When I was writing the rules for the Bowman of Bergerac, I knew I had to find a suitable model to represent this brave warrior. Although Citadel produces many fine Bretonnian archer models, I felt none of them really captured the feel of the character, so I decided to convert my own. I started by cutting up a standard plastic archer sprue, as you can see below.

I made the edge of the bowman's tunic more decorated by having notches (more like that of the squire models). I started by marking out evenly spaced dots with a pencil on the model, and then drilling out these marked points with a pin vice using a 1mm diameter drill piece. I then carefully cut out the plastic between the hole and the edge of the tunic with a modelling knife.

The model on the above right was stuck together using blu-tack. I decided the tied arrows on the back didn't look right (and besides, the rules stated the bowman had a magic quiver), so I scoured my bits box for a more appropiate piece. I eventually found a quiver and a skeleton sword arm from the old plastic skeleton chariot model. I replaced the arrows sticking out of the quiver with the end half of the original archer's tied arrows (just cut in half with a modelling knife). The sword was removed from the skeleton's arm at the guard. A new hilt was made from a piece of scrap round plastic. I then covered the blade in green-stuff to make it look like the sword was in it's scabbard.

Here is a picture of the nearly complete bowman! I used green-stuff to fill in the gaps between the pieces. The helm on the bowman's head was filed down and patched with green stuff to make the bowman look like he was wearing a hood.

After attaching the sword, the bowman is now ready for painting. Here are some photos of the completed bowman from various angles. Because the model's left arm was pointed to the left, I needed to reconstruct the shoulder (again more green stuff!) when I glued it pointing forward.

An easy conversion, about a night's work (3 to 4 hours). The following night was spent painting the model, click here to see how I did it!

Addendum! Since the writing of this article, the new Mordheim mercenaries sprues are available. You can easily use the quiver and scabbarded sword, as well as the many bow arms and bodies to create an infinite variety of bowmen!

© Andrew Lum 1999