Converting Goblins

Goblins are a great unit to field, especially since they can tie up units, which cost much more. However, to have any success in actually winning or tying combat with goblins you should field they in ridiculous numbers. Fielding 35 to 40 goblins isn't absurd, but more or less the correct size of a unit.

In this article I'll explain how you can get more goblins out of the same regiment box. This article owes a big thank you to Hertz ont da warpath, who came up with the idea, which I shamelessly copied (with his knowledge and only if I offered him a place in my wargaming on a budget hall of fame. Well, here you go!!!).

In this article I won't be doing any fancy modeling. I just use green stuff to make as much goblins as possible, without them looking to shabby. The modeling itself can practically be done by anybody who has the courage to undertake the project. All in all I looked more towards speed than to actually getting great looking models. When fielding hundreds of goblins you don't want to spend hours on one model.

First of, let's look at the content of the goblin regiment box. What do you get? Well, per set of two sprues (which normally gets you 5 goblins) you will get:
5 normal legs
5 riding legs
5 bodies
10 heads
5 right arms with spear
5 right arms with bows
7 left arms and some other stuff which you won't need consider

After we construct 5 goblins, what do we have left:
5 riding legs
5 heads
5 right arms (either spear or bow)
2 left arms.
With these parts we will try to make extra goblins, although I suggest you try and combining sculpted and regular parts on most of the models, because if you sculpt several things on each goblin you need to wait until the green stuff dries before going on to the next phase.

How it works

First of we take the 5 legs and glue them to a base (if you don't have spare bases you will have to buy them, sorry!). Next we take a small piece of sprue and cut it off at somewhat the height of a normal goblin body and glue them to the legs. This will be the armature on which the body will be sculpted. (Again, a great tip from Goblin Warlord Hertz and also easier than making a metal armature)

Next we wrap the armature in putty and give it the general shape of a goblin upper body (keep a standard goblin handy for reference). Make sure you leave some flat bits on the side to glue the arms later.

Before this is dry we shape a belly and the chest of the goblin. Don't pay to much attention to the chest, as it will mostly be lost behind the head. The belly should have a belly button and be slightly forward. Not very much detail needed here. This will be enough for the body.

Once dry we take the left over arms and glue them to the body. In this example I've made the goblins have hand weapons. I do this using various bits from my bits box, and reconstruct their weaponry using a method I learned Here.
This will look something like this:

Just to remind you, I'm not trying to sculpt a golden deamon here, just a goblin that I can put in a unit without much shame. Please bare in mind that I've made the upper body in something like five minutes. And that was even before I got the hang of it.
Painted up it looks somewhat better (And yes, it still needs a shield)

Need a hand?

By now you should have noticed that we don't have enough left arms to make this work. So what do we do about that? Of course, we model them!
Again this isn't a painstaking and difficult procedure. We simply want something that looks rather like an arm and is easy to construct. If you equip your goblins like I do they should have a large shield to cover up the most difficult to sculpt part (i.e. the hand).

The first thing I did was construct an armature. This meant clipping a paper clip and bending it into what I thought was an appropriate pose. I drilled a hole into the body and attached it. I covered the arm up in green stuff and made some dents with my sculpting tool. This should represent the upper arm muscles and elbow-joint. I hardly paid any attention to the lower part of the arm, because this will most definitely be behind the large shield. I did however put some dents into the part where the fingers would be. This took ten seconds and would look almost like fingers when painted. Again, don't spend too much time on it. You'll have loads of goblins in your army, if you want to make every single one perfect you'll be spending twenty years constructing your army.

After constructing the arm for this goblin, I stuck on the shield immediately. This was because frankly, the arm and hand looked bad when I just sculpted them.
But again, with paint it doesn't really show

Another way to create the arm is to sculpt it onto the body, thus eliminating the need of an armature. In my first attempt I in fact sculpted the arm to small to be proper goblin arms (oops!). So these took a little longer than they should have. But it can easily be done in just a few minutes.

Once painted and a shield attached, the will look great. And remember, again the shield will cover most of your work. So don't go practicing any golden deamon skills on the arms.

Using Wolf Rider legs

Once you have tried a few with normal goblin legs it is time to rebuild some mounted legs into normal walking ones.

The first step is to cut the legs on the upper side of the leg. I've tried cutting half way through and bending it into place, but this not only proved harder, it took longer as well. So just cut it and glue it into place.

Again, remember you'll be doing 40-60 of these, so don't go for the best look, in stead just make sure you do it fast.

The result after reglueing should look something like these:

All that is left to do is cut the feet and reattach in a standing position. Again, it's easier to cut and glue then to bend them. The result should be somewhat like the picture below. Although it doesn't seem well done the result when painted will be enough to ensure almost nobody will ever notice.

After this you can follow the steps above for creating torso and arms. Especially since you do it this way. The goblins become practically free! Remember this article is all about getting a few more goblins for the same price. But as I went along it not only enspired me to work more and more on this article, but I actually started working on goblins with some enthousiasm. Perhaps this is a good thing all around, because hopefully it'll get my new goblin unit finished soon. Until now I've always played with 4th edition golbins. Giving me no option but spears.

I also hope this article has inspired you to try these sort of small conversions for yourself, just like the original topic by Warlord Hertz originally inspired me and others to try it.