Now for those crossbowmen I've been teasing. I want mine to be state troops rather than militia but don't want to use those metal crossbow arms from 5th edition (
you know the ones). I've decided to convert them out of the handgunners that came in the 6th edition starter box, of which I have plenty. Here are the first two partially complete.

The crossbows are from the ever-useful militia box. The two biggest difficulties of this conversion are getting the crossbows to line up with handgunners' hands and using green stuff to touch up the areas where I removed handgunner equipment like cartridges and powder horns. The model on the right is a relatively easy conversion because he's using only one hand to handle his handgun/crossbow. I don't want a monopose unit though, so will include at least one of each of the four handgunner poses. Headswaps will hopefully do some extra lifting to make it less obvious how few different models there really are.
I've also been experimenting with magnetic bases and movement trays. This crossbowman has had his base glued to a sheet magnet. He's standing on a movement tray made out of plasticard sandwiched between steel sheet (top) and magnetic sheet (bottom). It works in the sense that I can put this combination inside a cookie tin, handle it very roughly and not have it move a millimetre. Actually removing casualties from the unit is however made hazardous by the strength of the magnets. You have to exert a lot of force, for which you need to grab the model itself rather than the base, and you risk crashing your hand into the other models as you overcome the inertia. Not sure where to go from here. Perhaps I could glue some paper on top of the steel sheet to weaken the bond between the model and the movement tray? Any ideas would be welcome.

If I go ahead with this design, I'll of course also add a plasticard strip along the front and sides to help keep the models in place. I've decided to go with a straight-up goblin green edge rather than something beveled and flocked to match the tops of the models' bases. It's the only right way. 8)