The Conversion Corner: Moria Goblin Captain with Shield

In our last edition of “500 under 50” we looked at Moria, and the list we threw together had a Goblin Captain leading a small warband. Rather than suggesting you buy the Commanders pack and spend another £20, I thought it would be a nice opportunity to start of a small and most likely infrequent series “The Conversion Corner”, in which we'll have a look at some interesting conversion ideas.

Kicking it off we have the aforementioned Goblin Captain. The conversion was in an old copy of Battle Games in Middle Earth Magazine, just in case anyone think I'm trying to take credit for it!

This is my captain painted up:

If you want to have a go at making your own, you'll need 2 Goblin Warriors. One armed with a bow, specifically one of the model who has just fired an arrow (if you're following our 500u50, you'll notice I left 1 Goblin with a bow out of the list) and one goblin armed with a sword, specifically the one holding his sword up in the air. (You'll need to source this goblin yourself as our list used up all of the sword toting Goblins, but even if you don't your list will only be 5 points down).

First thing we're going to do, is cut the arm off our sword Goblin. I cut it at his shoulder, just to make sure we don't damage the arm in anyway.

Once you've cut the arm off, you'll want to trim it down to the right size. We're going to cut the arm so we're just left with the bracer and sword. You should have this once you've cut it.

Next, we're go to very simply cut off the bow of out warrior, and cut his right arm just where his arm meets his bracer. This is what you want to have after you've cut:

You can see that it's starting to take shape now. Lets have a look at we should have now:

Next, we just need to attach everything. Add a small drop of your chosen glue to the arm and attach the arm in whatever position you like. You'll see that I've stuck my model into a bit of blu-tac on an old paint pot, this is just so I can move the model around without touching it directly and accidentally risk touching and moving the piece as it dries.

It's starting to look the part now! We only have one more step to do! I forgot to get a picture of it, but the small plug at the back of the shield needs to come off so it fits to our goblin. This is easily done with a hobby knife and a pair of clippers. Just clip it off and make sure its nice and smooth so the shield and arm can touch each other to form a nice contact point.

This is the bit to remove

Glue on the shield and once it dries, you should have this:

And here he is! I made an unhelmeted version, just so I don't have 2 identical models, and you'll notice I cut the sword arm a little different aswell, just to show you have a few options! I had a blast making this captain, I even threw together a third one! This one, I cut the bowman's arm at his sleeve and used the whole sword arm to give him a different pose, and glued the shield on at a different angle. I also cut the arrows out of his quiver, since he doesn't have a bow, and I gave him a modelled base I had in my bits box, I think it's from Warhammer AoS Shadespire.

Well, I hope you have a go at making your own Goblin captain! If you do, feel free to show us, I'd love to see what you come up with!