The Marauder Sorcerer MM90/1A

In the early years of my 3^rd edition collecting quest, I was but a mere student, with little to no disposable funds. I was paying for University and at the same time we had a young lad crawling around the house (diapers are not cheap!). So I had to rely on Ebay bargains and lucky lots (meaning to find a few desirable figures in a bigger lot of mostly less desirable figures, hidden gems).

I was doing quite well, having secured a large part of the Perry Citadel miniatures and quite a few of the Morrison Marauder line. However one figure was eluding me, the sorcerer. This figure was selling a minimum of 5 fold what any other Marauder miniature was doing at that time, sometimes going up to a 100 Euros for the individual miniature. Yes it's a very cool miniature, great pose, awesome helmet, but I figured there should be just as many sorcerers around as there are other Marauder Chaos Dwarfs around. This price was not only absurd but also just simply too high at that time.

Since back then I was trying to build a playable Chaos Dwarf army completely out of 3^rd edition style figures I had to come up with a solution. I didn’t know of any other suitable miniature candidate for the sorcerer role so I decided to make my own. Now mind you, I absolutely had no experience in sculpting whatsoever, all I had done was some green stuff gap filling and some small conversions, so completely unchartered territory for me.

I gathered my tools, a tooth pick, a big needle stolen from wife’s sewing kit and a roll of GW green stuff. Luckily the internet was there to lend a helping hand. I found some tutorials online explaining the basics of building a frame or armature and some other useful tips. So I set about by plugging a paperclip into a piece of eraser and started bending it until I was satisfied with the overall shape. I made sure it was height wise comparable to the other 3^rd edition Chaos Dwarfs miniatures.

Then it was time to make some design decisions. One part I always really like about the marauder chaos dwarfs were their full plate armours. And I especially loved the miniatures with the plate armour feet, as seen on MM90/2D. This design seemed achievable to my novice eye. So I set to work and started with the feet, this was tougher than I thought, especially getting the armour plates to overlap convincingly and to keep the feet approximately the same size and shape.

Then the pose, I wanted the sorcerer to exuberate a menacing and scheming feel, truly evil sorcerer-like. At the same time I wasn’t comfortable yet with the idea of sculpting a complete plate armour torso. So to solve this problem I went for the fully cloaked body, this way I didn’t have to sculpt anymore armour, because the feet had been tough enough. Then the decision on beard yes or no; hands bare, chainmail or glove; weapon staff or axe. Since I was quite proud of myself solving the plate armour issue with a cloak I decided to cloak up everything, beard, hands, arms, all of it! So I outlined the rough body shape of a slightly hunched dwarf that was hiding something under his cloak, plotting away on all kinds of evil plans (insert evil laughter). Again the cloak was much tougher than anticipated, making folds look realistic is quite hard. I achieved it by rolling up tubes of greens stuff, positioning them on the right place on the body and then smoothing them into the miniature shape. I think I must made a made at least 3 or 4 layers until I was happy with the result.

Then on the last part, the head; face or helmet or combination (open helmet). Again I opted for what I thought would be easiest to sculpt a full metal helmet. For the design I took inspiration from my favourite MM90 dwarf, the ball and chain wielding MM90/4B. I love the helmet on this model, it even resembled the back then newly release plastic chaos warrior helmets.

The toughest part of the helmet was to make it symmetrical and actually suitable to put on a head, like eye holes in the right place etc. So there you have it that’s how I ended up sculpting Chaos Dwarfs (and some other stuff). Oh yeah, of course the result, I present Azhback the Grey (roughly translates to ashtray in Dutch, I had a reason for that name, but can’t remember it anymore@

first picture from stunties.com, second picture painted version by Clam with added horns http://clamshellsandseadogs.blogspot.ae/

By the way, one thing still eludes me about the MM90/1A sorcerer, why is he carrying a hand grenade on his belt? (painted by DAGabriel)

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And in the green, courtesy of Clam: