Senator Pigskin

As is typical in my life, shiny new things derail the best laid plans.  I stumbled across this kickstarter project for the Spinespur game, and quite like the sound of it.  Unfortunately, I don't really have the money right now to invest heavily in another kickstarter, so I'm planning on a small contribution to get the pdf rulebook (when the commensurate funding level is reached) and maybe a couple of models.  In the meantime, I thought I'd have a go at building myself a 15mm Slaughterhouse agenda force (one of my favourite themed forces) while I wait for the kickstarter to finish.

So, I thought I'd start with the head of the Slaughterhouse agenda, Senator Pigskin himself (image taken from comfychairgames.com):

As you can see, he's basically a large guy with a meat cleaver and a meathook on a chain.  Oh, and he has a penchant for wearing a pig's head.  Charming fellow, eh?  By the time I finally crawled into bed last night, I had made this version:

After some consideration of various barbarian models, I eventually decided to go all-out and make this guy a real monster.  Cobbled together from an assortment of gw plastic remnants that I had lying around, and judicious use of green stuff, he's based on my idea for 15mm ogres, so the top of most 15mm scale model heads will reach his chin.  I also fancied making my model a bit less buff than the original, so he was assembled and bulked out in such a way as to keep the muscles, but add a bit of bulk.  I imagine him being slow but hard-hitting (of course, that may not be how he is described in the rules, but never mind.  I like this look and that's what matters).

If you are wondering about the parts used, the cleaver is from an ogre sprue, gloves are from a Khorne berserker, torso/arms from a savage orc, shoulder pad from a 40k ork, chain from an ork biker, with the hook made from the butt of a kroot rifle, legs from a goblin, the apron is a cut-down kroot bone-cloak, pocket bones are from the crypt ghouls sprue, and the knives are an accessory from the kroot sprue, used to cover an area where the original goblin loincloth was not covered by the apron.

The pig's head is based on a goblin head with the eyes drilled out (how freaky does that sound?  It was a weird feeling, drilling out a models eyes.  Made me feel like a deranged serial killer or something).  Green stuff was used to variously blend things in, bulk things out, and create the pig features.  The most bizarre thing to admit is having to bulk out the arse on the model.  Because a large, chunky torso was being glued to teeny little legs, Pigskin's butt needed to be bulked out to make the join more natural looking.

Anyway, I'm rather pleased with the end result.  I added gloves, because I figured they would be a necessary item of abbatoir apparel, and compliment the apron well in that regard, and the shoulder plate was added just because I thought it looked good, and added something to the otherwise bare right hand side of the model.  The only thing I would change about this build is the meathook.  If I had been able to find one of the chaos marauder standards, or some dark eldar bits, or anything a bit more meathook-y(?), I would have gone for them instead.  But, that's not a huge regret.

For now, Pigskin is off to be sprayed, and it's time to rummage through my 15mm lead pile to find him some minions (I reckon there must be some zombie survivor models that would fit the bill).  With luck, the only money I'll need to spend will be on some 15mm pigs.