The Great Mage Knight Conversion

Half way through working through my idea for the Murky Caves (my Origin’s game for SBH), I knew that I was going to need a bunch more miniatures if I was going to have enough to run the dungeon as I wanted. I had bought a bunch of D&D singles (pre painted plastic miniatures), but it was just not going to be enough. After determining exactly how much I had spent on stuff, I remembered that I had a lot of old Mage Knight figures that hadn’t seen the light of day for a while.

Preparing the Figures

I needed to get the miniatures off click base. There were two main reasons for this. First the base is 1.5” around which was too big for my purposes (most of my stuff is on a 1” base) and second, I had to hide the click nature of the miniature.

1. I found the best tool for the job is a razor blade scraper (used to remove paint and such from glass). Carefully slide the blade under the miniature until it pops off. Some were relatively easy and some took a little work.

2. I found a great deal on wooden disks online somewhere so I wanted to use them. The only major problem is that superglue won’t attach a miniature to the disk. In the end, I used a two-part epoxy and it worked great. Remember that the fumes that are produced are dangerous – have decent ventilation! As you can see I have two wooden disk sizes available a normal 1” disk and a larger 1.5” disk.

3. After the epoxy dries (mine only took about 10 minutes), paint the base black. This is mainly due to the fact that all my D&D miniatures are a simple black base and they fit right in.

(From Left to right: a starting MK figure, the scraper used, the same model off the base, the epoxy I used, the wooden disks, a model on a disk and the figure on the black painted base)

I hope to go back and repaint some of the MK figures. Most of my come of the earlier sets and the paint job is really bad. Hokey in some respects! I’d also like to finish the bases on some of them to make then stand out less, but it’s definitely not a priority.

(You can see the number of empty bases from the now converted figures)

Most of my MK collection is from the dungeons series that came out. I have the whole line of heroes that I should go ahead and convert as well. More so now since I really don’t have enough of playable mage knight figures!

More painted miniatures?

Yep, I can't believe it either, but while I was finishing those boxers, I finished painting some fantasy figures I had in various states of completion. I like the cleric one so much (mini from Privateer Press) that I made an upcoming scenario for her. With my vacation done, I’m not sure when I’ll get back into painting, but I have plenty of unpainted Warmachine and Hordes models that could keep me busy until… well, forever!

In other news, Fantasy Flight Games were selling off their stock of Confrontation and AT-43 models for 66% off and I couldn’t resist getting my hands on some fairly cheap, pre-painted plastic miniatures (most boxes were 10 dollars apiece). In the end I spent way too much, but I now have a good selection of models from the Army of the Griffin and the Army of the Wolf. I’m definitely going to be using them in an upcoming scenario!