Grim Champs: Converting the Champions of Erebor, Part 1

Good morning gamers,

I mentioned at the start of the year that I was going to take a bunch of Champions of Erebor in my Fantasy Fellowship this year. The champs are kinda expensive (like everything in the Erebor Reclaimed list), so I wanted to look for conversion options. While I was puzzling through this, I got the Dain and Thorin set from Rythbyrt and I noticed how similar the shield design on Thorin was to the cheaper Warriors of Erebor. Picking up a box of Warriors, Grim Hammers, and Thorin's Company costs the same as the champs, but also nets me a bunch more models - so I began a neat endeavor to convert up our Heroes from these models. Let's start with the six Dwarves in our Fellowship.

The War of the Ring Era Champs

These are the bits we're going to need for our War of the Ring champions (I didn't end up needing Dwalin's hammer). We mostly need their heads, but we're going to also borrow some other bits too. Let's start with the Champ that's being used by both me and my son for Fantasy Fellowships this season, Dori!

Dori the Dwarf, Champion of Erebor 

Dori is equipped with a two-handed mace, which is good because Grim Hammers have weapons that will pass for that. As such, we want a pose with the mace raised high and get his head swapped:

We're going to cannibalize the sword and flail too - more on those in the next post for this project!

I attached Dori's head (cutting deep into the plastic torso to save his beard) to the awaiting Grim Hammer - I rather like the end result:

Nori the Dwarf, Champion of Erebor 

Nori will be started in this series, but because he needs a shield, he won't be finished until next time. For now, we need him to have a hand mace (he starts with a two-handed mace) and a pose that will accommodate a shield later:

This one is simple - the walking pose should look great once we get the shield on him:

Bifur the Dwarf, Champion of Erebor 

For Bifur, we need a hand-and-a-half axe, for which the Grim Hammer weapons will work just fine for now (but I'll be replacing it with an axe head from a Warrior of Erebor later). We only need the head from the Thorin's Company model, but he has quite the beard - so I made sure we got that too:

Simple gluing gets us to a pretty good finish:

Bofur the Dwarf, Champion of Erebor

Bofur is similar - get the head off, being careful to get the two whisps of mustache and the braid in the back:

A little glue and we're good - I gotta say, going carefully around the facial hair for this project really paid off:

Gloin the Dwarf, Champion of Erebor

Gloin requires very little work - he has a distinctive axe head, but his Thorin's Company version has two of these, so it's not a big deal. We need the second axe head for another guy, so we chopped it off now:

Gloin was a pain to work on because his hair flowed on both sides. When I finally got his head off, his back hair came off. A tiny strip of putty and some creases to match the hair fixed that up quickly:

The second axe bit was added to Dwalin's model, who we'll turn to next.

Dwalin the Dwarf, Champion of Erebor

Dwalin's the end of the line and will get a new head and some crossed axes. I left the beard on the Grim Hammer - I thought it flowed nicely into his neck and showed that Dwalin lived up to his longbeard heritage:

Conclusion 

Four of us will be in the next Fantasy Fellowship mission this weekend!

So why do all this? Why go through the work of converting models instead of buying the real ones? Well first off, the aesthetic of the Erebor Reclaimed heroes we want to pair our Dwarves with (old Dain and Thorin III) is different from the Hobbit era aesthetic. To match the shield on Thorin and the armor of both, Grim Hammers are just the better option. 

Second, from a purely financial viewpoint, I can get Gandalf, Bilbo, Thorin, 12 converted champs, 11 Grim Hammers, and 24 Warriors of Erebor for the same cost as the actual champs. Converting up 30ish Dwarves to be Iron Hills Dwarves will save me a ton of money too - and that's the biggest impediment for most people to get into the Iron Hills or Erebor Reclaimed (and again, the conversions will keep the same aesthetic as the models I began with).

Third, on some level, I did it because I could - conversion projects are fun and while I'm not completely happy with Bofur, I really like how the rest came out. Converting up the champs will be checking off a ton of boxes for hobby bingo (as you'll see at the end of the year), so it's pretty exciting to know my efforts aren't just for the fun of converting, but also helping me reach a goal (and we're saving money along the way).

This is a fun little hobby project and we'll cover the other models in a few weeks, but until then, happy hobbying!