Salvaging something scaly

Recently I managed to find a chance to dig through my Orcs and Goblins and do a proper inventory of what I still have sitting around in boxes, waiting for their chance to be painted and played with. It took a long time. One of the things that I did establish is that I have a good reserve of Wyverns and riders...

3 Wyverns and 5 Riders (3 old Azhags!). Actually, it's 2.5 Wyverns. The silver one is missing bits. Like a head, neck and shoulders.

A friend dropped past whilst I was doing this and suddenly got excited at the prospect of how many Wyverns one could fit into a list under the new 50% Lord restrictions introduced with the End Times. For 2600 points (the size of Moonstruck, the next major tournament), the answer is 4. You can jam 4 Wyverns into a single list, and have quite a few points left to equip them. Apparently this is enough to be exciting and/or silly, and now I am under instructions to paint up 2 more Wyverns to accompany the 2 I already have ready to go. Oh, and the second Arachnarok. Kill me now...

Anyway, I am an idiot and agreed to this plan. And if I actually survive painting the second Arachnarok, I will be very happy to have it finished. But I have decided to focus on the Wyverns to be begin with. Specifically I am working on the one with no head, neck or shoulders. Details, really. It's not like half the model is missing. 



How does one end up with a headless, neckless Wyvern? Actually this one is pretty lucky. He was once wingless as well. I think a friend bought the thing on sale at one point, specifically to get the wings. I paid a tiny amount to take possession of the rest of the model. You never know - maybe I could come up with a use for a flightless Wyvern. Then another friend wanted to buy the head and neck from me, to turn a normal Dragon into a 2-headed Chaos Dragon. Sure, why not? It's not like I was using it anyway. Maybe I could make a big Dragon Ogre out of the bottom half of the model (this was before the Shaggoth had a proper model).

Since then, the terrible pattern of Wyvern dismemberment has been somewhat reversed. A friend wound up with a spare set of wings, so I took possession of those. After all, I had a wingless Wyvern in a box somewhere. And I bought some High Elf Dragons, and that kit comes with 2 heads. The spare head would work fine for a Wyvern! Now all I needed was a neck and shoulders...

Wyverns, Dragons, whatever. They're all the same from the neck up, right?

Unfortunately this is the point where my convenient discovery of alternate bits comes to an end, and I am forced to use wires and putty. Whatever, it's achievable. Here's my progress thus far.

Fear me!

A bit further along the process, we're actually starting to resemble a creature. 2 of those wires were twisted together to make the neck and then spread again at the end to ensure the head wouldn't spin around on a single point of contact. I have positioned the wings quite differently from how this Wyvern model is normally assembled (I have 2 complete versions), just to further differentiate between them.

Obviously this is only the first stage. The next effort will involve trying to give it some convincing detail. And only then will I discover that I can't fit a rider onto it. See, planning!

Tonight is painting night, so I should be able to have a good crack and adding some detail.