Kitbashing and the Slothrog

The Undercity contest is now officially closed as of an hour ago. I have 16 submissions in hand and as usual you my lovely, mad readers have outdone yourselves. Tonight I weigh all the various bits and make hard decisions, tomorrow announce the winners.

In the meantime I have been digging on this great little article from Gary Gygax about fantasy Chainmail battles in 1972. As I wrote on Google Plus, I love the whole playful DIY ambiance of the article. At the time there were no little metal fantasy figures commercially available and you had to make do by kitbashing your own.

Reading through that piece you see Gygax joyfully talking about converting plastic giant sloth toys into balrogs, 1/72 (that's 20mm) Airfix “Robin Hood” figures into hobbits, plastic toy 54mm Indians into trolls, and 40mm Elastolin Turks into menacing orcs.

All day mad notions have been plaguing me about outfitting my own kitbashed retro array. Fortunately Ebay auctions on Elastolins are sky-high, so I can resist the urge to go fully bonkers on this, but scanning through my shockingly large amount of small plastic children's toys I have some interesting little mini-projects.

And wouldn't you know it out of some little Hobby Lobby value pack of Ice Age critters, I even have me a giant sloth! Pictured here next to a 28mm Norman archer, I reckon him to be around 35-40mm. This “Slothrog” (name appropriated from Chris Hogan) will be kitbash retro fantasy project #1.

So what to do with him to take him from that to something like this?

Perhaps drill in some metal pins and putty for horns. Maybe use some dark wash and firey red undertones. Not sure how to make myself an appropriately menacing blade of fire and nasty whip. Green putty and twine?

The Slothrog

No. Enc: 1-2

Alignment: Chaotic (Evil)

Movement: 40'

AC: -1

Hit Dice: 8

Attacks: 1 (sword, whip, or teeth)

Damage: 1d8+3, 1d6, or 1d10

Save: F8

Morale: 10

XP: 1,820

When raised from its demonic stupor, the Slothron can be a formidable foe. It can elect to use either its firey magical bastard sword +1, nasty barbed whip (save vs. paralyze when entangled by a hit) , or sharp incisor-like teeth in a combat round. The Slothron can cast Slow twice per day and can only be hit by magical weapons.