A Gripping Saga (or mind your fingers lads!)

It's always a good idea to plan in advance - but that would spoil half the fun.

When I was putting together the plastic Thegns I didn't think much beyond getting them into some reasonable poses. I had noticed that the plastic spears were a bit on the chunky side and thought they'd be better with wire spears. Anyway, I could live with them the way they are - or so I thought. The trouble is, once the idea was formed I couldn't get it out of my head. Those plastic spears just had to go!

This would not have been a simple job even before starting construction. The spears are moulded as an integral part of the arms. Some are connected not only to the hands, but to the forearm with a thick block of plastic bridging the gap between spear and arm. This was going to require major surgery - and I was already well into painting the figures.

Deep breath. Armed with sprue cutters, pin drill and plenty of fresh scalpel blades I set to work. The first job was to clip off the spears neatly either side of the hands. This gave a nice flat surface into which I was able to drill a hole through each  hand. After that, it was simply (ha!) a matter of carefully trimming away the excess plastic around the hands and forearms. Fortunately as the figures are plastic, the clipping, drilling and trimming wasn't too painstaking. There were a few casualties; a severed thumb here, a sliced finger there. No - not mine! This required reconstructive surgery with Milliput to re-sculpt the missing digits and restore proper grip. I'm no sculptor, but I was reasonably happy with the result.

The miracle of Dark Age plastic surgery

The forearms on some of the figures were going to require similar post-op reconstructive treatment, re-priming and painting, but the damage was relatively minimal.

After surgery and re-arming with wire spears it was back to the painting queue for the Thegns...

...where they joined their more sensible (and thus uninjured) comrades who had eschewed spears in favour of swords.

Okay, so now I can stop agonising over the spears. Next time, I'll remember to fix them before construction. Now I come to think of it, I wonder if it was such a good idea to fix the shields on before painting? 

Coming out of the Dark Ages

A while back I picked up a few frames of Gripping Beast plastic Saxon Thegns off eBay. I'm not really sure why as I had no plan to build a Dark Age army. You know how it goes. Impulse purchase. I suppose if I have to justify it, I was a bit curious about plastic figures and their potential for customisation and wanted to find out what all the fuss was about. (Okay, I have a lot of catching up to do). This seemed a cheap way to find out and if I messed up completely it wouldn't hurt too much.

So, the figures arrived and were duly put away in the wargames cupboard where - you guessed it, they remained untouched for many a month.

Fast forward to the past month and I finally got around to putting some of the figures together. I know some wargamers find putting plastic figures together a trial of patience, but I found it rather therapeutic and relaxing. There's something about the smell of liquid polystyrene cement that wafted me right back to my childhood days of Airfix kits. (Serious note - inhaling the fumes isn't recommended. Bad for your health, right). Of course back when I was in short trousers the cement was stringy stuff out of a tube that oozed out of seams and joints, got all over your fingers and always made mess of clear aircraft canopies. We have progressed.  Yes, I could have used Cyanoacrylate 'Superglue' but it just doesn't have the same nostalgia and anyway, experimenting with repositioned heads and limbs is a pain with contact adhesive. And I hate sticking my own fingers together.

So, after a happy hour or so I had put together a dozen or so Thegns. Not the greatest sculpts. The poses are a bit limited, which did reduce my options a bit. Some of the faces tend to be slightly cartoony and detail is a bit soft in places but, hey they're perfectly acceptable for the price.

After basing and priming I got down to painting. Stay tuned. Progress reports to follow.