With the release of Iron Kingdoms Unleashed: Skorne Empire, I thought I’d try my hand at converting another miniature for the Iron Kingdoms Unleashed Roleplaying Game.

As many of you probably know by now, Skorne is my first love (sorry, Mom), so I had plenty of ideas for characters. After some deliberation, I decided to convert and paint a Cataphract/Tyrant. This combination of careers brings some very cool and characterful abilities to the table. My character’s Cataphract training minimizes the penalties for wearing heavy armor, and he gets a bonus to his ARM when he forms a Defensive Line with an ally. The Tyrant career gives him access to several battle plans and Natural Leader, allowing you to keep your allies on their feet and increase your command range. The starting assets for a Cataphract include a war spear and shield, but as this guy is also a Tyrant, I wanted him to carry a weapon worthy of a leader, so I chose to give him a great sword instead.

When creating the conversion for my character, I knew I wanted to use the body of the Tyrant Commander. It’s one of my favorite Skorne sculpts. I tend to favor stoic poses rather than leaping action poses, so I decided to make the model rest his hand on a sheathed sword while holding his helmet under the crook of his arm.

With great care, I cut the helmet off of the Tyrant Commander model and then painstakingly hollowed it out with a rotary tool and my hobby knife. The Tyrant Commander’s left arm was already in a good pose and only needed to be angled out slightly to accommodate the helmet. I sculpted the hand after the arm and helmet were in place so that I could sculpt the fingers gripping the inside edge of the helmet.

I stole the scabbard and sword handle from Legion bits, but their Asian influence is similar to the Skorne aesthetic, and without context they blend in perfectly. Getting the sword to hang realistically and show the balance between the forces of the straps holding it to the body and the pressure of the hand was a little tricky, but it’s the little details that often sell the pose. I mounted the sword with a pin, then sculpted straps out of putty on a separate surface and allowed them to cure before gluing them from the scabbard to the model’s waist. I angled the sword to make sure the grip would be in line with where the second sculpted hand would be placed.

Sculpting hands is always a trial for me, and the more open the pose of the fingers the trickier the process becomes. I started with a wire armature that I then bulked up with Formula P3 Brown/Aluminum Putty. Once the putty cured, it could be filed to reduce mass or to change the shape. I then overlaid a second layer of putty that held the details of the hand, such as the joints of the fingers and the clefts between them. After much cursing and frustration, I usually end up with something that looks vaguely hand-like.

I used the bare head of the Standard Bearer for my Tyrant’s head. If you think about this too long it’s pretty messed up. I mean, these guys were probably friends, and at the very least comrades in arms, and now one of them is wearing the other one’s head. The head didn’t fit naturally to the body (go figure), so I sculpted a raised collar on the armor to hide the join.

I decided to stick with a mostly traditional paint scheme, but I added some cream-colored armor plates for visual interest. Because the desert sun is so bright, I wanted the model to have harsh highlights and very deep shadows. With that in mind, I did extra shading on any overhung areas and worked to focus bright highlights toward the top of the model.

The finishing touch was, of course, to give him a name. I tried mashing together some Zs and Xs to create a suitably skorney name, but I eventually settled on Tyrant Georduaraii for obvious reasons.