Not melting down and making new ones... but retasking under a new banner
Is it just me or have you chaps ever looked through your lead mountain and thought "I really should do something with all these..."
I currently have a deal of ancients left over from previous stalled projects and assorted figures collected from scrap figure piles at shows going back 20+ years from Essex, Irregular, Chariot, Minifigs and Donnington.
Even the older castings have a lot of potential (otherwise why have them in the first place eh?) so I thought these old soldiers deserve to be taken out of obscurity and retirement...
15 Hoplites are being retasked as Spartans, Thespians and assorted members of the Peloponnesian League
8 archers, 8 javelins for use as skirmishers
24 Persian archers
a dozen infantry command
24 Persian/Median bow and javelin armed cavalry
4 Scythian horse archers
3 Persian armoured cavalry command
3 Parthian Cataphracts
A Persian Command Chariot
For allies I have the makings of a Scythian DBA to provide more skirmish infantry and horse archers
I even have 20 Early republican Roman infantry and 3 peltasts and 4 Carthaginian archers
I'm thinking it would not be too much trouble to finish these off and I'd be able to create a semi historical Achaemenid Persian army based loosely around Cyrus and the Ten Thousand. If I seed this lot with a minimal amount more - some shield bearing Sparabara to protect the archers and some Heavy cavalry - that might complete the job. I'd then have at least one ancients army to pit against my Han war machine...
Neil
Good thoughts Neil.
I often re purpose figures when a game is imminent.
Just a quick rebase and some paint could make "these" into "those". Probably have to be from the same period though.
This also extends into scenery a lot for me. A house gets converted into an objective. A hill gets cut in half , patched and becomes a smaller hill. I did this with some redundant hills by "the scene". They are good hills but were the wrong size.
martin :)
I kinda agree Martin,
While I can stretch Thermopylae period Hoplites 480BCE to Cunaxa 401BCE, the Romans from c.200 - 146BCE are a bit of a stretch... shame really cos they'd make a good unit of Mercs.
I've also rediscovered some unfinished scenery - some past attempts at Medieval huts/houses in expanded poly, card and match sticks from 25years ago...
Now I have the chops to have a stab at finishing them off too... all I need are some warm sunny days and a bucket load of milliput! ;D
Neil
I repurposed a load of Italian WW2 figures into a Greek company. They had the same style of uniform, just a different colour.
John
I have a real smorgasbord off ancients mainly classical types - Punic Wars, Successor types I think. To be honest I have no idea what they are other than men with pikes, swords or slings.
Im going to sit down and baase them for Conquerors amd Kings, and they can probably represent half a dozen armies if you dont look too closely.
My most recent project was to convert 3 US WW2 artillery men into Union gunners with new slouch hats and a repaint.
Mike
Yes, in the sense that some Italian condottiere and WotR figures from the later C15th have made it into the early Italian Wars. Also some ACW figures have made it into the ranks of my FPW republican French forces and French WWI. Also some 1914 surplus French have been repurposed into the French FPW republican forces.
The wide range of PP figures, their compatibility between ranges and the extensive variety of available head swaps lends them to being repurposed.
In particular have found a lot of cross-over within and between the Vietnam and AK47 ranges, and have a project on the go that combines figures and heads from these two. I may even write an article on it for The Mill once complete.
Simon
In our ancient gaming this can be known as morphing - pushing figs which are really one things t stand in for another.
This works for a lot of in period stuff and is ok but there are limits. eahc person has their own level of where those are though.