The Eagle Griffon Has Landed : Pt I

I've finally got my hands on the plastic High Elf Griffon kit from GW's Warhammer Fantasy Battle Island of Blood boxed set, picking it up for a very reasonable price on Ebay and have set about my 'admittedly slightly bonkers' conversion project for the Captain of my 8th Company 'The Talons' of the Blood Drinkers Chapter.

During the planning stage the biggest hurdle I had to cross was what to do about the riders legs? The Antipope had already rightly identified that the Elf riders legs were molded to his mounts body. Looking at a similar project I found whilst doing research (it appears I'm not alone in my dreams of 40k Griffons) by Aedes over on Warseer, I felt that his approach, whilst a laudable effort, looked a bit cobbled together for my liking, it just didn't flow; I wanted my finished piece to be an example of Marine and Griffon in perfect harmony, to look like they belonged as one miniature.

So it was that I decided to keep the Elf legs, now I just had to find a suitably heroic Marine that I could 'blend' with the High Elf Armour of the lower body. I found a suitable candidate in the Emperors Champion miniature (who had been sitting around gathering dust for several years) I'd already decided that the 8th should have a slightly different look to them and that the 'Crusader' style helmet gave an excellent sleek look to these 'Air Cavalry' Marines and who better to lead them than this noble and imposing Astarte?

Firing up the Dremel (which is a boon for any miniature modeller) I began the delicate work or cutting and sanding.

After the cut I had a few nice items for the bitz box and ended up with this result; the pose isn't fixed yet, I was just using white tac to gauge how it was all coming together. As you can see I've also left the Elf sword and flowing material in place, this not only helps to cover the waistline join but also IMO adds to the 'Knightly' feel of the miniature.

The upper and lower portions of the body are not matched perfectly to scale (Elves being size zeros compared with Super Human Astartes) but I'm hoping with some judicious use of Green Stuff and a few well placed purity seals and other sundry equipment, I should be able to hide the discrepancy well enough.

In Part II of the project I'll be adding the Captains weapon arm, securing the pose with pinning and Green Stuff and adding some subtle bionics to the Griffon to help with the transition to a 40K looking beast.