K. Close III

It’s a Free Action to Drop a Weapon…

Thursday, April 30th, 2009 | Entertainment

…in which I talk about my first real miniature alteration.

I’ve been playing in my first 4th edition D&D game for a few months now and I’ve been using the mini that I found best represented my character. The only downside to him, was that he was wielding all the wrong weapons. So, when I purchased the mini, I also purchased a package of weapons to be swapped into his hands. I’ve researched miniature modification online and learned the best and easiest practices for swapping weapons cleanly, so I was all ready to do it. I even spent twice as much on the weapon pack as I did on the figure itself so that he could be carrying that vicious khopesh.

After about two games, however, I decided to completely retool the character and he coincidentally ended up with the exact weapons that were represented by the mini. I didn’t really think much of it at the time, because if I did, I lamented the wasted money on the weapon pack. Over the last few games, however, my unprimed, unpainted mini has started to show a weakness in the main hand weapon. Every time I showed up to a game I had to straighten his short sword and the joining point was getting notoriously weak. Finally, as I was repacking my bag for our game tomorrow, I finally decided enough was enough. I bought the weapon pack and the figure had an obvious flaw, so it must be a sign to replace the sword.

I went through that regretfully expensive weapon pack and pulled out a particularly aggressive looking short sword and inspected it’s possibility for replacement. The handle was small enough and the pommel from the original sword looked good at the cap of the new blade that it looked like a good fit all around. I took a deep breath and bent the old sword one more time and it snapped right off at the figure’s hand. I then snipped the pommel off of the new sword and headed out to the shed to retrieve my Dremmel and a small drill bit. A few nervous seconds later and I had drilled a clean hole right through the figure’s hand, leaving the pommel untouched. The new sword was a tight fit in the hole, but it still went in easily. I dropped a bead of super glue in the hole and inserted the new blade. After a little fine tuning, it looked like it had been there the whole time and was far more sturdy than the original.

I’ve since primed it and it’s sitting waiting for inspection out in the shed. I’m excited to see if it is obvious, after the application of primer, that the blade is not original.

In short, I’m quite pleased with my first real hack up of a miniature figure.

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