White Nun

I'm fairly new to Lego and up until now I've been purchasing joblots of used bricks as a way to get a start in on having enough bricks to build things. Today to my great surprise I discovered that the general store/emporium in the rural town where I live has Lego. Not huge quantities mind you, but they do have it. I always thought Lego came in big box sets that needed the sale of a kidney to buy, so I was really surprised when I saw the little Creator sets on the shelf...... Today I purchased the Creator 5864 set and I'm delighted with it. I wonder what I'll buy next week?

My new adventurer minifig, Major What'shisname, was busy poking about exploring and the soldier was on duty to watch out for him. Apparently there were rumours of Skeletons and other undesireables lurking in the area. I assembled that Treeman purely on impluse, but now I like him so much I think I'll make a few more. Thanks for the good comments and feedback.

Peace

Perhaps you don't get out so much (sigh). There have been the most dreadful disasters around the world with thousands suddenly having their lives cut short in cataclysmic natural events and here you are worrying about Mega Bloks having collectible figures.

This is my Elf army, - Forest Elves and High Elves combined, - that I've put together for Brikwars. The High Elves are still a little WIP, but able to be used. I still need to fit decals to the High Elf Swordmasters and redo their faces. The Forest Elf King and his War Captain with a Hero riding a Griffin. Note the Treeman.

I vectorised the cloak so it's a little better now.

Moments after I took delivery of a series 2 Adventurer I had his pith helmet off him and I was trying it on one of the Redcoat soldiers from the Pirate sets. I've never been bothered much about Pirates and I wasn't especially interested in musket era European wargaming, but tongue in cheek Colonial wargaming and Victorian Sci-Fi are just plain wonderful IMHO. I know it's not entirely accurate for details, but he's almost a British soldier from the pre-khaki period. I'm going to have to look into this some more and see what I can come up with. Some years ago I made a card model of an 'Aphid' model aerial gunboat for Space 1888, but I'm picking that one made from Lego would be just as much fun. (This is not my Gunboat btw. Mine was accidentially destroyed during a housemove)

I've made up my mind I'm going to play wargaming using Brikwars Rules. After years of buying great big rule books and army books that go out of date after a year or two I'm going to have a go at playing everything by Brikwars Rules. That includes my Warhammer figures, my no-name Chinese made knights/warriors/men at arms and my Playmobil army too. I don't know if I'm allowed to show pictures of my armies because examination by an expert has determined that some of them aren't Lego. But that aside I'm going to set myself up a table with all manner of terrain and things on it and i'll have a go at Brikwars. Any advice? - any last minute warnings before it's too late........?

Ok pictures...... I've given the High Elf the odd bit of touching up with a fine brush and acrylic paint. After trying out a printed sticker shield I found that shields look best printed on photopaper. The cloak is printed paper with the inside painted with blue acrylic paint. To my eye at least the dragon looks like it's been embroidered onto the cloak.

Look I really tried, but there is no way I can make a High Elf look good with a brown cloak. In the end I inexpertly modified Ed's High Elf torso artwork to have a blue cloak and things look so much better now. After a few attempts at making a print worthy cloak I used some fancy caligraphy parchment paper I had and that turned out reasonably nice. And so it should at around $1.00 a sheet! I tried double siding, but couldn't get things to line up well enough so I just painted the other side over with blue acrylic in a crosshatch brush pattern. It's the inside of the cloak and you're not going to see it much anyway. Besides it saves on printer ink. Sealing with an art spray works well; - I used a matt finish one, but I would like to try out a gloss one just to see how it looks. By sheer accident I printed out some blue cloaks on a sheet of paper that had a little art seal overspray on it and I ended up with a really nice effect that I might use on one or two High Elves just for the fun of it. Pictures soon, - I've got stuff hanging up drying all over the place at the moment.

I wondered if that was so. That was certainly the impression I got from reading through the rules.

This is my very first High Elf conversion using Ed's artwork. I used one of those awful blue lollypop Castle knights as the basis and I must say that the improvement is considerable. No lollypop blue castle knight will be safe from now on High quality print onto an A4 sticker sheet using my HP Deskjet printer and the sticker has been sealed with PVA glue like I usually do. The face isn't quite as good as I would like, but I'll see how I go once I get some decal film. I still need to make this wee fellow a cloak, but I'll get round to that soon.

One Elf! - but he'll get lonely! The head situation should be fine as I've ordered a whole lot of blank yellow heads and some sheets of clear decal paper so I can use ED-209's artwork to create a range of expressions in the ranks. The MB Griffin is a really nice piece (It's not a MB King Arthur set flapping wings Griffin btw), - I've even sometimes used him as a proxy in 'serious' Warhammer Fantasy Battles wargames back in the days when I didn't have a proper official Griffin model. I got lucky because he arrived unexpectedly in a job lot of bloks along with a MB Phoenix (which is nice enough too as it happens).

As a wargamer rather than a collector I don't really have any spare figures from other themes unfortunately

I've broken the figures down and the armour is going to be re-decaled and used by my skeleton army. The helmets are going in the bits/scrap box and the knights themselves are going to be converted into Elves for my Elf army. That will be the plan for any others of these awful knights I find anywhere that are cheap enough for me not to care.

I suppose I'd just about have to stand in a queue for this, but if anyone has any Series 3 Elves they want to sell I'd be keen to buy them.

Thanks Smittyfan. The only thing is I don't think I can show off the picture here of my Elf Hero mounted on a Mega Bloks Griffin. He looks really good too At least buying custom Elf helmets will give me extra Elf hair/ear pieces that I can then use to convert ordinary John Doe minifigures into Elves. Yay for Elf torso decals

New faces are definitely on the to-do list. All those little staring eyes watching me are starting to get on my nerves Two more Elves arrived in the post to swell the ranks since the photo was taken, more should arrive later in the week.

This is my small Elf army so far, - may their ranks increase! There is a local trader who supplies sets of Elf armour and weapons and I'm definitely going to be buying more from him.

They were on sale on our local internet auction site here in NZ. I didn't have a proper look at the pictures and since I wasn't aware of the finer details of Lego minifigs I didn't notice the 'crash helmet' style helmets. I have been using Bricklink to buy shield and weapons and the like, but haven't tried buying minifigs that way yet.

Oh my word Tomcat, - your Elf army is amazing! I love your freehand painting and it looks just so very effective blending in well with the original Elf figure so very seamlessly. I've been collecting Lego Elves as there seems to be a lot of them being offered for sale on the main auction site here in NZ. I'm not sure what number of Elves I'm up to at the moment, but I know I want MORE! I've been buying old joblot down-on-their-luck minifigs too so I can convert them to Elves. Having been a keen miniature wargamer for years I've got a steady hand for painting figures so I think I'll have a go too.

What an amazing project, I'm going to be following this with interest.

Yes sir, - lesson learnt!

Having been a keen wargamer for some years with both 'serious' models and toyshop figures I thought I'd buy some Lego knights to see if they would make a good basis for an army. Because I live in a rural district miles and miles away from anywhere that sells Lego I thought I'd order the knights on-line. When they arrived I was horrified to discover that almost all their helmets were based on what looked like a motorcycle crash helmet; - well all except the knight Karzon and King Jayko. Because the King had a crown on his head and Karzon (has to be a bad guy) had a proper bronze Dark Ages looking helmet with no visor. The rest just plain didn't look convincing. Wargaming with toys gives me a high tolerance for the unlikely, but no, not this time. Not meaning to talk dirty or anything but sad to say I think I'll be going back to buying up old toybox refugee Mega Blocks Dragon sets if I want some knights.