Trebuchet

My Bretonnians need a trebuchet [actually 2, lets see I can muster enough determination to build another!], but the official one is expensive, and as I have many bits and plastics lying around, might as well build one!~

Any seasoned Bretonnian players should be familar with
http://www.roundtable-bretonnia.org/index.php?option=com_frontpage&Itemid=1

A fantastic site where all the knights and generals of Bretonnia gather and discuss tactics, modelling and everything Bretonnian !

As I scoured through the postings, some of the dudes there have made their own trebuchets from scratch and even cast them !

Rafael de Bois et Guilbert (Rafael) 's trebuchet

So, first of, I have some square rods lined up according :

The square rods are cutted up and glued, with a thin strip of plastic glue in between the rods with two studs to resemble metal works with bolt-ons.

 Two were made.Make sure the dimensions are the same so they can fit later.

The counter-weight are made from light weight foam! They are about 1cm thick so two pieces are glued together with PVA and cut to good shape.

Some spare foam are cut to be glued to the base later to resemble rocks [ammo] lying around for ye peasants to load them into the trebuchet. The "leather" rock holder is from a thick card, later to be soften with wet PVA.

The main pole was from a disposable chopstick, with a bit of a jeweller's chains attached by hanging a paperclip to it. The counter-weight "rock" are glued with 2 strips of cardboard from those postcards.

A shield shape was cutted from those free postcards and glued to the rock counter-weight too.

The rope were some kite strings but it wasn't thick enough! So I twist 2 strings together by using a drill gun, but before that, I wet them with PVA glue so they'll stick togther!

After assembling all the pieces together:

It was quickly brushed with black acrylic as a primer, then painted up !

The finished product :

Onwards to lobbing rocks at the enemy !!

Chimera on the Cheap

While shopping, I came across this pack of cheap plastic animals :

Something tells me this is dying to be converted, and I remember my Bretonnian damsels might just need a Chimera for the Lore of Beasts spell when they cast Transformation of Kadon...hell, you might just need it for a DnD game!

So off we go!

The Chimera is supposed to have a lion head, a goat and a dragon, so I google the web for some pic reference besides the one in the GW website, one of the pics :

(picture from http://iamaguardian.com/310/panels-look-at-genetic-engineering-of-%E2%80%9Cchimeras%E2%80%9D-in-uk-and-germany/)

The pack does'nt have a dragon's head! So how?? You can either substitute it with a dragon head bit you can find on ebay, or any dragon toy figure of appropriate size, but with the art of poorhammer, I used the Rhino head that came with it LOL...

They are then pinned and hotglued to the lion's body.
The material is a little bit of a softplastic, so you can drill and pin it with paperclip easily.
Make sure the hotglue is hot [!] so the plastic will melt properly and glue to the surface, and any gaps are also filled with hotglue. You can do it with greenstuff  if you happened to have some lying around. Hotglue works fine too.

A part of spare wings I got from ebay from some abandoned project was added to the body, again by pinning.

It is then hotglued to a 50mmx100mm plasticard base, with 2 dressmakers pins drilled up from the bottom of the base thru 2 of the chimera's legs to make sure its tought enough to withstanding some rough handling when playing on the gameboard [IF I ever get to play]

The horns of the goat and rhino were sharpened by carefully carving it with my trusty knife. It is then brushed primed black with cheap acrylics :

They are then painted with Vallejo's paints and a layer of white wood working glue [or PVA glue] is smear onto the base, then added basing sand from armypainter [brown battleground] or you can use fine sand or cat litter. Give it another coat of watered-down PVA glue after it dries to ensure the sand doesn't fall off easily. You can add flock or bigger stones for better effect.

The completed work:

Done! The cheap-mira! HAHAH I think it's pronounced "Kai-me-rah" lol..

Thanks for viewing.