Making miniatures - converting the models from the Maelstrom's Edge boxset!

After working on Maelstrom's Edge for about 4 and a quarter years, designing the fluff and writing hundreds of thousands of words of stories set in our new universe, it was amazing to finally get the box set in the post and see the models we'd spent so long creating. I'd had a few of them earlier, but most of these were as new to me as to our backers! 

As well as a writer I've always been a gamer and hobbyist. I have a big space wolf/space marine army, as well as tau and IG in various states of assembly. Making stories and customising the models to fit that were always the most enjoyable thing for me - I spent a lot of time kitbashing Necromunda gangers out of pretty much every different sprue I could find. My sculpting and painting isn't as good, but I have a lot of fun creating custom poses from multipart plastics. 

So, with all of the sprues in hand, I set out to see what I could make from my Epirian and Karist sprues. My photography isn't the best, but hopefully people get the idea! 

First up, the Epirian robots. I'd had a play with the Contractor sprue before, but this was my first opportunity to play around with the Hunter, Scarecrow and Drone sprues, which are so much fun to kitbash. First off, a Hunter, armed with Maglock Chaingun, Supressor Dual Machine Gun and Strike Missiles. I put the Chaingun on the other arm to get an aiming pose, and used green stuff to fill in the gaps between the arms and shoulders to enable a wider stance. The Strike missiles are easy to pose if you slice the bottom mount off and then rotate the missile itself. 

The Scarecrow is even more customisable. I made some steps from plasticard so that the multi-jointed legs could climb up it, and cut off the elbow joint from the Clingfire Sprayer so that I could put the Railrifle on the left arm. I'm quite happy with how easy it was to make such a dynamic pose suited to the Scarecrow's behaviour as a lone bot patrolling, taking out intruders from a distance. 

This is my first Spider drone. The main ability of the four-legged ground drone is the way they hug the terrain, their bot protocols giving them a choice of three different bonuses based on utliising the cover of the buildings and rubble around them. I wanted to bring this across in my squad, so I've tried to create a pose where the spider is crawling up a piece of building (made from heavy plasticard with a bunch of bits from the terrain sprue), keeping its profile low to avoid enemy fire. There's not actually any conversion done to the spider other than twisting and bending each leg so that the foot is flat on whichever surface it touches - I did this after I'd made the terrain. 

Lastly there's my first attempt at a Mature Angel. These are just as much fun to model as they are to write about. Apart from the core of their torso, most of the alien body of the Angel is made up of morphing flowing void gel, which means they can adapt their limbs to suit the situation, creating claws, legs, tentacles or limbs as suits them. This was a relatively simple hack to display that, twisting the clawed forelimbs and then using the two additional claws plus some green stuff to give them two additional legs, giving them a nice crab-like feel. 

I'm using a bone-coloured scheme for my Karists - the Tempest above being the first I finished, which I think should complement the deep purples and blacks of the Angels really nicely. I'm not sure about the metallic gun, I feel that could be made more interesting, suggestions welcome! 

More to come in future as I explore the possibilities of the other sprues and start painting in earnest, but just wanted to show what is sitting on my desk inbetween writing sessions!