Deadzone - Thor Pattern Iron Ancestor - How I did it

In the Forgefathers list for Deadzone, a unit they have is the Thor Pattern Iron Ancestor, unfortunately there is no official model for it yet. Well the idea of them intrigued me, a melee oriented Dwarf dreadnought. The Thor Pattern Iron Ancestors are like the regular Iron Ancestor, but a little faster (actually can do a run move) and replaces any possible guns with 2 forge hammers. The additional bonus of wielding 2 hammers is better chance of hitting in melee.

Time will tell if this unit is even worth it as it is THE most expensive model (points wise) you can get for the game, and Forgefather models are already all generally more expensive. One of the challenges of playing Forgefathers I've found is you are usually outnumbered. These will have the infamous Iron Ancestor toughness to take down, but will it be worth it?

I really don't care. I wanted to make a big melee dwarf dreadnought and set about finding some ways to go about it. I saw a simple conversion another guy did with just taking a regular Iron Ancestor and giving it 2 hammers. Well I really didn't like the look of that and wanted to go for something a little more unique. So I stumbled upon Mantic's Dreadball Giant Iron Ancestor, and I got an idea. I liked the different look of the Dreadball one (like the neat little head wings) and the fact that it had 2 fists. Two fists that could be gripping something. Well I am a sucker for big 2 handed great hammers so I got the idea finalized in my head and ordered the model.

The model came pre-assembled like this, but luckily it is made of a softer pvc material, so cutting this up shouldn't be too hard. I am just grateful it's not metal.

Like a lot of my big conversions and reposing, it starts with cutting it up a bunch. This is no exception. The arms are going to need to be reposed to double grip a great forge hammer.

The big hands will be reposed as well. So they needed to be cut off.

Starting with the left hand, I cut off the cable and pins, and thumb. The thumb will be repositioned to grip the hammer. The other 2 digits I left intact because they will be holding the hammer from underneath and didn't need to be enclosed around it.

On the right hand, luckily the fingers are turned inward some, so they will be gripping the haft. The thumb was removed as well to create a more realistic hold.

The first thing I reassembled was the right hand gripping the hammer's bar. For the bar I am using a pole from an Ogor standard bearer. It seemed to be just the right thickness for what I needed. As you can see the fingers were already turned inward to wrap around the pole, and I glued the thumb back on, but in a better gripping position. With this now held, I can start posing the rest of the model around it.

Pinning will be used a lot in the reposing of this model, but I was careful to not glue any of the pins in place so I could finalize the positioning first. The right hand with pole is to be pinned on the right shoulder unit.

With pinning (again, no glue) I could get an idea how this guy was to hold the hammer. I wanted the hammer head to be slightly elevated to create a realistic pose.

I pinned the left arm and hand into place and finalized the overall pose. Notice I have not glued the left thumb in yet because I didn't want it to get in the way of gluing the pieces one at a time as this was going to need to be reassembled during gluing.

Using the above pose I could finally see what pose the right arm and hand needed to be in. So after gluing the pins in place, I had to create the cable and pins for that arm. Due to the angle being more extreme than before, the original pin and cable pieces were not long enough, so I made some new ones out of plasticard tubes you can get from Gale Force Nine. I got the variety pack a while ago at a game shop and it is being used on several of my projects.

I didn't get a shot of it, but I glued in place the right arm and hand holding the pole, so all I had to do with the left was glue it in place to where it rested under the pole. Now I was able to glue on the left thumb. The place it mounted on the hand was a little awkward so I cut out a tiny piece of plasticard to blend it with the hand. Everything so far has been glued in place.

Now that the hard part is over (getting the hold position complete), I am able to get to the embellishments. Like with the left arm, the right arm needed a new cable piece that I made out of plastic tubing.

With the pole and pose glued in final position, I noticed it was a little too bland, so I blinged it up slightly with some spare bits I had from an old Warpath Steel Warriors kit and some plasticard. Also on the right hand, the green stuff is filling in the hole on the back of the hand. I am pretty sure that was designed for this model being a dreadball figure so it could catch the ball, but this guy won't be playing dreadball on the battlefield. Now all that is left to be done is add the hammerhead! I was a little nervous at this point because I didn't actually have the head I was going to use in yet. I was still waiting for it to be delivered from Ebay.

After a week the hammer head finally arrived. It is an actual iron ancestor hammer head. It's just stuck in place with sticky tac to see if the look would work, and I got the feeling that it was a little too small. The hammer head was meant to be wielded one handed, so I will be bulking it up to look the part of a 2 handed weapon.

I started off by chopping it up into 3 separate pieces as shown, being careful to keep the cutting clean and inside the seems.

Then I measured out and cut out of thick plasticard some blocks. These are each 2 pieces thick of the plasticard.

It is then glued together and sanded even. I then bored a hole right through the center of it so it can mount strong on the pole.

Now this is more like it. I marked off on the pole where it stuck through and cut it down.

To cover the pole's end, I put on a small shield piece from some of my fantasy dwarf bits.

I pinned it on a 50mm base decorated to the street rubble theme and it's done! The only thing I didn't cover was a simple little dwarf face symbol I stuck in a hole in its back from my fantasy dwarf bits.

So I present to you Dunhill the Indomitable. I am super proud of this conversion and think it came together really nicely. I would love to get to painting all my Forgefathers and Enforcers, but I do have deadlines for my Zone Mortalis Tiles and Haemonculus Covens army right now.