91st Highlanders Piper

I have been looking for a long time for a piper for the 91st Highlanders, and I thought I had found just the model in the Foundry range in their Highland Infantry Command blister. When I found I could order this through my FLGS, even better.

Now, I am fully aware of scale creep, and indeed that the Spartan miniatures are on the top end of the 32mm range, some might even say heroic 32mm. However, I have a Reaper colonial figure that fits in quite well, so I thought this would be a similar size to that, smaller, but not noticeably so. I had not taken into account the age of the Foundry line. These guys are from back when 25mm really meant 25mm, so the piper I wanted from the pack really is quite diminutive when compared to the rest of the section. I think I'll paint him up anyway, after all he's just the musician, and not one of the firing line, but I think he may have to be raised up on some kind of mound on his base to make his height, or lack thereof, a little less noticeable. Maybe I'll hide him behind some sandbags.

On the Foundry website, some of the minis look rather heroic in scale, and maybe some of the non-trooper minis are a little taller, but this guy is the same height as a kneeling Spartan mini. This is going to take some thought. Still, I do love the mini, and he comes with pipes and pith helmet, which means no conversion is needed to make him fit with the section in any other way.

Black Watch Infantry Piper Conversion

So, in my last post, I mentioned I was planning to convert one of my Infantrymen to a piper. With the help of the Victoria Miniatures Piper conversion kit. At first, I thought to use the running man as the base for the conversion, as his gun was a mis-cast anyway, but on closer inspection, he was not the prime candidate. The knife man seemed to have an overall better pose, with the reloading guy being next (at least his head is down, which might make it easier for him to reach the mouthpiece, but more on that later).

The only real thing I had to do for this was cut his left arm off, as his right arm already comes separately, so as far as conversions go, it's pretty simple. I blocked in the spaces between the body and the new arms with greenstuff, smoothed it out, and there you go.

The arms from Victoria Minis are not a perfect match however. They are for GW style 28mm heroic scale, and Spartan, although 32mm figs, they are pretty slim built and fine of feature. This means if you look closely, they piper has huge hands compared to his section mates.

The other issue with the arms was the cuffs. So I GSed in some new cuffs in an attempt to match with the rest of the section. They look pretty rough, but a coat of paint should help hide a multitude of sins in that department.

Lastly, the pipes come separate from the head in the conversion kit, therefore the mouthpiece doesn't reach the mouth. This means he's taking a pause from playing I guess, but it did mean I didn't have to re-sculpt the mouth to make him play. I have since looked up pictures of bagpipes, and it seems the actual mouthpiece is really long in real life, so maybe I'll redo this to get him mid-tune.

 

So on with the rest of the section. I foresee at least one other conversion with the minis I have, probably using the arms I cut off this gent to replace the mis-cast gun I received, along with a few bits and bobs on the rest of them, just to make the unit a little more unique.