Adding a little more DOOOM!!

Convic is fast approaching (5 days away now), and as I mentioned earlier, I still have work to do. I don't have enough Flagellants to field both my list and that being used by a friend at the event. It was clever planning. As it currently stands I'm some 19 models short, and I'm running out of time. The end is coming! The END!! 

Sorry, just getting into the whole apocalyptic vibe. Anyway, I planned a long time ago to make a unit filler for my Flagellants to add some interest to the unit. I decided that I wanted to give them a little bell carriage to push around. It should aid them in their efforts to make a lot of noise and generally get people's attention. At the time (some 2 years ago now), I went on a quest to find a suitable bell. I had some difficulty, but eventually I located a little wedding bell. I say little, but it was still pretty big by 28mm standards (or 30mm, or whatever scale GW claim to be using these days). Nevertheless I figured I could make it work, but I followed this resolution up with absolutely nothing. The bell sat on the painting table and waited patiently whilst piles of modelling crap accumulated on top of it.

Well, my sudden need for more Flagellants brought things to a head, and coupled with my friend Pete's ability to print things in the third dimension, it seemed a good time to finally make use of the bell. I fired up Sketchup and started planning my bell carriage. After a bit of fiddling and scientific guesstimation, I came up with the following:

The bell carriage concept. The bell itself is just a place-holder to help me get the dimensions right - we didn't need to print a bell, after all. I already had one of those.

I decided I was happy enough with this layout, so I saved the various components and sent them off to Pete for conversion into the physical realm. In a dazzling display of efficiency, he was able to hand me the finished product the following day when he arrived at painting night.

The components of the bell carriage, along with the long-neglected bell itself.

Rather excited, I immediately started hooking the thing together. This required a bit of pinning to get it to stay in the right shape whilst the super glue did its thing, and I also realised that I was 1 axle short. This was unfortunate, but I was certainly not going to wait to print another one. Instead I grabbed a 6x1 block of Lego and attacked it with knives and stabbing weapons. It was just in the wrong place at the wrong time, and happened to be exactly the right length, and about the right height. Unlucky.

Once this was all done and the basic carriage was assembled, I grabbed a metal Mordheim Flagellant (the final wave of my Flagellants will all be repurposed Mordheim models) and added him as a bell ringer. He basically stands inside the bell and clatters about with his flail. He is without a doubt the deafest man in my army. I also added whatever suitable plastic components I could find.

It's gradually coming together. The skeleton on the side is from the plastic Giant kit, as is the millstone on the other side. The hooks and chains are from the Marauder and Empire Cannon kits. A few other dangly bits from the Flagellant kit were added, and then I used a couple of 6th edition Empire Spearmen shields as braziers for the flames on top.

He can sort of see where he's going. Not that he cares. He's too busy making a terrible racket.

The model as a whole is bigger than I might have liked. It takes up a 3x3 footprint in the unit, and really fills all of that space. For something so large, it doesn't really have all that much detail on it. This is in keeping with my general approach of trying to keep my models relatively simple so they don't take an eternity to paint. I also didn't anticipate having quite such a large empty space at the back of the platform. This not necessarily a problem - it leaves room to put something significant and interesting there. The problem was trying to work out what to do with the room.

It's not necessarily the final solution, but for now the plan is to put an Ogre there. They're big and ugly and they take up plenty of space. It's a perfect match. And I had already started work on a group of Ogre Flagellants anyway, before I realised that the bell carriage could be done in the timeframe available...

Check out my Ogre Flagellants. OK, so they're not much to look at now. They need a little work. A fixer-upper.

The bell carriage took up the space of 9 models, and I had 9 metal ex-Mordheim Flagellants that I had been busily stripping, but that was going to leave me 1 model short. So I figured I was going to have to follow through with my plan for at least 1 of the Ogre Flagellants anyway. It wouldn't be that much harder to work on 2 of them and put one of them on the bell carriage. It was a plan. In the end I spent the entirety of my time at the games club this week working with green stuff, but at least I had something to show for it.

Here they are, in all their blurry glory. Not the best pic, I'm afraid. The guy on the left is on a temporary base. He's the one destined to end up on the bell carriage.

Another shot. This one is more in focus, but darker. The question was raised over whether they were really Ogre Flagellants, or just Ogres in drag. The guys at the club are mean like that...

Both of the Ogres were given a flail, and dressed in a manner similar to the current plastic human Flagellants. It was slightly fiddly work, and I won't really know how things turned out until I try to paint them. I think they will be OK, though. The guy who will stand on the bell is using Ogre Bellower components. He's shouting the good word about the bad things to come. I would imagine he has to be pretty loud to be heard over the clanging of the bell right behind him.

At this point I have undercoated all the stuff shown above, as well as the 9 other Flagellants. This is good, because I think it's going to be a very busy week with some long evenings trying to get them ready for Saturday. I'm pretty sure it can be done. I'm just hoping I will have long enough to give everything a decent finish.