Goblin Pirates

This is my slow moving project on the side, mustering together a Pirate warband completely converted to be a Goblin crew! These will be built mostly out of Empire Free Company and Goblin bits, with a few spare pieces from other kits. Bases are made from cut up match sticks

My heroes so far:



Left to Right: Ship Mate with a great sword and a shovel from the Imperial Guard weapon team, Captain with Sword and Pistol, Cabin Boy with Sword and Buckler(small shield from Bretonnian Knights box)



Left to Right: 2 Gunners one with a brace of pistols and the other with a blunderbuss, Crew with sword and dagger, Boatswain with crossbow.

There will be hats, bandanas and eye patches soon! A friend was generous enough to send some feathers from some empire kits my way, so once I get those my captain will have a nice hat. While I wait for those, I will get some practice with green stuff and convert some more members for the crew(and give heads to those who are lacking)

Cool start! I like the choice of bits.

Looking forward to the hats, bandanas and eye patches.

OH BABY...GOBLINS! As a Goblin Guy the progress of your crew is especially interesting to moi...keep posting as things develop.

WarbossKurgan: Thanks, still waiting for some bits but hopefully I get them in soon!

DeafNala: Thanks, I feel that goblins makes everything a bit more awesome.

I did add some heads, and began work on one with a cat o nine tails:


Also thinking of using a squig or two in place of dogs. What would look better, a squig with a pirate hat, bandanna or eye patch? or some combination of those?

Coming along VERY nicely!
The picture of a Squig in a pirate hat & eye patch is JUST TOO COOL not to give it a try...EXCELLENT IDEA!

Squig with a peg leg please!

Squig with a pirate hat, bandanna, a peg leg and an eye patch!

Neat. The militia torsos and goblin legs work better together than I would have thought. Thanks for sharing a cool idea.

I keep telling myself I'm going to muster up a Goblin Pirate warband one of these days, I even have all the free company bits I need, but man this idea just never gets old! I love the look of your gobbos.

I'm all on board with the piratey squig idea. Personally I'm with Deafnala - the more swashbuckling paraphanelia the better! What warband list are you using? You could count them as wardogs, or alternatively if you're just using the standard pirate warband you could treat them as swabbies too (the weakened profile might make sense for one-eyed, one-legged, debilitated squigs).

Nice Gobbos. Looking forward to seeing some paint.

thanks all, still waiting on some bits which will hopefully be turning up next week so I can resume this and get to some painting.

Myntokk: I am using the pirate warband list for this, I hadn't considered debilitated squigs for swabbies but its a really good idea! I had originally thought of gnoblars as swabbies, but now you got me reconsidering. Time to dig up some squigs and see what I can do.

I have been trying to come up with some ideas for hired swords as well. Gnoblar Chef instead of a halfling is all I have so far.

Hired swords--There's always Myntokk's Goblin Pirates...

I also recommend StyrofoamKing's Orc Pirate and Goblin Swabbie and for that matter the whole Sartosa setting.

I use Forest Goblins as a base for my goblin pirates. Since they have access to shooting skills and start with one less advance than a normal hero I don't mind giving up the skill slot to get Weapons Master and start the collection of blackpowder weapons. Also I like the Sluggers and the Red Toofs as pirates.

Loving the models, keep up the good work!

Von Kurst: Thanks! Forest Goblins seems like a good list too but I can't resist converting up a swivel gun later on.

Ordered the pirate maneater, and the gnarly cave squigs. Can't wait for everything to get here so I can make some more progress! Figure I will just count the squigs as swabbies armed with 2 axes to try to represent their bite.

Squigs would be the best swabbies ever. Normally I hates them lubbers, but represented by squigs makes them sound not half bad.

Swivel gunner--I had one of those in my goblin band, too. I like heroes with Weapons Master as swivel gunners when I can't get a Lads got Talent Gunner. Max BS4 with no skill upgrades is a waste of a big gun in my book.

I like the use of Empire Arms with the Goblins. One of my friends got some extra Goblin bits, it had a ton of bodies, but for some reason not too many heads and arms. I had quite a few heads already, some of them got Night Goblins Heads, but I didn't have enough goblin melee weapon arms. So I busted-out my extra Empire Bits and they worked pretty well. A little green stuff here and there they looked pretty good. There were a couple where the Empire arm was a little too long, but I trimmed them a little bit and it looked fine.

Took a much longer break from this than I wanted, darn responsibilities. Just getting back to work on this project now, and I painted one of my cabin boys with sword and buckler as a test for the gang. Might have to do the belt a different colour, kind of blended in with the armour.



The matchstick bases turned out better than I hoped, I brushed some wood stain on them after painting and it really helped give it an older look I think. Also picked up a pirate maneater to use as a hired sword!

Haha, looks great! The matchstick base definitely works for a ship's deck.

VERY COOL little Guy! The base turned out GREAT. To complete the Pirate Chic look, doing some stripes on his pants would add a touch of in character color.

He looks aces!

Can't wait to see more of 'em!

I promised myself I wouldn't touch my Empire militia for any conversions until I saw this. I'm definitely going to do some serious goblin pirate conversion using this thread as inspiration. Thanks a lot for showing us this!

Joao

I second the notion of stripy pants. Always good to see more varied cloth patterns on a warband.

I didn't even notice there was a belt. I just thought it was a bottom strap or cusp on his leather jerkin.

Loving them! Can't wait to see more.

Theo

Thanks for the comments! Stripey pants is a good idea, I will need to try that out. Sickness and tests are slowing me down, but here's a quick WIP shot:

The gnoblar is my ship's cook, a count as halfling scout. I gave him a little crossbow from one of the mordheim sprues to count as his bow. The maneater is just perfect as is to use.

Hope you get better soon.

Your project is looking great! I've been doing some very simple conversions for my goblin pirate theme and found that the combination of arms and bodies of goblins, gnoblars and gretchin work wonders!

Joao

Amazing. I'm planning a full pirate goblin unit for my Warhammer O&G, so this is great inspiration! Will have to mix them with Gnobbos, and go willy-nilly with humie bits like you have.

Theo