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Mage Knight Rattletails Refurbished


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Personal logo Sgt Slag Supporting Member of TMP writes:

Nice work, Bill. I am a huge fan of Mage Knight figures. Sadly, they are hard to find, and their prices are ever-rising.

MK made some figures which I've never seen elsewhere, by any company. Once example is their Zombie Centaurs. They were armed with a big hammer/maul, but other than that, they were excellent figures. I bought around 20 of them, to use as a unit in my 2e BattleSystem games. Unfortunately, I sold them off, and now I cannot find enough to reconstitute the Unit.

In my game world, I figure everyone burns their dead, to prevent them from rising as undead! For this reason, Necromancers need to get creative: either raise an army, on the battlefield (what I wanted the Zombie Centaurs for), or breed them (I have a number of dog zombies I picked up from another game, in the proper scale). Dogs were considered work animals, in medieval times, rather than pets. No reason a dog breeder would raise any eyebrows selling off his animals, and raising more.

I recently converted a MK chariot which had a Dwarf driver up front. I added steps ("a box"), to allow my smaller dwarf figures to see over the railing on it, in the back. I just applied The Dip to the chariot, inserted the box, and glued the painted riders into the box area, gluing the chariot to a base. Super fast, looks decent, and it will be a hoot to game with!

I really wish MK was still producing mini's. The Hero-click mini's are sometimes useful, but not so many are applicable to my fantasy games. I recently converted two Giganta figures into female Storm Giants, painting their flesh purple, and re-basing them, of course. They look fantastic. Need to get them onto the table, to kick some evil booty. Cheers!


Revision Log
7 January 2021page first published

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Personal logo Editor in Chief Bill The Editor of TMP Fezian writes:

In this hobby, we talk a lot about buying figures, basing figures, painting figures, and even storing figures, but we don't talk a lot about maintaining figures.

Rattletails

These are some Mage Knight Rattletails which have just emerged from my workbench after refurbishing.

Rattletails

I picked these up cheap years ago when the Mage Knight game tanked. They are pre-painted fantasy figures made of a bendy plastic.

Rattletails

Years ago, I ripped these models off their clicky-bases and rebased them on steel disks. I did some minor touch-ups to the paint jobs, and over-painted the colorful yellow, blue and red 'strength' colors. I used some texturizing medium to add 'mud' to the bases.

Rattletail

Fast forward to 2021, and I'm looking at using these figures in a new campaign. But I now hate the bases, and the figures have turned into dust magnets. (Well, I do live in a Victorian home, lots of charm but dusty!)

Rattletail

First step is to wash the figures with mild detergent. The models are not sticky to the touch, but something about the plastic, the paint, or the sealer (or the combination) really holds onto dust. I tried to be gentle, because these figures can get brittle with age.

Rattletail

I refurbished the bases by painting them dark gray, and flocking them with black sand. That's a look that works in both dungeon and on the battlefield.

Rattletail

Then I gave the models another coat of sealer, which will hopefully make them less clingy to dust.

Rattletail

And that's the end!