by Peter Atkinson

For me, digging out a Mancrusher sprue is like that feeling you get when you put on an old pair of jeans and find a $20 in the pocket.  It famously contains the greatest Bit in Warhammer history, but the whole kit is absolutely stuffed with glorious plastic and every time I pull it out, I strike gold.  I reckon everyone’s got their favourite set of sprues like that, and mine’s the Mancrusher.

Well like plenty of people right now, I’ve got a garage full of old sprues and moths in the wallet, so I determined to square off the two with net zero hobby spend in 2023.  I’m only spending what I can fund from selling off abandoned projects and assorted junk, and massively limiting the outflow by kitbashing and converting as far as possible.  

This is the first of a new series in articles aiming to:

• Give you some ideas for making productive use of your old Bits on sprue
• Save a few dollars by getting access to new units without shelling out for the kits
• Identify specific sprues that will provide key Bits for your projects
• Suggest appropriate alternatives where you don’t have that specific Bit to hand

So it’s out with the old, and in with the upcycled.

“But I like to support GW”

I’ll support GW to the same extent they’ve supported those Gitmob, Forgeworld and Bonesplitterz armies they sold me.  I say this as a minor GW shareholder – I owe them as much as you do, which is to say fark all. They don’t need your sympathy dollars: it’s a business relationship and every dollar has to be earned, on the way out as on the way in.

I’m still buying some new minis, but mixing it through with a few scratch builds, as well as repurposing a lot existing stuff I own that GW stopped supporting.  Keep your friends close, and your hobby dollar closer.  

I’ve honestly had a lot of fun doing it, and come up with some unique minis that I reckon don’t look half bad.  I managed to help out a friend who had sniped 4 of the 5 Gobbapalooza minis on eBay by bashing together a perfectly passable fifth crew member for the one that he was missing, and put together a decent Squig Herder for myself too, because $55 for a single Grot (even a cool one) feels pretty punchy.

Today I want to show you how I put together a custom Beast Skewer Killbow.  When Big Grikk dropped I already had a whole bunch of starter-set Manskewer Boltboyz lying around, and I was keen to have the option of running the Regiment of Renown.  It’s mostly a novelty thing so screw paying $59 for the full kit – I’ve built mine for the cost of an empty base, and here’s how I did it.

Goldmine

The foundations of what we’re going to be building today are bits from the following kits:

• Mancrusher sprue
• Stonehorn sprue
• Ironblaster sprue
• Dankhold Troggoth sprue

These are all going to be mainstays of many conversions, but our starting point is Big Grikk himself: he will be built from an Ogor Beastrider.  And this is my first tip for Destro conversions:

Ogors with a Brute head always look dope.  They fit the scale like an iron glove.

His legs are built to be sitting down, so the idea is starting to take shape.  We’ll have an Orruk Beastrider sitting down on a “rock”, launching a missile from some kind of catapult apparatus.  And now we can launch our first raid on the Mancrusher sprue.

We’ll take that yoke, clip out the middle and that can be the Y-frame we launch our missile from:

A bodge of putty at the bottom will help keep it upright on the base. Now we can rattle through the next lot of key bits in sequence:

1) We need an appropriately massive projectile to lob across the board, and for that purpose we’ll use a Big Stabba shaft to stabb them biggly.  Kit: Savage Orruks

2) The beam going up and through the Y-Frame is taken from one of many unborn Scraplaunchers. Kit: Ironblaster

3) Any crossbow-kinda-deal is going to need a rope to pull back and release*, which could come from anywhere. As you can see there are already a couple of bits of raggedy rope available, and at a pinch we could use actual twine, but this one is from the Dankhold.  Kit: Dankhold Troggoth

4) Torso from an Ogor Beastrider – don’t worry, with their naked torso putting all that green flesh on display they’ll end up looking even orcier than orcs do. Kit: Stonehorn

5) This fella comes on the same base as a Mancrusher Gargant.  I did nick this one from a Mancrusher, but we’ll have to backfill that whenever we get round to assembling the giant so that will be the only thing we’ve purchased for the whole project.  Kit: 90x52mm base

6) Unless you take the extra step, these kitbashes can look a bit lightweight and spindly relative to a “proper” kit, so let’s thicken up the soup a bit.  To do that we’ll add a fleeing Grot, this time from the Mangler kit, although there are plenty of wee men in the Scraplauncher kit that could fill a similar role. We’ll also beef up the base with a couple of barrels from the Ironblaster.  Kit: Mangler Squig

7) The raised right fist is any old Ogor weapon hand with the weapon clipped off.  Simiarly, the banner pole comes from a Mournfang standard bearer (clipped off at the top and with a spike added on), giving him something to do with his left hand (other than “The Stranger”). Kit: Mournfang

Now anyone who’s built a Frostlord will have a couple of his buddies ready to use, and as you can see in the top of this photo, those bow-legs are built to straddle something other than the Miliput box:

It’s just somewhere for him to park his arse, so you could easily use a bodge of putty or an actual rock and be done with it, but in this case I used a spare Dankhold neck.  

Now we’ve got a mini on our hands. If you put it on the table, you’re putting your name to it, and when this thing is painted up I’d be more than happy to put my name to it:

The main skin colour here is Orruk Flesh, which was a Base colour that came out with the Kruleboyz release.  Despite being a Base colour it’ll probably need three coats for good coverage, but it comes up a treat:

Shaded with Athonian Camo and highlighted with Ogryn Camo. Nihilakh Oxide on the gut plate:

So there ya go: Big Grikk at your service, for the cost of an empty base.  I reckon the best place to run him is Big Waaagh personally, but my mate has been running a pretty wild list with one Warstomper, 9 Mancrushers and these guys.  

If you end up making one of these yourself, tag us on Twitter and we’ll share it around. Coming up next in the series will be how I stretched out a 3-man Ragerz kit to make 9 models…kinda.

Have a good weekend, nerds – see you on the other side.

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*Sigmar’s dad should have pulled back and not released.

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