weapons -Tutorial!  (Read 6626 times)

Offline kwest

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Making halberdiers with shouldered weapons -Tutorial!
« on: August 09, 2012, 01:10:30 PM »
I don't like the pose of the soldiers of the empire halberdiers. It looks a bit naff for a whole unit. As such I decided to convert the back rankers of my halberdier unit to be a bit more avant garde.

Here's one of my veteran zombie hunters I just knocked out for this thread:

And here's a quick guide on how I did it.

1. You'll need:
an armless human torso including legs attached to a base
a slightly bowed right arm that fits fairly flush to the body
a state troopers halberd pole (comes with both left and right arm attached)


First you'll need to prepare the halberd pole. Remove the left arm from the hand. Next remove the left hand from the weapon using a combination of clipping, shaving with a knife and filing to give a clean halberd pole. I got a bit lazy here and didn't bother to file mine perfectly.

Once you've done this find a right arm that is nicely bowed and remove it's hand (I got my arm from the milita kit). Glue this arm to the soldier's body with the wrist slightly forward of the shoulder.

Take the body and the pole arm and try to eye up where/what angle to remove the right arm that is still attached to the weapon. You'll want to try to do this so you can glue the remaining right hand/weapon directly to the bowed right arm already attached to your solider.

At this stage you have two bits (the body with an arm and a right hand with a pole) just like the first picture.

2. You'll need a halberd head


This part is a bit simpler; remove the tab from the base of a halberd head and glue that tab in place on to the weapon shaft. (picture 2)

3.

Add glue to the right shoulder of the soldier and to his wrist. Attach the right hand/pole as shown in picture 3. If you have a gap at the wrist it can easily be filled with green stuff or poly cement later (depending on how sloppy you are happy to be ;))

4.

Once you've attached the right hand+polearm to the right arm+body it's simply a case of adding the halberd weapon head at a suitable angle (picture 4).

5. You'll need a soldier head, a left arm and any extra details you want to add


The conversion is complete! Finish the model with a head, left arm and anything else you want/need to add and it's ready for the painting table!


I hope this is helpful to someone. If anything is unclear do ask; I'm going to make a couple more of these so can add extra pictures for subcombines I may have skipped. Oh and apologies if this post is a little longwinded!
« Last Edit: August 09, 2012, 01:15:42 PM by kwest »

Offline Zak

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Re: Making halberdiers with shouldered weapons -Tutorial!
« Reply #1 on: August 09, 2012, 01:23:56 PM »
Nice..thanks  :::cheers:::
Yes I'm dyslexic so what

Offline arjunstc

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Re: Making halberdiers with shouldered weapons -Tutorial!
« Reply #2 on: August 09, 2012, 01:48:40 PM »
One option would be to use the arms from the Perry Mercenaries set.


Offline dublindawg

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Re: Making halberdiers with shouldered weapons -Tutorial!
« Reply #3 on: August 09, 2012, 01:53:59 PM »
great information!

Offline kwest

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Re: Making halberdiers with shouldered weapons -Tutorial!
« Reply #4 on: August 09, 2012, 01:55:07 PM »
Good suggestion!

In fact, the reason I made this tutorial was due to the popularity of shouldered pole arm alternative figures. I guessed people might appreciate a guide to doing a 'gw official' version.

Thanks for your speedy comments guys, I was a little worried no one would be interested as I've not seen anyone else do something like this before (though I do remember seeing a very cool conversion here of state troopers where they were holding spears and shields in a saxon style).

Offline zifnab0

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Re: Making halberdiers with shouldered weapons -Tutorial!
« Reply #5 on: August 09, 2012, 01:57:57 PM »
Nice idea.  I really hate how poorly my state troops rank up, this will certainly help in the future.

Offline DonJulio

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Re: Making halberdiers with shouldered weapons -Tutorial!
« Reply #6 on: August 09, 2012, 02:57:21 PM »
Good one, if you like your troops to look "casual"  :closed-eyes:

Offline Spjuth

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Re: Making halberdiers with shouldered weapons -Tutorial!
« Reply #7 on: August 09, 2012, 04:48:19 PM »
Great idea and great tutorial.
Those arms can really be a mess to rank up as they are.

Offline kwest

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Re: Making halberdiers with shouldered weapons -Tutorial!
« Reply #8 on: August 09, 2012, 05:09:25 PM »
Yeah the advantage of doing it this way is the model doesn't overhang out of it's 20x20mm base area. Back in the day it seemed all models were content to fit inside their allocated base space!

Offline Vesticus

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Re: Making halberdiers with shouldered weapons -Tutorial!
« Reply #9 on: August 09, 2012, 05:59:36 PM »
Nice tutorial.

Do you have any others planned?
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Offline kwest

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Re: Making halberdiers with shouldered weapons -Tutorial!
« Reply #10 on: August 09, 2012, 06:06:28 PM »
Other tutorials?

Offline Spjuth

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Re: Making halberdiers with shouldered weapons -Tutorial!
« Reply #11 on: August 09, 2012, 08:29:47 PM »
Yeah the advantage of doing it this way is the model doesn't overhang out of it's 20x20mm base area. Back in the day it seemed all models were content to fit inside their allocated base space!

The good old days...

Offline Padre

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Re: Making halberdiers with shouldered weapons -Tutorial!
« Reply #12 on: August 09, 2012, 10:01:36 PM »
Shouldered is the best way, certainly, and especially so if you wanna do internet campaign fluff pictures like ...



Photobucket has now re-destroyed my pictures, so the first half of my collected works thread is no longer working again. To see my website version of the campaign thread, with fully functioning pictures, please go to https://bigsmallworlds.com/

Offline ColonialRaptor

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Re: Making halberdiers with shouldered weapons -Tutorial!
« Reply #13 on: August 17, 2012, 12:49:31 AM »
Yeah. But where does that right arm that is holding the halberd come from? Which kid / model is that?? The bowed hand?
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Offline kwest

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Re: Making halberdiers with shouldered weapons -Tutorial!
« Reply #14 on: August 17, 2012, 04:37:51 PM »
The militia kit has loads of really good right arms to use. Loads of fantastic bits in there...

And it is cheaper per man than state troopers!

Some of the 5th edition Soldiers of the Empire arms may work too if you want a puffy look but don't want to sculpt... I've not tried it though.

Offline ColonialRaptor

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Re: Making halberdiers with shouldered weapons -Tutorial!
« Reply #15 on: August 18, 2012, 04:39:22 PM »
Cool thanks, I've got heaps of those arms sitting around so I will have to take a look through them. I suppose the arms that are holding rifles could also have the rifle cut off and used also.

This has also given me some ides for some other things I've been thinking about as well hmm.
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Offline Mordenkai

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Re: Making halberdiers with shouldered weapons -Tutorial!
« Reply #16 on: August 23, 2012, 07:43:14 AM »

Thank you very much for this tutorial.

I needed some reinforcements to my Halberd unit (wich is made out of converted 6th ed spearmen) and these guys were just perfect.

I used the arms/body for the 5th ed kit to give the puffy sleeves, and the the new halberd arms. I just followed your tutorial, and have already painted the first 'test' Halberdier.

Pics to show I'm not lying... ;-)





Now I just need to convert/paint 10 more, and the Horde is ready!

Game on.  :::cheers:::

-Mordenkai


Offline kwest

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Re: Making halberdiers with shouldered weapons -Tutorial!
« Reply #17 on: August 26, 2012, 11:28:01 AM »
Looks great! I'm really glad to see the tutorial works and have someone else use this idea :) Thanks for sharing :)